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The development of a novel nanoarray photoanode with a heterostructure on a transparent conducting oxide substrate provides a promising scheme to fabricate efficient energy conversion devices. Herein, we successfully synthesize the vertically aligned hierarchical TiO2 nanowire/ZnO nanorod or TiO2 nanowire/ZnO nanosheet hybrid arrays, which are proven to be excellent anode candidates for superior light utilization. Consequently, the quantum-dot-sensitized solar cells based on such hybrid arrays exhibit an impressive power conversion efficiency (PCE) under AM 1.5G one sun illumination with improved short-circuit current density (JSC) and fill factor compared to pristine TiO2 nanowire arrays. Combined with the chemical-bath-deposited Cu2S counter electrode, the eventual PCE can be further optimized to as high as 4.57% for CdS/CdSe co-sensitized quantum dot solar cells.

This paper reports on a full evaporation headspace gas chromatography (FE HS-GC) technique for rapid determination of the ethyl laurate content in supercritical ethanol–carbon dioxide mixtures. The data show that, at an equilibration temperature of 150 °C, with a small volume (up to 75 μL) of sample, the full evaporation of ethyl laurate can be achieved in 3 min. The method had a relative standard deviation of less than 5.5% in replicate measurements; the limit of quantification (LOQ) was 26.0 μg; and the recovery ranged from 96 to 105%. The method is simple and rapid. It is quite suitable for use in the determination of ethyl laurate or similar compounds in an ethanol–carbon-dioxide-based supercritical reaction system.

An engineered and optimized trilayered TiO2 photoelectrode on Ti metal substrates with synergistic effects for dye-sensitized solar cells has been developed through the combination of one-dimensional (1D) TiO2 nanotubes, three-dimensional (3D) TiO2 hierarchical microsized spheres, as well as zero-dimensional (0D) nanoparticles with a large surface area. The advantages of efficient charge-collection, light-harvesting, as well as high dye-loading capability make it possible to achieve unprecedentedly high short-circuit photocurrent density (17.90 mA cm–2) under back-side illumination and thus allow us to obtain a power conversion efficiency as high as 9.10%.

A hierarchical macroporous Zn2SnO4-ZnO nanorod composite film is prepared through a drop-casting process of PS@Zn2SnO4 and subsequent hydrothermal growth of ZnO nanorod. CdS/CdSe co-sensitized solar cells based on the macroporous Zn2SnO4-ZnO nanorod composite photoelectrode exhibits an enhancement of 34.4% in power conversion efficiency (1.68%) compared to the pristine macroporous Zn2SnO4 photoelectrode (1.25%). Especially worth noting is that the growth of ZnO nanorods contributes greatly to the enlargement of surface area and improvement of light scattering ability of the composite film, which dominates the increase of Jsc values and eventual power conversion efficiency. QDSSCs based on the optimized 9 μm thick composite photoanode film exhibits a power conversion efficiency of 2.08%, which is the highest value for the reported QDs sensitized solar cells based on the Zn2SnO4 photoelectrode.