The objective of this dissertation is to develop a methodology for describing the functionality, analyzing the complexity, and evaluating the performance of a large class of pattern-matching circuit design approaches for field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs). The developed methodology consists of three elements. The first is a functional model and associated nomenclature that unifies a significant portion of published circuit design approaches while also illuminating many novel approaches. The second is a set of analytical expressions that model the area and time complexity of each circuit design approach based on attributes of a given pattern set. Third, software tools are developed that facilitate architectural design space exploration and circuit implementation. This methodology is used to conduct an extensive evaluation and comparison of design approaches under a wide range of conditions using pattern sets from multiple application domains as well as synthetic pattern sets. The results indicate strong dependences between pattern set properties and circuit performance and provide new insights on the fundamental nature of various design approaches. A number of techniques have been proposed for designing pattern-matching hardware circuits with reconfigurable FPGA chips. The use of FPGAs enables high performance because the circuits can be customized for a particular application and pattern set. A relatively unstudied consequence of tailoring circuits for specific patterns is that circuit area and performance are affected by various properties of the patterns used. Most previous work in this field only considers a single design approach and a small number of pattern sets. Therefore, it is not clear how each design is affected by pattern set properties. For a given set of patterns, it is difficult to determine which approach would be the most efficient or provide the highest performance. Previous attempts to compare approaches using results from different publications are conflicting and inconclusive due to variations in the FPGA devices, patterns, and circuit optimizations used. There has been no attempt to evaluate a wide range of designs under a common set of conditions. The methodology presented in this dissertation provides a framework for studying multiple aspects of FPGA pattern-matching circuits in a controlled and consistent manner.

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In recent years, non-fullerene acceptors (NFAs) have attracted enormous interest in the field of organic solar cells (OSCs), they improve power conversion efficiency (PCE) compared to the classical fullerene acceptor. In this work, OSCs based on PBDB-T as the donor material and the very well-known NFA ITIC, along with its fluorinated and chlorinated derivatives (IT-2F, IT-4F, IT-2Cl, IT-4Cl) were fabricated to investigate the effect of the halogenation end group on the photovoltaic parameters. Optical characterization reveals that both chlorination and fluorination are effective in downshifting the molecular energy levels and redshifting the absorption spectra, which results in higher Jsc but lower Voc compared to pristine ITIC. In addition, the halogenated ITIC device exhibited enhanced FF and PCE. Various optoelectronic techniques were also used to investigate the charge recombination dynamics and charge extraction process. It has been found that (IT-2F, IT-2Cl) show suppressed monomolecular recombination compared to di-substituted NFA (IT-4F, IT-4Cl). Furthermore, fluorinated ITIC has a longer charge carrier recombination lifetime but a lower carrier extraction rate. Lastly, the best-performing device from the preceding component mixtures PBDB-T:IT-2F was exposed to thermal annealing at different stages of the fabrication process to investigate how annealing affects the photovoltaic parameters. According to our findings, both post and 2-stage annealing improve FF and PCE, but the latter is even more beneficial. In further studies, the annealing effect on the HTL layer (MoOx) has also been investigated. Annealing improved the MoOx’s work function, resulting in higher internal electric field that thereby facilitated hole extraction, as demonstrated by TPC where 2-stage annealed devices exhibited a faster carrier extraction rate.

Nanostructured ferritic alloy and silicon carbide composite materials (NFA-SiC) were sintered with spark plasma sintering (SPS) method and systematically investigated through X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), as well as density and Vickers hardness tests. Pure NFA, pure SiC, and their composites NFA-SiC with different compositions (2.5 vol% NFA-97.5 vol% SiC, 5 vol% NFA-95 vol% SiC, 97.5 vol% NFA-2.5 vol% SiC, and 95 vol% NFA-5 vol% SiC) were successfully sintered through SPS. In the high-NFA samples, pure NFA and NFA-SiC, minor gamma-Fe phase formation from the main alfa-Fe matrix occurred in pure NFA 950 degree C and 1000 degree C. The densities of the pure NFA and NFA-SiC composites increased with sintering temperature but decreased with SiC content. The Vickers hardness of the pure NFA and NFA-SiC composites was related to density and phase composition. In the high-SiC samples, NFA addition of 2.5 vol% can achieve full densification for the NFA-SiC samples at relative low temperatures. With the increase in sintering temperature, the Vickers hardness of the pure SiC and NFA-SiC composite samples were enhanced. However, the NFA-SiC composites had relative lower hardness than the pure SiC samples. A carbon layer was introduced in the NFA particles to prevent the reaction between NFA and SiC. Results indicated that the carbon layer was effective up to 1050 degree C sintering temperature. Green samples of gradient-structured NFA-SiC composites were successfully fabricated through slip casting of an NFA-SiC co-suspension. / Master of Science

