A new closed cell is presented for in situ X-ray ptychography which allows studies under gas flow and at elevated temperature. In order to gain complementary information by transmission and scanning electron microscopy, the cell makes use of a Protochips E-chipTM which contains a small, thin electron transparent window and allows heating. Two gold-based systems, 50 nm gold particles and nanoporous gold as a relevant catalyst sample, were used for studying the feasibility of the cell. Measurements showing a resolution around 40 nm have been achieved under a flow of synthetic air and during heating up to temperatures of 933 K. An elevated temperature exhibited little influence on image quality and resolution. With this study, the potential of in situ hard X-ray ptychography for investigating annealing processes of real catalyst samples is demonstrated. Furthermore, the possibility to use the same sample holder for ex situ electron microscopy before and after the in situ study underlines the unique possibilities available with this combination of electron microscopy and X-ray microscopy on the same sample.

Higher conversion efficiencies while reducing costs at the same time is the ultimate goal driving the development of solar cells. Multi-crystalline silicon has attracted considerable attention because of its high stability against light soaking. In case of solar grade multi-crystalline silicon the rigorous control of metal impurities is desirable for solar cell fabrication. It is the aim of this thesis to develop a new manufacturing process optimized for solar-grade multi-crystalline silicon solar cells. In this work the goal is to form solar cell emitters in silicon substrates by plasma immersion ion implantation of phosphine and posterior millisecond-range flash lamp annealing. These techniques were chosen as a new approach in order to decrease the production cost by reducing the amount of energy needed during fabrication. Therefore, this approach is called “Low Thermal Budget” process. After ion implantation the silicon surface is strongly disordered or amorphous up to the depth of the projected ion range. Therefore, subsequent annealing is required to remove the implantation damage and activate the doping element. Flash lamp annealing in the millisecond-range is demonstrated here as a very promising technique for the emitter formation at an overall low thermal budget. During flash lamp annealing, only the wafer surface is heated homogeneously to high temperatures at a time scales of ms. Thereby, implantation damages are annealed and phosphorous is electrically activated. The variation of pulse time allows to modify the degree of annealing of the bulk region to some extent as well. This can have an influence on the gettering behavior of metallic impurities. Ion implantation doping got in distinct consideration for doping of single-crystalline solar cells very recently. The efficient doping of multi-crystalline silicon remains the main challenge to reduce costs. The influence of different annealing techniques on the optical and electrical properties of multi-crystalline silicon solar cells was investigated. The Raman spectroscopy showed that the silicon surface is amorphous after ion implantation. It could be demonstrated that flash lamp annealing at 1000 °C for 3 ms even without preheating is sufficient to recrystallize implanted silicon. The sheet resistance of flash lamp annealed samples is in the range of about 60 Ω/□. Without surface passivation the minority carrier diffusion length in the flash lamp annealed samples is in the range of 85 µm. This is up to one order of magnitude higher than that observed for rapid thermal or furnace annealed samples. The highest carrier concentration and efficiency as well as the lowest resistivity were obtained after annealing at 1200 °C for 20 ms for both, single- and multi-crystalline silicon wafers. Photoluminescence results point towards phosphorous cluster formation at high annealing temperatures which affects metal impurity gettering within the emitter. Additionally, in silicon based solar cells, hydrogen plays a fundamental role due to its excellent passivation properties. The optical and electrical properties of the fabricated emitters were studied with particular interest in their dependence on the hydrogen content present in the samples. The influence of different flash lamp annealing parameters and a comparison with traditional thermal treatments such as rapid thermal and furnace annealing are presented. The samples treated by flash lamp annealing at 1200 °C for 20 ms in forming gas show sheet resistance values in the order of 60 Ω/□, and minority carrier diffusion lengths in the range of ~200 µm without the use of a capping layer for surface passivation. These results are significantly better than those obtained from rapid thermal or furnace annealed samples. The simultaneous implantation of hydrogen during the doping process, combined with optimal flash lamp annealing parameters, gave promising results for the application of this technology in replacing the conventional phosphoroxychlorid deposition and diffusion.:1 Motivation and objectives 1 2 Progress and prospects of silicon solar cells 5 3 Basics of a silicon solar cell 8 3.1 Specific characteristic of a standard silicon solar cell 12 3.2 Fundamental efficiency limits of standard silicon solar cells 14 4 Industrial process featuring low thermal budget process 17 4.1 Cleaning and etching steps 19 4.2 Emitter formation in p-type silicon 20 4.2.1 Thermal diffusion of phosphorous (industrial) 22 4.2.2 Ion beam implantation 24 4.2.3 Plasma immersion ion implantation as potential tool for the LTB process 26 4.2.4 Thermal processing of ion implanted solar cells - FLA as a novel method 28 4.3 Contact formation 30 4.3.1 Screen printing and sintering (industrial) 30 4.3.2 Gettering and BSF formation by aluminum diffusion (industrial) 32 4.3.3 Sputtering (LTB) 33 4.4 Surface passivation 33 5 Fabrication and characterization 35 5.1 Fabrication 35 5.2 Characterization of the p-n junction by ion implantation and FLA 39 5.2.1 Four-Point-Probe measurement (4-PPM) 39 5.2.2 Raman Spectroscopy (RS) 40 5.2.3 Photoluminescence Spectroscopy (PL) 41 5.2.4 Surface Photo-Voltage (SPV) 41 5.3 Analysis of hydrogen and metal impurities 46 5.3.1 Secondary Ion Mass Spectrometry (SIMS) 46 5.3.2 Elastic Recoil Detection Analyses (ERDA) and 47 Rutherford Backscattering Spectrometry (RBS) 47 5.4 Solar cell characterization 49 5.4.1 Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM) 49 5.4.2 Auger Electron Spectroscopy (AES) 50 5.4.3 Light Beam Induced Current (LBIC) 51 5.4.4 Sun Simulator 52 6 Solar cell performance 53 6.1 Processing of the p-n junction by IBI and FLA 54 6.1.1 Variation FLA parameters 54 6.1.2 Influence of the grain size on the LD 71 6.2 Influence of the hydrogen introduced by PIII 76 6.2.1 Hydrogen profile by SIMS 76 6.2.2 H content as function of the thermal treatments 78 6.2.3 Optical properties of the silicon substrate 80 6.3 Influence of PIII and FLA on implanted iron 82 6.4 Contact formation 88 6.4.1 Antireflection layer 89 6.4.2 Back surface formation 90 6.4.3 Electrical and optical characterization 93 7 Overview of the achieved results 98 I References VIII II Publications XVII III Symbols index XVIII IV Acronyms XXI

