Passivation of the crystalline silicon (c-Si) wafer surface and decreasing the number of interface defects are basic requirements for development of high efficiency a-Si:H/c-Si heterojunction solar cells. Surface passivation is generally achieved by development of detailed silicon wafer cleaning processes and the optimization of PECVD parameters for the deposition of intrinsic hydrogenated amorphous silicon layer. a-Si:H layers are grown in UHV-PECVD system. Solar cells were deposited on the p type Cz-silicon substrates in the structure of Al front contact/a-Si:H(n)/a-Si:H(i)/c-Si(p)/Al back contact. Solar cell parameters were determined under standard test conditions namely, using 1000 W/m2, AM 1.5G illumination at 25 oC. Growth of (i) a-Si:H, films on the clean wafer surface was investigated as a function of substrate temperature, RF power density, gas flow rate, hydrogen dilution ratio and deposition time and was characterized using SEM, HRTEM, AFM, SE, ATR-FTIR and I/V measurements. Structural properties of the films deposited on silicon wafer surface are directly effective on the solar cell efficiency. Morphological characterization of the grown films on the crystalline surface was found to be very complex depending on the deposition parameters and may even change during the deposition time. At 225 oC substrate temperature, at the beginning of the deposition, (i) a-Si:H films was found grown in epitaxial structure, followed by a simultaneous growth of crystalline and amorphous structure, and finally transforming to complete amorphous structure. Despite this complex structure, an efficiency of 9.2% for solar cells with total area of 72 cm2 was achieved. In this cell structure, TCO and back surface passivation do not exist. In the

The polarization behaviour for six species of Scarab beetles from the Chrysina genus is investigated with Mueller Matrix Spectroscopic Ellipsometer (MMSE). The m41 element of the matrix, which is related to the circular polarization behaviour, is analysed. The ellipticity, degree of polarization and azimuth angle are also presented to get a better understanding of the polarization effect. The measurements were done with a dual rotating compensator ellipsometer. The measured wavelength region was from 240 to 1000 nm and the angle of incidence from 25° to 75° in most of the cases. In general very high ellipticities (near circular) are reported. All specimens studied reflect both right- and left-handed polarized light. Depending on the species, two general types of polarization behaviour were observed. Chrysina macropus and Chrysina peruviana showed m41 values close to 0. Green stripes on Chrysina gloriosa showed similar polarization behaviour whereas gold stripes on the same beetle had much more pronounced m41 variations. Large m41 variations were also observed for Chrysina argenteola, Chrysina chrysargyrea and Chrysina resplendens. Four specimens of Chrysina resplendens show different m41 patterns suggesting differences in their structures.

Light reflected from the scarab beetles Cetonia aurata (C. aurata) and Chrysina gloriosa (C. gloriosa) has left-handed polarization. In this work the polarizing properties and structural characteristics of the cuticles of these two beetles are investigated with two different techniques: scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and Mueller-matrix spectroscopic ellipsometry (MMSE). SEM is used to get cross section images of the epicutucle and the endocuticle. Thicknesses around 18 μm were measured for both layers for C. aurata and between 12 and 16 μm for C. gloriosa. A layered structure is observed in both beetles. In addition, a cusp-like structure is also observed in C. gloriosa. MMSE showed left-handed near-circular polarization of light reflected on both beetles. For C. aurata this is observed in a narrow wavelength range (500-600 nm) and for C. gloriosa in a wider wavelength range (400-700 nm) when measured on golden areas of the cuticle. C. gloriosa also has green areas where the reflected light was linearly polarized. The results are used in regression modelling. A good model approximation was found for C. aurata for angles up to 60 whereas a good starting point for future work was reached for C. gloriosa.

In this work, a gradient of interpenetrating polymer networks, consisting of anionic and cationic polymers, has been investigated with respect to protein resistant properties and swelling characteristics at different pH and ionic strength conditions. The swelling and protein adsorption have been studied using \emph{in situ} spectroscopic ellipsometry(SE) and imaging surface plasmon resonance(iSPR) respectively. It has been shown that, by altering the buffer pH, the region of lowest protein adsorption on the surface could be moved laterally. The swelling has similarly been shown to respond to both changes in pH and ionic strength. Additionally, the arise of surface charge and the polymer swelling in solution, both a consequence of the ionisation of fixed charges on the polymer, have been indicated to occur at different buffer pH. The studied polymer systems show promising properties for future applications in, for example, the biosensor area, where the surface chemistry can be tailor-made to work optimally in a given environment.

We study in this thesis work the spectroscopic and thermodynamic quantities of some substances such as ammonium halides (NH4Cl, NH4I), ferroelectric crystals of tris-sarcosine calcium chloride (TSCC), tris-sarcosine calcium bromide (TSCB), organic compounds of carbon tetrachloride (CCl4) and s-triazine (C3N3H3) close to the phase transitions. Various physical and chemical properties of those materials have been measured near the critical points and have been reported in the literature. In this study, the spectroscopic parameters of the frequency shifts, intensity and bandwidths are calculated as functions of temperature or pressure near the phase transitions in ammonium halides using the experimental data from the literature. The spectroscopic parameters are related to the crystal volume and the specific heat in these compounds. The thermodynamic quantities of the specific heat, thermal expansion and the isothermal compressibility are also calculated in the solid and liquid phases of carbon tetrachloride using the experimental data. In another part of this thesis work, we analyze the temperature dependence of the spontaneous polarization and the dielectric susceptibility at fixed pressures for TSCC and TSCB by using the experimental data from the literature. The temperature dependence of the damping constant for the s-triazine is also calculated here close to the I-II transition. We use the theoretical models on the basis of the observations in the literature to calculate the critical behaviour of these physical quantities and we compare the results with the observed data. Various experimental studies in the literature give us the opportunity to find the proper way of fitting the calculated and observed results. This study gives us the chance of a better understanding of the critical behavior of the studied materials by verifying the values of some critical exponents and the types of transitions as expected by different theoretical models.

