Abstract: A dye sensitized solar cell, comprising a heteroleptic polypyridil complex of Ru, Os or Fe. The donating ligand has an extended conjugated ?-system increasing the light absorbance and keeing the LUMO energy level higher than that of the anchoring ligand. A compacting compound whose molecular structure comprises a terminal group, a hydrophobic part and an anchoring group may be co-adsorbed together with the dye on the semi-conductive metal oxide layer of the photoanode, forming a dense mixed self-assembled monolayer.

Abstract: In a view, e.g. of scenery, of a shopping or museum display, or of a meeting or conference, automated processing can be used to annotate objects which are visible from a viewer position. Annotation can be of objects selected by the viewer, and can be displayed visually, for example, with or without an image of the view.

Abstract: A Semiconductor device including, on at least one surface of a layer made of a crystalline semiconductor material of a certain type of conductivity, a layer made of an amorphous semiconductor material, doped with a type of conductivity opposite to the type of conductivity of the crystalline semiconductor material layer, characterized in that the concentration of the doping elements in the amorphous semiconductor layer varies gradually.

Abstract: A method for cleaning the surface of a silicon substrate, covered by a layer of silicon oxide includes: a) exposing the surface for 60 to 900 seconds to a radiofrequency plasma, generated from a fluorinated gas, to strip the silicon oxide layer and induce the adsorption of fluorinated elements on the substrate surface, the power density generated using the plasma being 10 mW/cm2 to 350 mW/cm2, the fluorinated gas pressure being 10 mTorrs to 200 mTorrs, and the substrate temperature being lower than or equal to 300° C.; and b) exposing the surface including the fluorinated elements for 5 to 120 seconds to a hydrogen radiofrequency plasma, to remove the fluorinated elements from the substrate surface, the power density generated using the plasma being 10 mW/cm2 to 350 mW/cm2, the hydrogen pressure being 10 mTorrs to 1 Torr, and the substrate temperature being lower than or equal to 300° C.

Abstract: A spectroscopic polarimetric system of broad spectral range, includes a light source suitable for emitting an incident light beam over a wavelength range, a polarization state generator (PSG), a polarization state analyzer (PSA), and a detector. The PSG and the PSA have respective elements for modulating the polarization of the light beam. The elements of the PSG for modulating polarization are suitable for generating a sequence of m polarization states with m>4 at each measurement wavelength, the elements of the PSA for modulating polarization are suitable for determining a sequence of n polarization states with n>4 for each measurement wavelength, and the detector elements are suitable for acquiring a sequence of N measurements with 16<N?n×m at each wavelength to extract therefrom a polarimetric spectroscopic measurement of the Mueller matrix of the sample. An extended spectroscopic polarimetric measurement method is also described.

Abstract: An optical device for measuring the transmission and diffusion of a tissue of the front segment of an eye, includes: a light source; an optical collimation system for directing the collimated light beam towards a tissue of the front segment of an eye to be characterized; an optical mire placed on the optical path between the optical collimation system and the tissue; an optical imaging system capable of receiving a light beam transmitted by the mire and the tissue and capable of forming an image of the mire on an image detector; and an image processing system capable of calculating a modulation transfer function for the tissue from an image of the mire through the ocular medium. The optical mire includes a set of alternately light and dark angular sectors radially distributed from a central point. Different image processing methods for extracting a function representing the transmission and diffusion characteristics of the tissue are described.

Abstract: Method for estimating and correcting a frequency offset between a local clock of a receiving transceiver and a remote clock of an emitting transceiver comprises receiving by said receiving transceiver, a signal emitted by the emitting transceiver, said signal lacking a continuous sinusoidal carrier and having at least one symbol, each symbol being emitted within a time frame having a first duration; sampling the signal by taking for each time frame a set of energy measurements of said signal; forming a matrix representative of said energy measurements; determining from said energy matrix, points of maximum of energy within each time frame; determining a line connecting a plurality of said points within each of said time frames; determining a slope of said line; calculating a frequency offset between the clocks of the emitting and receiving transceivers using the slope; and adjusting the receiving transceiver's clock frequency according to the frequency offset.

Abstract: The present invention concerns a receiver and a method for retrieving data from Ultra wideband radio transmission signals received by a receiver and transmitted in packets containing at least a preamble known to the receiver and a payload containing data unknown to the receiver. The payload data is formed of at least one burst containing at least one pulse. The method comprises the steps of receiving a signal corresponding to the preamble of a packet by a receiver; determining the energy of the received signal; determining weighting coefficients from the energy of the received signal; receiving a signal corresponding to the payload of a packet by a receiver; determining the energy of the received signal; calculating a threshold depending on the weighting coefficients; and applying a decision rule based on the sampled energy, weighted by said weighting coefficients and depending on said calculated threshold.

Abstract: A method for separating and recovering silicon debris from sawing waste is characterized in that it includes the following steps: —treating the sawing waste so as to deoxidize the silicon debris in a manner that reduces their surface energy, —applying to the sawing waste thus treated a flotation method using a flotation liquid and a nonoxidizing flotation gas, and —recovering the silicon debris at the surface of the flotation liquid.

Abstract: A method is described of depositing film of an amorphous or microcrystalline material, for example silicon, from a plasma on to a substrate. Microwave energy is introduced into a chamber as a sequence of discrete microwave pulses, a film precursors gas is introduced into the chamber as a sequence of discrete gas pulses, and gas for generating atomic hydrogen is supplied to the chamber at least during each microwave pulse. Each microwave pulse is followed in non-overlapping fashion with a precursor gas pulse, and each precursor gas pulse is followed by a period during which there is neither a microwave pulse nor a precursor gas pulse.

