The application and efficiency of optoelectronic devices depends on the ability to control the absorption and emission processes of photons in semiconductors. This thesis looks at three different applications of spectral management across a broad range of optoelectronic devices: photovoltaics (PVs), luminescent solar concentrators (LSCs) and light-emitting diodes (LEDs). Multiple excitation generation (MEG) – a process in which multiple charge-carrier pairs are generated from a single optical excitation - is a promising way to improve the photocurrent in photovoltaic devices and offers the potential to break the Shockley-Queisser limit. Here we present solar cells fabricated from PbSe nanorods which show external quantum efficiencies exceeding 100 %. This demonstrates the potential for substantial improvements in PV device performance due to MEG. Through spatial and spectral concentration, LSCs have the potential to reduce the cost of photovoltaic energy production and are attractive prospects for photobioreactors and building-integrated applications. Here we introduce versatile star-shaped donor-acceptor molecules based on a central BODIPY acceptor with oligofluorene donor side units. We perform comprehensive device measurements and Monte Carlo ray tracing simulations of LSCs. We find that the measured structures permit waveguide propagation lengths on a par with state-of-the-art nanocrystalline emitters, while proposed hypothetical structures can be seen as viable candidates for photobioreactor and energy production roles and should be synthesized. The efficiency of nanocrystal-based LEDs is inherently limited by the types of crystals used. Cesium lead halide perovskite nanocrystals exhibit photoluminescence quantum efficiencies approaching 100%. However, due to the large surface areas and anion mobility halogen exchange between perovskite nanocrystals of different compositions occurs rapidly, limiting applications. Here, we report significantly reduced halide exchange between chloride and iodide CsPbX3 (X= Cl, I) perovskite nanocrystals. We investigate perovskite-based multi-crystal component samples and their resulting optical and electrical interactions in bulk heterojunction LEDs. Efficient photon reabsorption from CsPbCl3 to CsPbI3 nanocrystals was found to improve LED device performance.

