In this paper, indium-doped zinc oxide (IZO) films were grown by spray pyrolysis, using zinc acetate and indium acetylacetonate precursors. The focus was on developing a solution recipe based on water as solvent, with only minor acetic acid content, as well as keeping the substrate temperature as low as possible—at 360 °C. The process is therefore environment friendly and energy efficient. Despite the challenging conditions, the resulting IZO films were highly transparent and conductive. Their texture deviates strongly from the (002) texture of ZnO and depends on the indium content, which also influences the resistivity. The latter attains its minimum for an indium concentration of 4 at.% in the solution and decreases for increasing film thickness, reaching the value of (5.0 ± 0.1) × 10⁻³ Ω cm, mainly due to the increase in carrier mobility. The stability of the resistivity after high dose of UV irradiation was found to increase with the carrier density and the film thickness. Thick, highly doped films show minimal resistivity modification even after a total dose of 12.1 kJ/cm² UVA/UVB irradiation. Finally, to demonstrate its applicability in devices, the IZO electrode was used for the fabrication of a lead-perovskite absorber solar cell, yielding an energy conversion efficiency of 6% and 910 mV open-circuit voltage.

In this work, we report on the fabrication, characterization, and photovoltaic properties of sputter-deposited, thin film heterojunctions combining p-type cupric oxide (CuO) absorber with n-type ZnO. The structural investigation reveals highly crystalline, columnar growth of the layers and confirms that the absorber's phase is purely CuO, with only negligible traces of Cu₂O. The optical characterization yields for CuO an indirect bandgap of 1.2 eV and a direct optical transition at approximately 3 eV. The short circuit current, open circuit voltage, fill factor, and power conversion efficiency of the heterojunction solar cells were extracted as a function of the CuO thickness under AM1.5 G (1 kW/m²) illumination. From the observed dependencies, we conclude that the photovoltaic performance is compromised by a restricted carrier collection efficiency, caused by the small carrier lifetime in CuO. Indeed, the carrier population is found to decay with time constants of 40 and 460 ps. A maximum power conversion efficiency of 0.08% was obtained for the solar cell with CuO thickness of 500 nm.

High-quality Ga ₂ O ₃ films are obtained by spray pyrolysis from aqueous solutions through optimization of the solution composition and the spraying process parameters.

The impact of the micromagnetic configuration on transport properties of magnetic tunnel junctions is presented. An artificial ferrimagnet system (AFi), made of two ferromagnetic layers with different magnetic moments antiferromagnetically coupled by exchange interactions through a Ru spacer layer, is used as a hard magnetic subsystem of the magnetic junction. Magnetic-force microscopy studies have shown that the magnetization reversal in artificial ferrimagnet systems occurs through the formation of Néel-type $360°$ domain walls. The stability of these walls is demonstrated to be different in the two magnetic layers of the AFi. These aspects have major effects in magnetic tunnel junction devices, due to the extreme sensitivity of spin tunneling to spatial variations in local magnetic order. The large tunnel magnetoresistance (TMR) of our samples, in the range of 20–30 % at room temperature, makes the tunnel junctions highly sensitive to magnetic fluctuations. A sharp switching of the soft magnetic layer upon field reversal prevents a domain structure from occurring in the soft magnetic layer, in the field window used for our micromagnetic studies. The tunnel device can thus be used as a sensitive probe for measuring small magnetic fluctuations associated with micromagnetic defects, domains, and walls in the AFi system. These fluctuations modulate the resistance of the tunnel junction and are fully reflected in the shape and the amplitude of the TMR signal.