Abstract: Different types of energy storage systems are described, in particular hydro-pneumatic storage systems. In one, energy is stored by compressing gas in a chamber (44,45,54,55) with a liquid piston and released by gas expansion. A spray head or grid at the top of the chamber (44,45,54,55) supplies liquid as a shower through the gas being compressed or expanding in the cylinder (11,12) to maintain an isothermal condition. In another, energy is stored from an array of solar cells connected to an array of supercapacitors forming an auxiliary storage, and a main energy storage device such as a hydro-pneumatic storage system, for supply to an AC or DC network. The efficiency is improved by connecting the solar cells via the array of supercapacitors to the AC or DC network.

Abstract: A method of using O6-alkylguanine-DNA alkyltransferase (AGT) is disclosed for transferring a label from a substrate to a fusion protein comprising the AGT. This allows the detection and/or manipulating of the fusion protein, both in vitro and in vivo, by attaching molecules to the fusion proteins that introduce a new physical or chemical property to the fusion protein. Examples of such molecules are, among others, spectroscopic probes or reporter molecules, affinity tags, molecules generating reactive radicals, cross-linkers, ligands mediating protein-protein interactions or molecules suitable for the immobilisation of the fusion protein.

Abstract: A Ferroelectric tunnel FET switch as ultra-steep (abrupt) switch with subthreshold swing better than the MOSFET limit of 60 mV/decade at room temperature combining two key principles: ferroelectric gate stack and band-to-band tunneling in gated p-i-n junction, wherein the ferroelectric material included in the gate stack creates, due to dipole polarization with increasing gate voltage, a positive feedback in the capacitive coupling that controls the band-to-band (BTB) tunneling at the source junction of a silicon p-i-n reversed bias structure, wherein the combined effect of BTB tunneling and ferroelectric negative capacitance offers more abrupt off-on and on-off transitions in the present proposed Ferroelectric tunnel FET than for any reported tunnel FET or any reported ferroelectric FET.

Abstract: A method for nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy of a sample comprises preparation of the sample and carrying out an NMR spectroscopy measurement. Preparation includes excitation of long lived coherences (LLC) between the singlet state S0 and the central triplet state T0 of nuclei of the sample. The thermal equilibrium Boltzmann distribution (Iz+Sz) is thereby transformed into a difference (Iz?Sz), which is flipped to the transverse plane, and irradiation of the sample with an rf-field is initiated. The LLC is sustained by maintaining the rf-irradiation during an interval t1 and the LLC is converted into observable magnetisation by interrupting the rf-irradiation. The method allows nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy measurements with improved spectral resolution.

Abstract: The present invention enables creating authenticable multi-ink luminescent continuous tone color halftone images offering means of verifying their authenticity. The invented luminescent color halftone image synthesizing techniques enable increasing the attractiveness and aesthetics of color images. The invention relies on daylight luminescent inks, color prediction models for daylight luminescent halftones, color gamuts of luminescent and non-luminescent inks, color separation into luminescent and non-luminescent ink layers, mapping of input gamuts into a luminescent target gamuts by gamut reduction and/or expansion strategies, and luminescent color halftone image generation. The basic authentication is performed by examining the excitation trace image of the synthesized luminescent color halftone image under an illuminant active within its excitation wavelength range.

Abstract: Arrangement (10) for measuring the distance to an object, comprising: a photonic source for illuminating said object using a continuous modulated photonic wave, a solid-state image sensor, comprising an array of avalanche photodiodes and a plurality of circuits for processing signals output by said avalanche photodiodes to yield data depending on the photonic wave reflected by said object onto said photodiodes. The circuit may comprise a multiplexer at the pixel level arranged so as to accumulate the signal output by the avalanche photodiode during different sub-periods in different storage devices.

Abstract: A method to create a video sequence of a plurality of resultant images is disclosed. The video sequence is produced from images originating from a rolling shutter acquisition sensor.

Abstract: A method is described for forming a film of amorphous silicon (a-Si:H) on a substrate by deposition from a plasma. The substrate is placed in an enclosure, a film precursor gas is introduced into the enclosure, and unreacted and dissociated gas is extracted from the enclosure so as to provide a low pressure in the enclosure. Microwave energy is introduced into the gas within the enclosure to produce a plasma therein by distributed electron cyclotron resonance (DECR) and cause material to be deposited from the plasma on the substrate. The substrate is held during deposition at a temperature in the range 200-600° C., preferably 225-350° C. and a bias voltage is applied to the substrate at a level to give rise to a sheath potential in the range ?30 to ?105V, preferably using a source of RF power in the range of 50-250 mW/cm2 of the area of the substrate holder.

Abstract: This invention discloses new methods and security devices for authenticating documents and valuable products which may be applied to any support, including transparent synthetic materials and traditional opaque materials such as paper. The invention relates to parallax moire shapes which occur in a compound layer consisting of the superposition of specially designed and possibly geometrically transformed s-random base layer and s-random revealing layer with a small gap between them. The base and revealing layers are formed respectively by base layer element shapes and revealing layer sampling elements positioned at s-random locations, where the base layer locations and the revealing layer locations are strongly correlated. When tilting the compound layer or changing the viewing angle, a parallax moire intensity profile of a chosen shape is seen moving in the superposition, thereby allowing the authentication of the document.

Abstract: The invention relates to a gas processing unit adapted for generating a surface plasma in the vicinity of a photocatalyst, that has a planar configuration. The photocatalyst is deposited in the form of a thin layer on a dielectric substrate and at least one plasma supply electrode is formed above the photocatalyst thin layer. Such a configuration increases the interaction between the plasma and the photocatalyst. The unit can be used for a gas processing of the pollution-control, odour reduction or bactericidal treatment type with a high efficiency.