Made available in DSpace on 2014-06-11T19:31:26Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 Previous issue date: 2004-11-09Bitstream added on 2014-06-13T19:20:25Z : No. of bitstreams: 1 rastelli_ans_dr_arafo.pdf: 1588793 bytes, checksum: f1face4ce729ada146c1f40f26e0748f (MD5) / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES) / O objetivo desse trabalho foi avaliar a capacidade de polimerização de uma fonte de luz halógena e um dispositivo LEDs utilizados na técnica de fotoativação trans-dental. Para isto, foram confeccionadas amostras em uma matriz metálica circular contendo um orifício central com 4 mm de diâmetro e 2 mm de profundidade (ISO 4049) utilizando-se a resina composta microhíbrida Filtek Z-250 (3M/ESPE), na cor A2. Cinco amostras foram confeccionadas para cada situação diferente, distribuídas em grupos da seguinte maneira: GRUPO I - aparelho Curing Light e dispositivo LEDs utilizados pelos tempos de exposição de 40 e 60 segundos, para as espessuras de 0 (grupo controle); 1,0 mm; 2,0 mm e 3,0 mm de faceta de estrutura dental, nas mesmas condições de operação armazenados em meio seco por 24 horas, avaliados pelo teste de dureza Vickers (VHN); GRUPO II - aparelho Curing Light e dispositivo LEDs utilizados pelos tempos de exposição de 40 e 60 segundos, para as espessuras de 0 (grupo controle); 1,0 mm; 2,0 mm e 3,0 mm de faceta de estrutura dental nas condições originais de operação armazenados em meio seco por 24 horas e 30 dias, água destilada, saliva artificial e ácido acético a 10% por 30 dias, avaliados pelo teste de dureza Vickers (VHN) e GRUPO III - aparelho Curing Light e dispositivo LEDs utilizados pelos tempos de exposição de 40 e 60 segundos, para as espessuras de 0 (grupo controle); 1,0 mm; 2,0 mm e 3,0 mm de faceta de estrutura dental armazenados em rodamina 6G durante 24 horas sendo avaliados pelo teste de espectroscopia de fluorescência. Os dados foram submetidos à Análise Estatística de Variância (p<0,05) e complementadas por comparações múltiplas pelo teste de Newman-Keuls ao nível de 5% de significância. Baseados nos resultados encontrados, pudemos concluir que: 1) a fonte de luz halógena testada proporcionou... . / The objective of this study was evaluate the light-curing capacity, throught dental structure, of two differents light-curing device (Halogen and LEDs), by hardness and fluorescent spectroscopic testings. The samples were made in a circular metallic mold with a orifice in the central portion measuring 4 mm in diameter and 2 mm in thickness (ISO 4049). The composite resin was used the Filtek Z-250 (3M/ESPE) at collor A2. Five samples were made by situation analyzed: GROUP I - halogen and LEDs light-curing devices by exposure times of 40 and 60 seconds for the thickness 0 (control group); 1,0 mm; 2,0 mm and 3,0 mm of the structure dental facet, at the same operation parameters stored in dry mean for 24 hours; GROUP II - halogen and LEDs light-curing devices by exposure times of 40 and 60 seconds for the thickness 0 (control group); 1,0 mm; 2,0 mm and 3,0 mm of the structure dental facet, at the original operation parameters stored in dry mean for 24 hours and thirty days, distilled water, artificial saliva and acetic acid at 10% for thirty days and GROUP III - halogen and LEDs light-curing devices by exposure times of 40 and 60 seconds for the thickness 0 (control group); 1,0 mm; 2,0 mm and 3,0 mm of the structure dental facet stored in 6G rodhamine evaluated for fluorescent spectroscopic testing. The data were submitted to the Statistical Analysis of Variance (p <0,05) and complemented by multiple comparisons by the test of Newman-Keuls at the level 5% of significance. Based on the found results, we could end that: 1) the device of tested halogen light provided larger curing of depth for the trans-dental technique; 2) the device LEDs promoted larger curing of depth for the trans-dental technique, when the source of halogen light was used in the same operation parameters; 3) in the technique trans-dental, independent of the source of used... (Complete abstract, click electronic address below).

Optoelectronic devices fabricated from nitride semiconductors include blue and green light emitting diodes (LEDs) and laser diodes (LDs). To design efficient devices, the structure and composition of the constituent materials must be well-characterised. Traditional microscopy techniques used to examine nitride semiconductors include transmission electron microscopy (TEM), and atomic force microscopy (AFM). This thesis describes the study of nitride semiconductor materials using these traditional methods, as well as atom probe tomography (APT), a technique more usually applied to metals that provides three-dimensional (3D) compositional information at the atomic scale. By using both APT and correlative microscopy techniques, a more complete understanding of the material can be gained, which can potentially lead to higher-efficiency, longer-lasting devices. Defects, such as threading dislocations (TDs), can harm device performance. An AFM-based technique was used to show that TDs affect the local electrical properties of nitride materials. To investigate any compositional changes around the TD, APT studies of TDs were attempted, and evidence for oxygen enrichment near the TD was observed. The dopant level in nitride devices also affects their optoelectronic properties, and the combination of APT and TEM was used to show that Mg dopants were preferentially incorporated into pyramidal inversion domains, with a Mg content two orders of magnitude above the background level. Much debate has been focused on the microstructural origin of charge carrier localisation in InGaN. Alloy inhomogeneities have often been suggested to provide this localisation, yet APT has revealed InGaN quantum wells to be a statistically random alloy. Electron beam irradiation in the TEM caused damage to the InGaN, however, and a statistically significant deviation from a random alloy distribution was then observed by APT. The alloy homogeneity of InAlN was also studied, and this alloy system provided a unique opportunity to study gallium implantation damage to the APT sample caused during sample preparation by the focused ion beam (FIB). The combination of APT with traditional microscopy techniques made it possible to achieve a thorough understanding of a wide variety of nitride semiconductor materials.

