Interracial barrier is a key factor that determines the performances of heterojunctions. In this work, we study the effect of manganite film thickness on the effective interracial barrier for La0.67Sr0.33MnO3/Nb：SrTiO3 junctions, The barrier is extracted from the forward current-voltage characteristics. Our results demonstrate that the barrier decreases gradually from -0.85 eV to -0.60 eV when the film thickness decreases from 150 nm to 2 nm. The overall value of the barrier is only about 50% of the corresponding one determined from the photovoltaic effect.
Platinum nanoparticles （PtNPs）/graphene composite materials are synthesized by a controlled chemical reduction of H2PtC16 on graphene sheets. The electrocatalytic activity of a PtNPs/graphene composite counter electrode for a dye-sensitized solar cell （DSSC） is investigated. The results demonstrate that the PtNPs/graphene composite has high electrocatalytic activity for the dye-sensitized solar cell. The cell employing PtNPs （1.6 wt%）/graphene counter electrode reaches an conversion efficiency （η） of 3.89% upon the excitation of 100 mW/cm2 AM 1.5 white light, which is comparable to that of the cell with a Pt-film counter electrode （7 = 3.76%）. It suggests that one can use only 14% Pt content of the conventional Pt-film counter electrode to obtain a comparable conversion efficiency. It may be possible to obtain a high performance DSSC using the PtNPs/graphene composite with a very low Pt content as a counter electrode due to its simplicity, low cost, and large scalability.
The low temperature sample stage in a transmission electron microscope is used to investigate the charge ordering behaviours in a Bi0.4Ca0.6MnO3 film with a thickness of 110 nm at 103 K. Six different types of superlattice structures are observed using the selected-area electron diffraction （SAED） technique, while three of them match well with the modulation stripes in high-resolution transmission electron microscopy （HRTEM） images. It is found that the modulation periodicity and direction are completely different in the region close to the Bi0.4Ca0.6MnO3/SrTiO3 interface from those in the region a little further from the Bi0.4Ca0.6MnO3/SrTiO3 interface, and the possible reasons for this are discussed. Based on the experimental results, structural models are proposed for these localized modulated structures.