Nowadays, polymer-metal hybrids are covering a broad range of advanced applications, especially in the automotive or aerospace industries where high performance and lightweight components are highly demanded. Hybrid parts may offer additional functionality regarding strength, durability, impact and wear resistance without sacrificing size or weight of the full component. However, there are still challenges regarding improving the adhesion between dissimilar materials such as metals to polymers and its composites. There is a lack of research about the influence of a post heat treatment on adhesion and durability in polymer-metal hybrids manufactured through an overmolding processing chain. There is also a need for using adhesive promoters that may offer simultaneous corrosion protection to metallic substrates in order to extend the lifecycle of the part when subjected to diverse harsh environments. In this work, two organic coatings used as adhesive promoters on steel substrates were investigated: the first one is a polyester-based powder-coat adhesive developed in the Leibniz-Institute in Dresden. The second one is a high performance anti-corrosive electrophoretic paint that has never been reported in the literature as an intermediate adhesive layer in a thermoplastic-polyurethane (TPU) overmolding processing chain. A TPU was overmolded on both pre-coated steel substrates, and the adhesion of the polymer to the metal substrate was investigated after a heat treatment (annealing), and a subsequent hygrothermal aging at different temperature-humidity conditions. The influence of the annealing process on the adhesion and durability of the multilayered specimen was investigated in depth; similarly, failure modes and lifetimes were evaluated after the hygrothermal aging. Lifetime predictions calculated from kinetic parameters for solid decomposition -obtained from thermogravimetric analysis- were validated experimentally with polyurethane-steel hybrids commonly used as district heat pipes. Adhesion of TPU on the steel substrate using both organic coatings as adhesive promoters was successful due to the contribution of new physical-chemical and mechanical interactions at the polymer-coating interface, especially after annealing at 100 °C for 20 h. Additionally, heat treated hybrids exhibited a much better performance because of the apparent increased in the anchoring density at the polymer-metal interfaces. It is conclusive that progressive failure of the multilayered specimen is strongly dependent on water diffusion rather than thermolysis of any of the components, as it was detected by FTIR, and observed in the micrographs on the artificially-aged hybrid surfaces. Finally, accelerated aging was used to correlate lifetime predictions throughout the analysis of the kinetics of degradation using TGA experiments and mechanical tests. The calculated values of the activation energy evidence that durability of the polyurethane-based polymers is affected by temperature and humidity at the conditions described in this work. Lifecycle is directly related to kinetic parameters, and especially to the activation energy, EA. This kinetic parameter for pre-aged specimens, and particularly for those subjected to higher temperature conditions, were lower when compared to the fresh polymer; as it was demonstrated that TGA analysis is a primary tool to predict lifetime for thermoplastic and thermosetting polyurethanes.