Deep ultraviolet light emitting diodes (UV LEDs) are an important emerging technology for a number of applications such as water/air/surface disinfection, communications, and epoxy curing. However, as of yet, deep UV LEDs grown on sapphire substrates are neither efficient enough nor powerful enough to fully serve these and other potential applications. The majority of UV LEDs reported so far in the literature are grown on sapphire substrates and their design consists of AlGaN quantum wells (QWs) embedded in an AlGaN p-i-n junction with the n-type layer on the sapphire. These devices suffer from a high concentration of threading defects originating from the large lattice mismatch between the sapphire substrate and AlGaN alloys. Other issues include the poor doping efficiency of the n- and particularly the p-AlGaN alloys, the extraction of light through the sapphire substrate, and the heat dissipation through the thermally insulating sapphire substrate. These problems have historically limited the internal quantum efficiency (IQE), injection efficiency (IE), and light extraction efficiency (EE) of devices. As a means of addressing these efficiency and power challenges, I have contributed to the development of a novel inverted vertical deep UV LED design based on AlGaN grown on p-SiC substrates. Starting with a p-SiC substrate that serves as the p-type side of the p-i-n junction largely eliminates the necessity for the notoriously difficult p-type doping of AlGaN alloys, and allows for efficient heat dissipation through the highly thermally conductive SiC substrate. UV light absorption in the SiC substrate can be addressed by first growing p-type doped distributed Bragg reflectors (DBRs) on top of the substrate prior to the deposition of the active region of the device. A number of n-AlGaN films, AlGaN/AlGaN multiple quantum wells, and p-type doped AlGaN DBRs were grown by molecular beam epitaxy (MBE). These were characterized in situ by reflected high energy electron diffraction (RHEED) and ex situ by x-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy, atomic force microscopy, photoluminescence, and reflectivity. Using the primary elements of the proposed design, this research culminated in the MBE growth, fabrication, and characterization of prototype deep UV LED devices emitting below 300 nm.

InGaN is a promising semiconductor for solid state lighting thanks to its bandgap which spans the entire visible regime of the electromagnetic spectrum. InGaN is grown heteroepitaxially due to the absence of a native substrate; however, this results in a strained film and a high dislocation density—two effects that have been associated with efficiency droop, which is the disastrous drop in efficiency of a light-emitting diode (LED) as the input current increases. Heteroepitaxially grown nanowires have recently attracted great interest due to their property of eliminating the detrimental effects of the lattice mismatch and the corollary efficiency droop. In this study, InGaN nanowires were grown on a low-cost Si (111) substrate via molecular beam epitaxy. Unique nanostructures, taking the form of mushrooms, have been observed in localized regions on the samples. These nanomushrooms consist of a nanowire body with a wide cap on top. Photoluminescence characterization revealed that the nanowires emit violet-blue, whilst the nanomushrooms emit a broad yellow-orange-red luminescence. The simultaneous emission from the nanowires and nanomushrooms forms white light. Structural characterization of a single nanomushroom via transmission electron microscopy revealed a simultaneous increase in indium and decrease in gallium at the interface between the body and the cap. Furthermore, the cap itself was found to be indium-rich, confirming it as the source of the longer wavelength yellow-orange-red luminescence. It is believed that the nanomushroom cap formed as a consequence of the saturation of growth on the c-plane of the nanowire. It is proposed that the formation of an indium droplet on the tip of the nanowire saturated growth on the c-plane, forcing the indium and gallium adatoms to incorporate on the sidewall m-planes instead, but only at the nanowire tip. This resulted in the formation of a mushroom-like cap on the tip. How and why the indium droplets formed is not entirely clear, but a localized temperature dip may have been the cause. Ultimately, the simultaneous growth of nanowires and nanomushrooms on the same substrate may pave the way to the development of a phosphor-free, efficient, inherent white LED.

