ABSTRACT
A colloidal deposition technique is presented to construct long-range ordered hybrid arrays of self-assembled quantum dots and metal nanoparticles. Quantum dots are promising for novel opto-electronic devices but, in most cases, their optical transitions of interest lack sufficient light absorption to provide a significant impact in their implementation. A potential solution is to couple the dots with localized plasmons in metal nanoparticles. The extreme confinement of light in the near-field produced by the nanoparticles can potentially boost the absorption in the quantum dots by up to two orders of magnitude.In this work, light extinction measurements are employed to probe the plasmon resonance of spherical gold nanoparticles in lead sulfide colloidal quantum dots and amorphous silicon thin-films. Mie theory computations are used to analyze the experimental results and determine the absorption enhancement that can be generated by the highly intense near-field produced in the vicinity of the gold nanoparticles at their surface plasmon resonance.The results presented here are of interest for the development of plasmon-enhanced colloidal nanostructured photovoltaic materials, such as colloidal quantum dot intermediate-band solar cells.
ABSTRACT
Compliance in medicine dispensation has proven critical for dosage control, diagnosis, and treatment. We have designed, manufactured, and characterized a novel dynamically programmable e-pill dispensing system. Our system is initially programmed remotely through a cell phone. After programming, the system may be reconfigured in order to adapt pill dispensation to new conditions. In this paper we describe the mechanics, electronics, control, and communication protocols implemented. Our dyn-e-pill devices can be actuated for over 350 h with two pill retrievals per hour. We challenged the charging circuit and demonstrated that the system has a lifetime longer than 6 h with a 30 min charging cycle, while it lasts for 14 h of uninterrupted use with a full charge.