Autonomous underwater vehicles have become a popular countermeasure to naval mines. Saab’s AUV62-MR detects, locates and identifies mine-like objects through three phases. By extracting functionality from the AUV62-MR and placing it on a second vehicle, it is suggested that the second and third phases can be performed in parallel. This thesis investigates how to design the second vehicle so that the runtime of the mine reconnaissance process is minimized. A simulation framework is implemented to simulate the second and third phases of the mine reconnaissance process in order to test various design choices. The vehicle design choices in focus are the size and the route planning of the second vehicle. The route-planning algorithms investigated in this thesis are a nearest neighbour algorithm, a simulated annealing algorithm, an alternating algorithm, a genetic algorithm and a proposed Dubins simulated annealing algorithm. The algorithms are evaluated both in a static environment and in the simulation framework. Two different vehicle sizes are investigated, a small and a large, by evaluating their performances in the simulation framework. This thesis takes into account the limited travelling distance of the vehicle and implements a k-means clustering algorithm to help the route planner determine which mine-like objects can be scanned without exceeding the distance limit. The simulation framework is also used to evaluate whether parallel execution of the second and third phases outperforms the current sequential execution. The performance evaluation shows that a major reduction in runtime can be gained by performing the two phases in parallel. The Dubins simulated annealing algorithm on average produces the shortest paths and is considered the preferred route-planning algorithm according to the performance evaluation. It also indicates that a small vehicle size results in a reduced runtime compared to a larger vehicle.

