XPS as Characterization Tool for PV: From the Substrate to Complete III-V Multijunction Solar Cells

This contribution aims to illustrate the potential of the X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) technique as a tool to analyze different parts of a solar cell (surface state, heterointerfaces, profile composition of ohmic contacts, etc). Here, the analysis is specifically applied to III-V multijunction solar cells used in concentrator systems. The information provided from such XPS analysis has helped to understand the physico-chemical nature of these surfaces and interfaces, and thus has guided the technological process in order to improve the solar cell performance.

Substrate nanopatterning by e-beam lithography to growth ordered arrays of III-nitride nanodetectors, white light emitters, and solar cells

III-nitride nanorods have attracted much scientific interest during the last decade because of their unique optical and electrical properties [1,2]. The high crystal quality and the absence of extended defects make them ideal candidates for the fabrication of high efficiency opto-electronic devices such as nano-photodetectors, light-emitting diodes, and solar cells [1-3]. Nitride nanorods are commonly grown in the self-assembled mode by plasma-assisted molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) [4]. However, self-assembled nanorods are characterized by inhomogeneous heights and diameters, which render the device processing very difficult and negatively affect the electronic transport properties of the final device. For this reason, the selective area growth (SAG) mode has been proposed, where the nanorods preferentially grow with high order on pre-defined sites on a pre-patterned substrate

Response of Chrysantemum Plant to Addition of Broiler Manure as a Substitute for Commercial Substrate

Dos tipos diferentes de pollinaza mezclados con el material de cama (paja o serrín) añadidas en tasas de 0 y 10% más dos substratos comerciales de turba (turba negra y turba rubia) se usaron para estudiar el crecimiento de crisantemo en maceta. En todos los casos, la calidad y el tamaño de las plantas fue mejor con las mezclas de substratos de turba negra que con las mezclas de turba rubia. Con las mezclas de turba negra con pollinaza hubo un aumento significativo del número de flores sin que hubiese un aumento en el tamaño de las plantas. También se pudo observar que con la adición de pollinaza, el substrato de turba rubia mejoró significativamente los parámetros de crecimiento estudiados, esto fue debido a que el pH del substrato fue más adecuado para el cultivo. Por último, no hubo mortalidad de plantas con las mezclas experimentadas, pero cuando la cantidad de gallinaza aumentó en la mezcla fue más notable la mortalidad de plantas.

Influence of substrate type and orientation on the morphology and optical properties of selective area growth of GaN and InGaN nanocolumns

A relevant issue concerning optoelectronic devices based on III-nitrides is the presence of strong polarization fields that may reduce efficiency.

Effect of substrate-target distance and sputtering pressure in the synthesis of AlN thin films

In this work, we analyze the influence of the processing pressure and the substrate–target distance on the synthesis by reactive sputtering of c-axis oriented polycrystalline aluminum nitride thin films deposited on Si(100) wafers. The crystalline quality of AlN has been characterized by high-resolution X-ray diffraction (HR-XRD). The films exhibited a very high degree of c-axis orientation especially when a low process pressure was used. After growth, residual stress measurements obtained indirectly from radius of curvature measurements of the wafer prior and after deposition are also provided. Two different techniques are used to determine the curvature—an optically levered laser beam and a method based on X-ray diffraction. There is a transition from compressive to tensile stress at a processing pressure around 2 mTorr. The transition occurs at different pressures for thin films of different thickness. The degree of c-axis orientation was not affected by the target–substrate distance as it was varied in between 30 and 70 mm.

Influence of PH3 exposure on silicon substrate morphology in the MOVPE growth of III-V on silicon multijunction solar cells

Dual-junction solar cells formed by a GaAsP or GaInP top cell and a silicon bottom cell seem to be attractive candidates to materialize the long sought-for integration of III-V materials on silicon for photovoltaic applications. One of the first issues to be considered in the development of this structure will be the strategy to create the silicon emitter of the bottom subcell. In this study, we explore the possibility of forming the silicon emitter by phosphorus diffusion (i.e. exposing the wafer to PH3 in a MOVPE reactor) and still obtain good surface morphologies to achieve a successful III-V heteroepitaxy as occurs in conventional III-V on germanium solar cell technology. Consequently, we explore the parameter space (PH3 partial pressure, time and temperature) that is needed to create optimized emitter designs and assess the impact of such treatments on surface morphology using atomic force microscopy. Although a strong degradation of surface morphology caused by prolonged exposure of silicon to PH3 is corroborated, it is also shown that subsequent anneals under H-2 can recover silicon surface morphology and minimize its RMS roughness and the presence of pits and spikes.