LCModel has been widely used for MR spectroscopy analysis. LCMgui, which is the built-in user interface of LCModel, based on Linux system, provides the functionality to convert MRS data of various formats to match the format of LCModel raw file, except for GE MRSI data which can be analyzed by LCModel only with GE Sage/IDL software. Hence, the first part of this work was to develop a multi-platform tool with LCModel to support all GE data, including GE MRSI data and phased array data. With this tool, users can analyze MRS data with LCModel on their familiar environment such as Windows, and Linux. The MR spectroscopy experiments with phased array coils provide optimized SNR which lead to more accurate absolute quantification by some sophisticate combination algorithms of phased array coils. Thus, the second part of this work was to propose an algorithm of combining data obtained from phased array coils by doing phase correction and calculation of weighting factor. In addition, the comparison of the accuracy between using quadrature coil and phased array coils with different combination algorithms was investigated in order to demonstrate the efficiency of using phased array coils and the combination program.

Magnetic resonance (MR) has been developed and applied to clinical analysis studies due to its non-invasive properties. Because of the increasing interest of applying magnetic resonance spectroscopy imaging (MRSI) to clinical application, some post-processing softwares, like LCModel, provide a graphical user interface for convenient and efficient analysis. However, the features of combining MR imaging (MRI) with MRS information and browsing all analyzed results are not provided by LCModel. Our study proposed a method to implement the architecture for processing General Electric (GE), Siemens MRSI data sets and provides features including interactive display, selection and analysis of full 2D slices. For multi-console analysis, our tool also provides the combination of MRS, MRI, and data sets generated by LCModel, such as the projection of three planes and metabolite/spectra map, and therefore the three formats of data sets could be obtained from scanners of various manufactures. Especially, it is more complicated when processing GE data sets, so some mechanisms for processing are proposed, like the transformation, the three plane loc images detection and MRSI detection, etc. Additionally, our tool also has the advantage of the compatibility of further extended functionalities, which would be more flexible and useful for clinical applications.

Transiting planet candidates around rapidly rotating stars, a number of which have been found by the Kepler mission, are not amenable to follow-up via the usual radial velocity techniques due to their rotationally broadened stellar lines. An alternative method is Doppler tomography. In this method, the distortions of the stellar spectral lines due to subtracted light during the transit are spectroscopically resolved. This allows us to not only validate the transiting planet candidate but also to obtain the spin-orbit misalignment for the system. The spin-orbit misalignment is a powerful statistical tracer of the migration histories of planets. I discuss our project to perform Doppler tomographic observations of Kepler candidates and other transiting planets using the facilities at McDonald Observatory. I present our first transit detection, that of Kepler-13 b, and discuss some other recent results. / text

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With new radioactive isotope accelerators coming online in the next decade, the problem of extracting reliable nuclear structure information from reactions with unstable nuclei deserves considerable attention. A method has been proposed to determine spectroscopic factors (SFs) using the asymptotic normalization coefficient (ANC) to fix the external contribution of a nonperipheral reaction, reducing the uncertainty in the SF. The ¹⁵C[left right arrow]¹⁴C+n system was chosen as a test case for this new method. The direct neutron capture rate on ¹⁴C is important for a variety of topics of interest in astrophysics, and the ANC for ¹⁵C[left right arrow]¹⁴C+n was also used to calculate this reaction rate. The objective of the first part of this work was to find the ANC for ¹⁵C[left right arrow]¹⁴C+n. This was done in two independent experiments. First, the heavy ion neutron transfer reaction ¹³C(¹⁴C,¹⁵C)¹²C was measured at 12 MeV/nucleon. Second, the inverse kinematics reaction d(¹⁴C,p)¹⁵C was measured using the new Texas Edinburgh Catania Silicon Array (TECSA). The next phase of the experimental program was to measure a reaction with a non-negligible interior contribution, for which ¹⁴C(d,p)¹⁵C at 60 MeV deuteron energy was used. This reaction turned out to be more peripheral than anticipated, and as a result, the ANC for the ground state was extracted from this measurement as well. The final results for the three measurements are C²2s1/2 = 1.96±0.16 fm⁻¹ for the ground state and C²1d5/2 = (4.23±0.38)·10⁻³ fm⁻¹ for the first excited state. Because the 60 MeV ¹⁴C(d,p)¹⁵C reaction turned out to have a very weak dependence on the interior, the SF could not be determined for the ¹⁴C+n ground state in ¹⁵C using the new method. A lower limit of 1.05 was found for the first excited state. It is possible that other reactions might turn out to be more suitable for this method, however, the difficulty encountered at this relatively high deuteron energy highlights a substantial problem likely to be seen in other applications. Using the ANCs determined in this work, the astrophysical ¹⁴C(n,γ)¹⁵C reaction rate was calculated. The resulting value for the cross section for capture to the ground state at 23 keV was σgs(23 keV)=5.1±0.4 μb and to the first excited state was σexc(23 keV)=0.2±0.02 μb.