Abstract: A method of producing a transparent electrode suitable for use in an organic semiconductor photovoltaic device. First and second silanes (3) are deposited from the vapour phase on a substrate (1) and bind to the surface of the substrate. A metal film (4) is then deposited from the vapour phase and binds to both the first and second silanes so as to produce a transparent metal layer having a thickness which is no greater than about 15 nanometres. The first silane is a non-amino functional silane and the second silane is an aminofunctional silane. The electrode may be flexible, using a polymer substrate (1). The metal film (4) may be provided with a plurality of apertures (5), provided for example by masking the substrate with microspheres (2) while depositing the metal and subsequently removing the microspheres, and/or annealing the metal so that apertures appear.

Abstract: There is provided a method of producing multiple semiconductor components on a substrate, said method comprising the steps of: forming a predetermined relief pattern on a surface of said substrate; and epitaxially depositing a layer formed of a mixture of two or more Group III elements and two or more Group V elements on said surface; wherein said relief pattern results in said layer deposited in a single step forming with a different ratio between said Group V elements within areas having different relief pattern characteristics so as to provide different band gaps within said different areas.

Abstract: There is provided a method of producing multiple semiconductor components on a substrate, said method comprising the steps of: forming a predetermined relief pattern on a surface of said substrate; and epitaxially depositing a layer formed of a mixture of two or more Group III elements and two or more Group V elements on said surface; wherein said relief pattern results in said layer deposited in a single step forming with a different ratio between said Group V elements within areas having different relief pattern characteristics so as to provide different band gaps within said different areas.

Abstract: A computer-based method and apparatus for knowledge discovery from databases. The disclosed method involves the user creation of a project plan comprising a plurality of operational components adapted to cooperatively extract desired information from a database. In one embodiment, the project plan is created within a graphical user interface and consists of objects representing the various functional components of the overall plan interconnected by links representing the flow of data from the data source to a data sink. Data visualization components may be inserted essentially anywhere in the project plan. One or more data links in the project plan may be designated as caching links which maintain copies of the data flowing across them, such that the cached data is available to other components in the project plan. In one embodiment, compression technology is applied to reduce the overall size of the database.