La protéine multidomaine Pr55Gag de VIH-1 joue un rôle crucial dans les étapes finales de la réplication virale, notamment lors de la reconnaissance et la sélection de l’ARN génomique ainsi que lors de la production de nouvelles particules virales. Outre son rôle structural, Pr55Gag chaperonne aussi les séquences d’acides nucléiques, une propriété cruciale pour la dimérisation de l’ARN génomique et l’hybridation de l’amorce ARNt à l’ARN génomique. Des partenaires cellulaires comme la protéine ribosomale RPL7 sont supposées être recrutées par Pr55Gag afin d’augmenter son potentiel chaperon. Afin d’étudier le mécanisme d’hybridation des acides nucléiques par Gag et RPL7, nous avons examiné leur effet sur la réaction d’hybridation entre dTAR, la version ADN de l’élément de transactivation virale et sa séquence complémentaire cTAR. Nos résultats révèlent que Gag et RPL7 présentent des mécanismes différents pour promouvoir l’hybridation cTAR/dTAR. Utilisés de concert, RPL7 peut aider Gag à chaperonner des séquences stables de l’ARN génomique que Gag seule pourrait difficilement chaperonner. Ce renforcement par RPL7 de l’activité chaperonne de Gag jouerait un rôle critique dans l’assemblage du virus. / The multidomain Pr55 Gag protein of HIV-1 plays a crucial role during late stages of viral replication, notably for the recognition and selection of genomic RNA as well as for the production of new viral particles. In addition to its structural role, Pr55 Gag also chaperones nucleic acid sequences, a property which is crucial for genomic RNA dimerization and annealing of the primer tRNA to the genomic RNA. Cellular partners like ribosomal protein RPL7 are thought to be recruited by Pr55 Gag to enhance its chaperoning potential. To investigate the nucleic acid annealing mechanism of Gag and RPL7, we examined their effect on the annealing reaction between dTAR, the DNA version of the viral transactivation element and its complementary cTAR sequence taken as relevant model HIV-1 sequences. Our data show that Gag and RPL7 exhibit different mechanisms for promoting the cTAR/dTAR annealing. When used together, RPL7 can help Gag to chaperone stable sequences of the genomic RNA that Gag would hardly be able to chaperone alone. This RPL7-driven boost in Gag chaperone activity is thought to be critical in the viral assembly process.

Metal-semiconductor contacts have been widely studied in the past 60 years. These structures are of importance in the microelectronics industry. As the scaling down of silicon-based complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) devices becomes more and more challenging, new material and device structures to relax this physical limitation in device scaling are now required. Germanium (Ge) has been proposed as a potential alternative to silicon. In this thesis a systematic study of the thermally induced reaction of transition metals with the n-Ge substrate is outlined. Investigations in the change of the electrical properties of the metal germanide structures is studied in a wide range of temperatures. Current-voltage (I-V), capacitance-voltage (C-V), deep level transient spectroscopy (DLTS) and high-resolution Laplace-DLTS (L-DLTS) techniques have been used for the electrical characterization of the fabricated Schottky contacts. Results obtained indicate the variation of the electrical properties of these Schottky contacts can be attributed to combined effects of interfacial reactions and phase transformation during the annealing process. The barrier height distribution in identically prepared Schottky contacts on n-Ge (100) showed that the barrier heights and ideality factors varied from diode to diode even though they were identically fabricated. The properties of the n-Ge Schottky contacts have revealed a strong dependence on temperature. The current transport mechanism has been shown to be predominantly thermionic emission at high temperatures while at low temperatures, the Schottky contacts have exhibited the dominance of the generation-recombination current mechanism. The variation of the Schottky barrier heights at low temperatures have been attributed to barrier inhomogeneities at the metal-semiconductor (MS) interface. Results from defect characterization by DLTS show that the E-centre is the dominant defect introduced in n-Ge by electron beam deposition during contact fabrication and substitutional related defects are induced during the annealing process. The identification of some of the defects was achieved by using defect properties, defect signature, annealing mechanisms and annealing behaviour and comparing these properties to the results from theoretical defect models. Annealing showed that defects in Ge can be removed by low thermal budget of between 250–350°C. Finally, structural characterization of these samples was performed by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and Rutherford backscattering spectrometry (RBS) techniques. From the SEM images it can be observed that the onset temperature for agglomeration in the 30 nm Ni/n-Ge (100), and Pt/-, Ir/- and Ru/n-Ge (100) systems occur at 500–600°C and 600–700°C, respectively. / Thesis (PhD)--University of Pretoria, 2010. / Physics / unrestricted

