0000000001212701
AUTHOR
Alessandro C. Busacca
Si photomultipliers for bio-sensing applications
In this paper, silicon photomultipliers (SiPM) are proposed as optical detectors for bio sensing. Optical transduction is the most used detection mechanism in many biosensor applications, such as DNA microarray and real-time polymerase chain reaction. The performances of a 25 pixels device used for both applications are studied. The results confirm that the SiPM is more sensitive than the traditionally employed detectors. In fact, it is able to experimentally detect 1 nM and 100 fM of fluorophore concentrations in dried samples and solutions, respectively. We present and discuss in details the detector configuration and its characterization as fluorescence detector for bio sensing.
Terahertz time-domain spectroscopy based on photoconductive antennas
In this work, we present our first experimental results obtained by means of a THz-TDS setup based on photoconductive antennas (PCAs). The main elements of the setup are: i) a mode-locked Ti:Sapphire femtosecond laser (Mai-Tai SP - Spectra Physics), providing optical pulses at 800±20 nm with a duration < 50 fs and repetition rate of 84 MHz; ii) two photoconductive antennas, made in LT-GaAs (Low-Grown Temperature Gallium Arsenide), operating as THz emitter and detector; iii) an optical delay line.
Simulation analysis of Ruthenium-based Dye Sensitized Solar Cells
Dye Sensitized Solar Cell (DSSC), usually referred as one of the most promising third generation photovoltaic devices, is an electrochemical device in which a molecule (i.e., the dye) chemisorbed onto the surface of a porous material absorbs the incident light and, thus, transfers an electron to the wide band gap semiconductor material. The injected electrons can diffuse through the semiconductor up to the collecting anode without the risk of recombination. The roles of the electrolyte which permeates the cell are to regenerate the ionized molecule and to implement a hole-transporting layer, allowing to repeat the abovementioned process. Thanks to this behaviour, semiconductors with large a…