In this project, samples with a metal/semiconductor/metal structure were fabricated and investigated with the potential application as the interconnecting layer of a tandem solar cell in mind. Degenerately doped p-Si and n-Si were used as bottom (metal like) contacts, as Si represents one of the most common materials for the bottom cell of tandem devices. A transparent, wide bandgap semiconductor in the form of SnO₂ was investigated for the intermediate layer as it is a common choice for the selective back contact of top cells based on perovskites. However, atomic layer deposition (ALD) was used as an alternative to the typical solution based application of the SnO₂ layer. The top layer was simply chosen as a triple layer metal contact stack (Ni-Al-Ni) to provide for good contact with the SnO₂.The goal of the project was to study the electrical properties of the samples through I-V measurements and how the I-V characteristic depends on the oxide’s thickness under the possible influence of the contact areas. Three different thicknesses of the SnO2 layer were used for the p-Si sample: 50, 200 and 400 Å. For the n-Si samplesonly one thickness (400 Å) was studied. Using the diode equation, four parameterswere calculated (Jo, Rsh, Rs and n) for different measurements combing different contact configurations. The latter included measurements between the front and the back of the samples and measurements between contacts on the front with and/orwithout SnO2 layer. From the results, it was concluded that as the thickness of SnO₂ increases, the saturation current (Jo) decreases while both shunt resistance (Rsh) andseries resistance (Rs) increase. The ideality factor (n) neither depends significantly on effective area, nor on SnO2 thickness. The p-Si and n-Si samples show similar behavior in the case of 400 Å SnO2 thickness. The contact areas only appreciatively affect Jo, but it is not clear what lies behind this dependence. In all cases, the top contacts obtained major wear during measurements, reducing the number of trustworthy measurements that could be used on the smaller areas. The resistivity through the oxide layer was calculated to ρSnO₂ = 247±96 MΩ cm, which is higher than for SnO₂ deposited by other techniques, and too high for tandem cell application. Schottky barriers formed at the interfaces will typically limit the charge transport further.

A generalized design-comparable effect size modeling and estimation for multiple baseline designs across individuals has been proposed and evaluated by Restricted Maximum Likelihood method in a hierarchical linear model using R. This report evaluates the exact approach of the modeling and estimation by SAS. Three models (MB3, MB4 and MB5) with same fixed effects and different random effects are estimated by PROC MIXED procedure with REML method. The unadjusted size and adjusted effect size are then calculated by matrix operation package PROC IML. The estimations for the fixed effects of the three models are similar to each other and to that of R. The variance components estimated by the two software packages are fairly close for MB3 and MB4, but the results are different for MB5 which exhibits boundary conditions for variance-covariance matrix. This result suggests that the nlme library in R works differently than the PROC MIXEDREML method in SAS under extreme conditions. / text

Every day, machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) embeds itself further into domestic and industrial technologies. Interaction de- signers have historically struggled to engage directly with the subject, facing a shortage of appropriate methods and abstractions. There is a need to find ways though which interaction design practitioners might integrate ML into their work, in order to democratize and diversify the field. This thesis proposes a mode of inquiry that considers the inter- active qualities of what machine learning does, as opposed the tech- nical specifications of what machine learning is. A shift in focus from the technicality of ML to the artifacts it creates allows the interaction designer to situate its existing skill set, affording it to engage with ma- chine learning as a design material. A Research-through-Design pro- cess explores different methodological adaptions, evaluated through user feedback and an-in depth case analysis. An elaborated design experiment, Multiverse, examines the novel, non-anthropomorphic aesthetic qualities of generative literature. It prototypes interactions with bidirectional literature and studies how these transform the reader into a cybertextual “user-reader”. The thesis ends with a discussion on the implications of machine written literature and proposes a number of future investigations into the research space unfolded through the prototype.

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