Aujourd’hui, les applications de stockage de données utilisent principalement deux types de matériaux : les chalcogénures pour le stockage optique (e.g. Blu-Ray) et le silicium pour le stockage électronique (e.g. mémoires Flash). Malgré le fait qu’ils se soient avérés les plus efficaces pour des applications répandues, ces matériaux ont des limitations. Récemment, avec la montée en puissance du graphene, les allotropes du carbone ont été étudiés à la fois pour leurs propriétés intrinsèques et pour des applications ; ils ont des propriétés électroniques, thermiques et mécaniques très intéressantes qui peuvent rendre ces matériaux plus efficaces que les chalcogénures ou le silicium pour certaines applications. Dans cette thèse, nous étudions la faisabilité et le potentiel du carbone comme matériau pour le stockage de données.Nous nous concentrons d’abord sur le développement de stockage optique. Nous découvrons que les lasers continus et pulsés peuvent être utilisés pour induire des changements de phase réversibles dans des couches minces de carbone, confirmant la possibilité d’utiliser le carbone comme un matériau pour le stockage optique. De plus, nous découvrons plusieurs nouveaux phénomènes, que nous expliquons en utilisant des techniques de caractérisation avancées et de la modélisation par ordinateur de la propagation thermique dans le carbone.Ensuite, nous nous concentrons sur le stockage de données électronique en développant des mémoires à base de graphene qui peuvent être dans deux états de résistance bien séparés pour un grand nombre de cycles. Pour évaluer le potentiel de cette technologie, on caractérise le mécanisme de changement de résistance et on développe un modèle électromécanique qui permet de prédire les meilleures performances atteignables : ces mémoires ont le potentiel de commuter bien plus rapidement que les mémoires Flash tout en étant non-volatiles. / Today, data storage applications rely mainly on two types of materials: chalcogenides for optical storage (e.g. Blu-Ray) and silicon for electronic storage (e.g. Flash memory). While these materials have proven to be the most efficient for widespread applications, both have limitations. Recently, with the rise of graphene, carbon allotropes have been studied both for their intrinsic properties and for applications; graphene and other carbon allotropes have very interesting electronic, thermal and mechanical properties that can make these materials more efficient than either chalcogenides or silicon for certain applications. In this thesis, we study the feasibility and potential of the usage of carbon as a data storage material.Firstly, we focus on developing optical data storage. It is found that both continuous-wave and pulsed lasers can be used to induce reversible phase changes in carbon thin films, thus opening the way toward carbon-based data storage. Along the way, several phenomena are discovered, shown and explained by using advanced characterization techniques and thermal modelling.Secondly, we focus on electronic data storage by developing graphene-based memories that are found to switch reliably between two well-separated resistance states for a large number of cycles. To assess the potential of this new technology, we characterize the switching mechanism and develop an electro-mechanical model enabling to predict the best performances attainable: these memories would potentially be much faster than Flash memories while playing the same role (non-volatile storage).

Thesis (S.M.)--Joint Program in Oceanographic Engineering (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Ocean Engineering; and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution), 1999. / Bibliography: p. 111-112. / by Kevin Xu. / S.M.

The thesis deals with the high-temperature embrittlement of 14%Cr ODS ferritic steel in liquid lead environment. The 14%Cr ferritic ODS steel ODM401 manufactured by powder metallurgy technology was used as an experimental material. The effect of the long-term annealing, surface corrosion attack in the melt Pb and Pb-Bi on the microstructure and mechanical properties was described. The subsequent microstructural changes were evaluated by means of scanning electron microscopy and transmission electron microscopy The mechanical behaviour of the experimental material was proven by means of microhardness test, impact test and static tensile test. The fractographical evaluation of fracture surfaces were performed on all samples. The surface attack and outstanding microstructural ganges were found after the long-time exposition of the steel in Pb/Pb-Bi melts at temperature 550°C/1000h and 500°C/1000h respectively. The embrittlement of the steel after exposition in Pb/Pb-Bi melts was comparable to the embrittlement after high-temperature annealing of the steel at temperature 650°C/1000h.

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