A comparative study of electrical and opto-electrical properties of a few-layer p-WSe2/n-WS2 heterojunction diode on SiO2 and h-BN substrates.

Since the innovation of van der Waals heterostructures of 2D materials, the p-n junction diode, a building block of electronics and opto-electronics has been studied in various ways. To date most of them have been studied on SiO2 or other oxide substrates, although the oxide substrates cause significant degradation of the 2D material's intrinsic properties and device performances. Whereas using hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) as an underlying layer to the 2D materials is known to preserve their properties. Here we have carefully analyzed the electrical and opto-electrical properties of a p-WSe2/n-WS2 van der Waals heterojunction diode on SiO2 and the h-BN substrates. Besides the usual enhancement of the field-effect mobility of WSe2 and WS2, we have achieved a significant enhancement of the diode rectification ratio and excellent photovoltaic characteristics on the h-BN substrate. We have obtained more than an order-of-magnitude enhancement of the diode rectification ratio and about two-fold increments in the overall opto-electronics behavior on the h-BN substrate compared with those on the SiO2 substrate. The values of self-powered photo responsivity and external quantum efficiency are 3 A/W and 588% respectively on the h-BN substrate at 10 mW cm-2 photo-power density and 633 nm wavelength, whereas they reduce to about one-half on the SiO2 substrate.

Asymmetric electrode incorporated 2D GeSe for self-biased and efficient photodetection.

2D layered germanium selenide (GeSe) with p-type conductivity is incorporated with asymmetric contact electrode of chromium/Gold (Cr/Au) and Palladium/Gold (Pd/Au) to design a self-biased, high speed and an efficient photodetector. The photoresponse under photovoltaic effect is investigated for the wavelengths of light (i.e. ~220, ~530 and ~850 nm). The device exhibited promising figures of merit required for efficient photodetection, specifically the Schottky barrier diode is highly sensitive to NIR light irradiation at zero voltage with good reproducibility, which is promising for the emergency application of fire detection and night vision. The high responsivity, detectivity, normalized photocurrent to dark current ratio (NPDR), noise equivalent power (NEP) and response time for illumination of light (~850 nm) are calculated to be 280 mA/W, 4.1 × 109 Jones, 3 × 107 W-1, 9.1 × 10-12 WHz-1/2 and 69 ms respectively. The obtained results suggested that p-GeSe is a novel candidate for SBD optoelectronics-based technologies.

High-Performance p-BP/n-PdSe2 Near-Infrared Photodiodes with a Fast and Gate-Tunable Photoresponse.

Van der Waals heterostructures composed of transition-metal dichalcogenide (TMD) materials have become a remarkable compact system that could offer an innovative architecture for advanced engineering in high-performance energy-harvesting and optoelectronic devices. Here, we report a novel van der Waals (vdW) TMD heterojunction photodiode composed of black phosphorus (p-BP) and palladium diselenide (n-PdSe2), which establish a high and tunable rectification and photoresponsivity. A high rectification up to ≈7.1 × 105 is achieved, which is successfully tuned by employing the back-gate voltage to the heterostructure devices. Besides, the device significantly shows the high and gate-controlled photoresponsivity of R = 9.6 × 105, 4.53 × 105 and 1.63 × 105 A W-1 under the influence of light of different wavelengths (λ = 532, 1064, and 1310 nm) in visible and near-infrared regions, respectively, because of interlayer optical transition and low Schottky. The device also demonstrates extraordinary values of detectivity (D = 5.8 × 1013 Jones) and external quantum efficiency (EQE ≈ 9.4 × 106), which are an order of magnitude higher than the currently reported values. The effective enhancement of photovoltaic characteristics in visible and infrared regions of this TMD heterostructure-based system has a huge potential in the field of optoelectronics to realize high-performance infrared photodetectors.

MoTe2 van der Waals homojunction p-n diode with low resistance metal contacts.

Although many studies have focused on transition metal dichalcogenide heterojunction p-n diodes, homojunction p-n diodes still require more extensive study. We present a van der Waals p-MoTe2/n-MoTe2 homojunction p-n diode with low resistance metal contacts. Such two-dimensional homojunction devices with low contact resistance can be used in various applications in the electronics industry. The device structure consists of stacked nanoflakes of p-MoTe2 and n-MoTe2. In this investigation, we implement a deep ultraviolet light-driven doping technique in a N2 gas environment to modulate the carrier concentration in a multilayered p-MoTe2 flake, which is consequently inverted to n-MoTe2. The deep ultraviolet light-driven doping provides environmental stability in the treated devices. We use ohmic metal contacts for the homojunction p-n diode and achieve excellent gate-dependent rectifying behavior with a rectification ratio of up to 104. Contrary to heterojunctions, the ideality factor is found to be 1.05 for the zero gate bias, indicative of good interface quality at the p-MoTe2/n-MoTe2 junction, owing to low charge trapping sites at the homojunction interface. In addition, low-temperature measurements are performed to determine the barrier height for different gate biases. This study contributes to research on van der Waals homojunction p-n diodes, which show much potential for nanoelectronic and optoelectronic devices.

Allergic bronchopulmonary aspergillosis--a clinical review.

Allergic Bronchopulmonary Aspergillosis (ABPA) was first described by Hinson and colleagues in 1952. ABPA is a hypersensitivity disorder induced by a fungus Aspergillus and affects non-immunocompromised patients. The diagnosis is based on the presence of a combination of clinical, biological and radiological criteria. The treatment is based on oral corticosteroids for 6-8 weeks at acute phase or exacerbation and Itraconazole is now recommended and validated at a dose of 200 mg/day for 16 weeks.

Additional cash incentive within a conditional cash transfer scheme: a 'controlled before and during' design evaluation study from India.

BACKGROUND: Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) schemes have shown largely favorable changes in the health seeking behavior. This evaluation study assesses the process and performance of an Additional Cash Incentive (ACI) scheme within an ongoing CCT scheme in India, and document lessons. MATERIAL AND METHODS: A controlled before and during design study was conducted in Madhya Pradesh state of India, from August 2007 to March 2008, with increased in institutional deliveries as a primary outcome. In depth interviews, focus group discussions and household surveys were done for data collection. RESULTS: Lack of awareness about ACI scheme amongst general population and beneficiaries, cumbersome cash disbursement procedure, intricate eligibility criteria, extensive paper work, and insufficient focus on community involvement were the major implementation challenges. There were anecdotal reports of political interference and possible scope for corruption. At the end of implementation period, overall rate of institutional deliveries had increased in both target and control populations; however, the differences were not statistically significant. No cause and effect association could be proven by this study. CONCLUSIONS: Poor planning and coordination, and lack of public awareness about the scheme resulted in low utilization. Thus, proper IEC and training, detailed implementation plan, orientation training for implementer, sufficient budgetary allocation, and community participation should be an integral part for successful implementation of any such scheme. The lesson learned this evaluation study may be useful in any developing country setting and may be utilized for planning and implementation of any ACI scheme in future.