Cars and other automobiles are used for transportation every single day all over the world. Almost ninety percent of the households have access to at least one car. Along with this, the chance of getting into an accident has also risen. Our objective is to deal with the case of parking. Everyone must have felt anxiety about the distances while sitting inside the car. Oneway or the other way, it always leads to property damage, etc. It will be difficult for people who spend lavish money on their vehicles to see the damage. In our project, we designed a system that aids drivers with information about distances between the vehicle and a wall or obstacle. It will be even more helpful if the driver has an idea of the distance between the wall and the vehicle by visual representation not as a text because of natural instinct. A hardware setup is fixed to the walls of the garage after analyzing all the possible scenarios including skewed parking which only guides the driver. This system uses sensors like ultrasonic to get information about the distances and an LED strip to guide the driver about the distances. Depending on the distances the LED will indicate either red or green and also the number of glowing LEDs. The two signals to the LED are pre-calibrated after considering the garage spacing. This system can effectively remove the chance of accidents while parking a vehicle in the garage.

As Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are integrated into the national airspace to comply with the 2012 Federal Aviation Administration Reauthorization Act, new civilian uses for robotic aircraft will come about in addition to the more obvious military applications. One particular area of interest for UAV development is the autonomous cooperative control of multiple UAVs. In this thesis, a decentralized leader-follower control strategy is designed, implemented, and tested from the follower’s perspective using vision-based localization. The tasks of localization and control were carried out with separate processing hardware dedicated to each task. First, software was written to estimate the relative state of a lead UAV in real-time from video captured by a camera on-board the following UAV. The software, written using OpenCV computer vision libraries and executed on an embedded single-board computer, uses the Efficient Perspective-n-Point algorithm to compute the 3-D pose from a set of 2-D image points. High-intensity, red, light emitting diodes (LEDs) were affixed to specific locations on the lead aircraft’s airframe to simplify the task if extracting the 2-D image points from video. Next, the following vehicle was controlled by modifying a commercially available, open source, waypoint-guided autopilot to navigate using the relative state vector provided by the vision software. A custom Hardware-In-Loop (HIL) simulation station was set up and used to derive the required localization update rate for various flight patterns and levels of atmospheric turbulence. HIL simulation showed that it should be possible to maintain formation, with a vehicle separation of 50 ± 6 feet and localization estimates updated at 10 Hz, for a range of flight conditions. Finally, the system was implemented into low-cost remote controlled aircraft and flight tested to demonstrate formation convergence to 65.5 ± 15 feet of separation.

Yes / Characterising the organic and microbial matrix of water are key issues in ensuring a safe potable water supply. Current techniques only confirm water quality retrospectively via laboratory analysis of discrete samples. Whilst such analysis is required for regulatory purposes, it would be highly beneficial to monitor water quality in-situ in real time, enabling rapid water quality assessment and facilitating proactive management of water supply systems. A novel LED-based instrument, detecting fluorescence peaks C and T (surrogates for organic and microbial matter, respectively), was constructed and performance assessed. Results from over 200 samples taken from source waters through to customer tap from three UK water companies are presented. Excellent correlation was observed between the new device and a research grade spectrophotometer (r2 = 0.98 and 0.77 for peak C and peak T respectively), demonstrating the potential of providing a low cost, portable alternative fluorimeter. The peak C/TOC correlation was very good (r 2 = 0.75) at low TOC levels found in drinking water. However, correlations between peak T and regulatory measures of microbial matter (2 day/3 day heterotrophic plate counts (HPC), E. coli, and total coliforms) were poor, due to the specific nature of these regulatory measures and the general measure of peak T. A more promising correlation was obtained between peak T and total bacteria using flow cytometry. Assessment of the fluorescence of four individual bacteria isolated from drinking water was also considered and excellent correlations found with peak T (Sphingobium sp. (r 2 = 0.83); Methylobacterium sp. (r 2 = 1.0); Rhodococcus sp. (r 2 = 0.86); Xenophilus sp. (r 2 = 0.96)). It is notable that each of the bacteria studied exhibited different levels of fluorescence as a function of their number. The scope for LED based instrumentation for insitu, real time assessment of the organic and microbial matrix of potable water is clearly demonstrated. / The research reported here was sponsored by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council under grants EP/I001379/1, EP/I001468/1 and EP/I029346/1.

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