Magnetic resonance imaging based signal intensity mapping predicts appropriate therapies after prophylactic ventricular tachycardia substrate ablation in patients with previous myocardial infarction and secondary prevention implantable cardioverter-defibrillator implantation

The aim of this study was to determine the capability of ceMRI based signal intensity (SI) mapping to predict appropriate ICD therapies after PVTSA.

Registration and fusion of contrast-enhanced MRI myocardial substrate maps and X-ray angiograms

The aim of this work is to provide the necessary methods to register and fuse the endo-epicardial signal intensity (SI) maps extracted from contrast-enhanced magnetic resonance imaging (ceMRI) with X-ray coronary ngiograms using an intrinsic registrationbased algorithm to help pre-planning and guidance of catheterization procedures. Fusion of angiograms with SI maps was treated as a 2D-3D pose estimation, where each image point is projected to a Plücker line, and the screw representation for rigid motions is minimized using a gradient descent method. The resultant transformation is applied to the SI map that is then projected and fused on each angiogram. The proposed method was tested in clinical datasets from 6 patients with prior myocardial infarction. The registration procedure is optionally combined with an iterative closest point algorithm (ICP) that aligns the ventricular contours segmented from two ventriculograms.

TEM study of the AlN grain orientation grown on NCD diamond substrate

Piezoelectric AlN layer grain orientation, grown by room temperature reactive sputtering, is analyzed by transmission electron microscopy (TEM).Two types of samples are studied: (i) AlN grown on well-polished NCD (nano-crystalline diamond) diamond, (ii) AlN grown on an up-side down NCD layer previously grown on a Si substrate, i.e. diamond surface as smooth as that of Si substrates. The second set of sample show a faster lignment of their AlN grain caxis attributed to it smoother diamond free surface. No grain orientation relationship between diamond substrate grain and the AlN ones is evidenced, which seems to indicate the preponderance role of the surface substrate state.

High thermal neutron flux effects on structural and macroscopic properties of alkali-borosilicate glasses used as neutron guide substrate

The behaviour of four alkali-borosilicate glasses under homogeneous thermal neutron irradiation has been studied. These materials are used for the manufacturing of neutron guides which are installed in most facilities as devices to transport neutrons from intense sources such as nuclear reactors or spallation sources up to scientific instruments. Several experimental techniques such as Raman, NMR, SANS and STEM have been employed in order to understand the rather different macroscopic behaviour under irradiation of materials that belong to a same glass family. The results have shown that the remarkable glass shrinking observed for neutron doses below 0.5 · 10 18 n/cm 2 critically depends upon the presence of domains where silicate and borate network do not mix.

Bcl-XL interacts with Apaf-1 and inhibits Apaf-1-dependent caspase-9 activation

Recent studies indicate that Caenorhabditis elegans CED-4 interacts with and promotes the activation of the death protease CED-3, and that this activation is inhibited by CED-9. Here we show that a mammalian homolog of CED-4, Apaf-1, can associate with several death proteases, including caspase-4, caspase-8, caspase-9, and nematode CED-3 in mammalian cells. The interaction with caspase-9 was mediated by the N-terminal CED-4-like domain of Apaf-1. Expression of Apaf-1 enhanced the killing activity of caspase-9 that required the CED-4-like domain of Apaf-1. Furthermore, Apaf-1 promoted the processing and activation of caspase-9 in vivo. Bcl-XL, an antiapoptotic member of the Bcl-2 family, was shown to physically interact with Apaf-1 and caspase-9 in mammalian cells. The association of Apaf-1 with Bcl-XL was mediated through both its CED-4-like domain and the C-terminal domain containing WD-40 repeats. Expression of Bcl-XL inhibited the association of Apaf-1 with caspase-9 in mammalian cells. Significantly, recombinant Bcl-XL purified from Escherichia coli or insect cells inhibited Apaf-1-dependent processing of caspase-9. Furthermore, Bcl-XL failed to inhibit caspase-9 processing mediated by a constitutively active Apaf-1 mutant, suggesting that Bcl-XL regulates caspase-9 through Apaf-1. These experiments demonstrate that Bcl-XL associates with caspase-9 and Apaf-1, and show that Bcl-XL inhibits the maturation of caspase-9 mediated by Apaf-1, a process that is evolutionarily conserved from nematodes to humans.

Caspase-dependent activation of cyclin-dependent kinases during Fas-induced apoptosis in Jurkat cells

The activation of cyclin-dependent kinases (cdks) has been implicated in apoptosis induced by various stimuli. We find that the Fas-induced activation of cdc2 and cdk2 in Jurkat cells is not dependent on protein synthesis, which is shut down very early during apoptosis before caspase-3 activation. Instead, activation of these kinases seems to result from both a rapid cleavage of Wee1 (an inhibitory kinase of cdc2 and cdk2) and inactivation of anaphase-promoting complex (the specific system for cyclin degradation), in which CDC27 homolog is cleaved during apoptosis. Both Wee1 and CDC27 are shown to be substrates of the caspase-3-like protease. Although cdk activities are elevated during Fas-induced apoptosis in Jurkat cells, general activation of the mitotic processes does not occur. Our results do not support the idea that apoptosis is simply an aberrant mitosis but, instead, suggest that a subset of mitotic mechanisms plays an important role in apoptosis through elevated cdk activities.

