Poly(phenylene sulfide) (PPS) is a well-known organic insulator. However, the PPS thin film, deposited by thermal evaporation in vacuum, showed electrical bistable characteristics. The structure of the PPS thin-film device was glass/ITO/PPS (300 nm)/Au. The thin film can be converted to a high conductance state by applying a pulse of 80 V (5 s), and brought back to a low conductance state by applying a pulse of 100 V (5 s). This kind of thin film is potential for active layer of a memory device. The critical voltage of the device is about 40 V, while the read-out voltage is 5 V. We tentatively ascribe the bistable phe-nomenon to the charge transfer from S to C atoms in the PPS molecule chains.
Pure anatase TiO2 films have been made via hydration of titanium isopropoxide using a sol-gel tech- nique, while mixed TiO2 films which contained both anatase and rutile TiO2 were made from commercial P25 powder. Quasi-solid state dye-sensitized solar cells were fabricated with these two kinds of mesoporous films and a comparison study was carried out. The result showed that the open-circuit photovoltages (Voc) for both kinds of cells were essentially the same, whereas the short-circuit photo- currents (Isc) of the anatase-based cells were about 33% higher than that of the P25-based cells. The highest photocurrent intensity of the anatase-based cell was 6.12 mA/cm2 and that of the P25-based cell was 4.60 mA/cm2. Under an illumination with the light intensity of 30 mW/cm2, the corresponding en- ergy conversion efficiency was measured to be 7.07% and 6.89% for anatase-based cells and P25-based cells, respectively.