Non-fullerene Acceptors (NFAs) have gathered a great deal of interest for use inorganic photovoltaics (OPVs) due to recent breakthroughs in their power conversion efficiency and other advantages they offer over their Fullerene-based counterparts. In this work, a new promising non-fullerene polymer acceptor, PF5-Y5, have been studied using density functional theory and time-dependent density functional theory; and the effects that oligomer length, geometry relaxation and exchange-correlation interaction has on the exciton binding energies (the difference between optical and fundamental energy gaps) have been investigated. Both the fundamental and optical gaps are significantly affected by the choice of functional (i.e., the description of the exchange-correlation interaction). However, it does not appear to significantly impact obtained exciton binding energies as the effects of the fundamental and optical gaps cancel each other out. Both the fundamental and optical energy gap are shown to slightly reduce as a function of the oligomer length (~0.1 - 0.3 𝑒𝑉 reduction for each repeated monomer). As both gaps are reduced by a similar amount per repeated monomer, they counteract each other and the total effect that oligomer length has on the exciton binding energy is very low. Geometry relaxation and thermal effects showed the largest impact on the fundamental gap and exciton binding energy, with their combined effect resulting in a ~0.5 𝑒𝑉 reduction in binding energy. / Non-Fullerene Acceptorer (NFAs) har rönt stort intresse för användning i organiska solceller (OPVs) på grund av genombrott på senare tid gällande deras effektomvandlingsverkningsgrad och en mängd andra fördelar som de erbjuder jämfört med sina fullerene-baserade motsvarigheter. I det här arbetet har en ny lovande polymer-acceptor, PF5-Y5, studerats med hjälp av täthetsfunktionalteori (DFT) och tidsberoende täthetsfunktionsteori (TD-DFT). Effekterna som oligomerlängd, geometri-avslappning och utbytes-korrelations-interaktion har på exciton-bindningsenergin (skillnaden mellan optiska ochfundamentala energigapen) har även undersökts.  Både erhållna värden för det fundamentala och optiska gapet påverkas avsevärt av valet av funktional (dvs. beskrivningen av utbytes-korrelations-interaktionen). Valet av funktional verkar dock inte nämnvärt påverka erhållna värden för excitonbindningsenergin då effekterna från det fundamentala och optiska gapen till stor del tar ut varandra.  Både det fundamentala och optiska energigapet minskar som en funktion av oligomerlängden (~0.1 - 0.3 𝑒𝑉 minskning för varje upprepad monomer). Eftersom båda energigapen minskar ungefär lika mycket för varje upprepad monomer så motverkar de till stor grad varandra; och den totala effekten som oligomerlängd har på exciton-bindningsenergin förblir låg. Strukturell relaxation (eng: geometry relaxation) och termiska effekter visade sig ha störst påverkan på det fundamentala energigapet och exciton-bindningsenergin, och deras sammanlagda effekt ledde till en ~0,5 𝑒𝑉 reduktion i bindningsenergi.

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Nondeterministic finite automaton is an important tool, which is used to process strings in many different areas of programming. It is important to try to reduce its size for increasing programs' effectiveness. However, this problem is computationally hard, so we need to search for new techniques. Basics of finite automata are described in this work. Some methods for their reduction are then introduced. Usable reduction algorithms are described in greater detail. Then they are implemented and tested. The test results are finally evaluated.

The rampant growth of the Internet has been coupled with an equivalent growth in cyber crime over the Internet. With our increased reliance on the Internet for commerce, social networking, information acquisition, and information exchange, intruders have found financial, political, and military motives for their actions. Network Intrusion Detection Systems (NIDSs) intercept the traffic at an organization’s periphery and try to detect intrusion attempts. Signature-based NIDSs compare the packet to a signature database consisting of known attacks and malicious packet fingerprints. The signatures use regular expressions to model these intrusion activities. This thesis presents a memory efficient pattern matching system for the class of regular expressions appearing frequently in the NIDS signatures. Proposed Cascaded Automata Architecture is based on two stage automata. The first stage recognizes the sub-strings and character classes present in the regular expression. The second stage consumes symbol generated by the first stage upon receiving input traffic symbols. The basic idea is to utilize the research done on string matching problem for regular expression pattern matching. We formally model the class of regular expressions mostly found in NIDS signatures. The challenges involved in using string matching algorithms for regular expression matching has been presented. We introduce length-bound transitions, counter-based states, and associated counter arrays in the second stage automata to address these challenges. The system uses length information along with counter arrays to keep track of overlapped sub-strings and character class based transition. We present efficient implementation techniques for counter arrays. The evaluation of the architecture on practical expressions from Snort rule set showed compression in number of states between 50% to 85%. Because of its smaller memory footprint, our solution is suitable for both software based implementations on network chips as well as FPGA based designs.