The drug efflux protein, P-glycoprotein, additionally protects drug-resistant tumor cells from multiple forms of caspase-dependent apoptosis

Multidrug resistance mediated by the drug efflux protein, P-glycoprotein (P-gp), is one mechanism that tumor cells use to escape death induced by chemotherapeutic agents. However, the mechanism by which P-gp confers resistance to a large variety of structurally diverse molecules has remained elusive. In this study, classical multidrug resistant human CEM and K562 tumor cell lines expressing high levels of P-gp were less sensitive to multiple forms of caspase-dependent cell death, including that mediated by cytotoxic drugs and ligation of Fas. The DNA fragmentation and membrane damage inflicted by these stimuli were defined as caspase dependent by various soluble peptide fluoromethylketone caspase inhibitors. Inhibition of P-gp function by the anti-P-gp mAb MRK-16 or verapamil could reverse resistance to these forms of cell death. Inhibition of P-gp function also enhanced drug or Fas-mediated activation of caspase-3 in drug-resistant CEM cells. By contrast, caspase-independent cell death events in the same cells, including those mediated by pore-forming proteins or intact NK cells, were not affected by P-gp expression. These observations suggest that, in addition to effluxing drugs, P-gp may play a specific role in regulating some caspase-dependent apoptotic pathways.

Substrate-induced conformational change in a trimeric ornithine transcarbamoylase

The crystal structure of Escherichia coli ornithine transcarbamoylase (OTCase, EC 2.1.3.3) complexed with the bisubstrate analog N-(phosphonacetyl)-l-ornithine (PALO) has been determined at 2.8-Å resolution. This research on the structure of a transcarbamoylase catalytic trimer with a substrate analog bound provides new insights into the linkages between substrate binding, protein–protein interactions, and conformational change. The structure was solved by molecular replacement with the Pseudomonas aeruginosa catabolic OTCase catalytic trimer (Villeret, V., Tricot, C., Stalon, V. & Dideberg, O. (1995) Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 92, 10762–10766; Protein Data Bank reference pdb 1otc) as the model and refined to a crystallographic R value of 21.3%. Each polypeptide chain folds into two domains, a carbamoyl phosphate binding domain and an l-ornithine binding domain. The bound inhibitor interacts with the side chains and/or backbone atoms of Lys-53, Ser-55, Thr-56, Arg-57, Thr-58, Arg-106, His-133, Asn-167, Asp-231, Met-236, Leu-274, Arg-319 as well as Gln-82 and Lys-86 from an adjacent chain. Comparison with the unligated P. aeruginosa catabolic OTCase structure indicates that binding of the substrate analog results in closure of the two domains of each chain. As in E. coli aspartate transcarbamoylase, the 240s loop undergoes the largest conformational change upon substrate binding. The clinical implications for human OTCase deficiency are discussed.

Phosphorylation of insulin receptor substrate 1 by glycogen synthase kinase 3 impairs insulin action

The phosphorylation of insulin receptor substrate 1 (IRS-1) on tyrosine residues by the insulin receptor (IR) tyrosine kinase is involved in most of the biological responses of insulin. IRS-1 mediates insulin signaling by recruiting SH2 proteins through its multiple tyrosine phosphorylation sites. The phosphorylation of IRS-1 on serine/threonine residues also occurs in cells; however, the particular protein kinase(s) promoting this type of phosphorylation are unknown. Here we report that glycogen synthase kinase 3 (GSK-3) is capable of phosphorylating IRS-1 and that this modification converts IRS-1 into an inhibitor of IR tyrosine kinase activity in vitro. Expression of wild-type GSK-3 or an “unregulated” mutant of the kinase (S9A) in CHO cells overexpressing IRS-1 and IR, resulted in increased serine phosphorylation levels of IRS-1, suggesting that IRS-1 is a cellular target of GSK-3. Furthermore, insulin-induced tyrosine phosphorylation of IRS-1 and IR was markedly suppressed in cells expressing wild-type or the S9A mutant, indicating that expression of GSK-3 impairs IR tyrosine kinase activity. Taken together, our studies suggest a new role for GSK-3 in attenuating insulin signaling via its phosphorylation of IRS-1 and may provide new insight into mechanisms important in insulin resistance.