Thesis (M.S.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2008. / The entire dissertation/thesis text is included in the research.pdf file; the official abstract appears in the short.pdf file (which also appears in the research.pdf); a non-technical general description, or public abstract, appears in the public.pdf file. Title from title screen of research.pdf file (viewed on August 19, 2009) Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.S.)--University of Missouri, School of Mines and Metallurgy, 1922. / The entire thesis text is included in file. Typescript. Illustrated by author. Title from title screen of thesis/dissertation PDF file (viewed June 4, 2009) Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.S.)--Rochester Institute of Technology, 2009. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 115-120).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Materials Science and Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, 2007. / Wang, Zhong Lin, Committee Chair ; Wong, C.P., Committee Member ; Summers, Christopher J., Committee Member ; Degertekin, F. Levent, Committee Member ; Bottomley, Lawrence A., Committee Member.

Thesis--Catholic University of America, 1938. / "An attempt to answer the questions raised and left unanswered by the work of Langan."--p. 2. "Literature cited": p. 29.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--McMaster University, 2003. / Advisor: A.H. Kitai. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 193-199). Also available via World Wide Web.

abstract: Different environmental factors, such as ultraviolet radiation (UV), relative humidity (RH) and the presence of reducing gases (acetone and ethanol), play an important role in the daily life of human beings. UV is very important in a number of areas, such as astronomy, resin curing of polymeric materials, combustion engineering, water purification, flame detection and biological effects with more recent proposals like early missile plume detection, secure space-to-space communications and pollution monitoring. RH is a very common parameter in the environment. It is essential not only for human comfort, but also for a broad spectrum of industries and technologies. There is a substantial interest in the development of RH sensors for applications in monitoring moisture level at home, in clean rooms, cryogenic processes, medical and food science, and so on. The concentration of acetone and other ketone bodies in the exhaled air can serve as an express noninvasive diagnosis of ketosis. Meanwhile, driving under the influence of alcohol is a serious traffic violation and this kind of deviant behavior causes many accidents and deaths on the highway. Therefore, the detection of ethanol in breath is usually used as a quick and reliable screening method for the sobriety checkpoint. Traditionally, semiconductor metal oxide sensors are the major candidates employed in the sensing applications mentioned above. However, they suffer from the low sensitivity, poor selectivity and huge power consumption. In this dissertation, Zinc Oxide (ZnO) based Film Bulk Acoustic Resonator (FBAR) was developed to monitor UV, RH, acetone and ethanol in the environment. FBAR generally consists of a sputtered piezoelectric thin film (ZnO/AlN) sandwiched between two electrodes. It has been well developed both as filters and as high sensitivity mass sensors in recent years. FBAR offers high sensitivity and excellent selectivity for various environment monitoring applications. As the sensing signal is in the frequency domain, FABR has the potential to be incorporated in a wireless sensor network for remote sensing. This study extended our current knowledge of FBAR and pointed out feasible directions for future exploration. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. Electrical Engineering 2011

Made available in DSpace on 2016-03-07T19:20:28Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 Previous issue date: 2015-08-21. Added 1 bitstream(s) on 2016-03-07T19:24:05Z : No. of bitstreams: 1 000858000.pdf: 3107291 bytes, checksum: 03cc09e21968c8a2c5f8ce48884a2617 (MD5) / Este trabalho apresenta um estudo das propriedades ópticas de filmes finos de ZnO puro e de ZnO dopado com Al; e um estudo da influência da variação de pressão do gás argônico durante a deposição dos filmes, nas propriedades ópticas e estruturais. Os filmes foram depositados em substrato de vidro e silício pela técnica RF magnetron sputtering com alvo de uma liga de Zn-Al, com uma concentração de 2% em peso de alumínio. As análises de DRX dos filmes apresentam um pico preferencial no plano (002) - eixo c, que mostra a formaão de uma estrutura de wurtzita correpondente ao ZnO, e que há um aumento do tamanho do cristalino com a dopagem de Al, em concordância com resultados de AFM. Medidas Raman mostram o modo de vibração característico do ZnO ao redor de 575 cm-1 e a melhora da cristalinidade do material com a dopagem de Al, sem a deterioração com a variação de pressão de argônio. Os filmes apresentam valores de transmitância óptica acima de 70% na faixa do visível do espectro (400 a 700 nm) e correlacionados com o espectro de refletância possibilitaram obter dados como o gap óptico na ordem de 3,5 - 3,6 eV, que estão acima dos valores esperados para o ZnO intrínseco (3,3 eV). Os resultados de gap óptico foram correlacionados com dados obtidos através de Modelagem Computacional (DFT). As medidas de fotoluminescência mostram uma larga faixa de emissão de luz na região visível e linhas de emissão em 3,32 e 3,37 eV que sugerem efeito de dopagem de Al. Os resultados de medidas ópticas correlacionadas com a modelagem computacional reforçam que o efeito Burstein-Moss é dominante para esse material / This thesis presents a study of the optical properties of thin films of pure ZnO and ZnO doped with Al; and a study of the influence of argon gas pressure of argon gas pressure variation during synthesis of films on the optical and structural properties. The films were deposited on glass and silicon substrate by RF magnetron suputtering technique with a target Zn-Al alloy with a concentration of 2% by weight of aluminum. The XRD analysis of the film showed a preferential peak in the (002) - c axis, showing the formation of a wurtzite structure corresponding to the ZnO, and that there is an increase in crystalline size with. Al doping, in agreement with results AFM. Measurements showed the characteristic. Raman vibration mode ZnO around 575 cm-1 and the improvement of crystallinity of the material with the doping of Al, without impairment to the variation of argon pressure. The films exhibited optical transmittance above 70% in the visible spectrum range (400 to 700 nm) and correlated with the reflectance spectrum enabled to obtain data such as the optical band gap in the range 3.5 to 3.6 eV which are above the values obtained for the intrinsic ZnO (3.3 eV). The optical gap results were correlated data obtained through Computational Modeling. The photoluminescence measurements showed a large light emission range in the visible region and emission lines at 3.32 and 3.37 eV suggest that Al doping effect. The optical resuts correlated with the computational modeling reinforce the Burstein-Moss effect is dominant for that material

The synthesis and extensive spectroscopical characterization of novel phthalocyanines are reported. The new compounds were characterized by elemental analysis, FT-IR, ¹HNMR, mass spectrometry and UV–Vis spectroscopy. The new phthalocyanines showed remarkable photophysicochemical behaviour. The novel phthalocyanines were then conjugated to nanoparticles, silver and ZnO. The coupling of the novel Pcs to nanoparticles was through covalent bonding and ligand exchange. These conjugates were supported onto electrospun polystyrene fibers and chitosan microbeads for use as photocatalysts. The efficiency of the immobilized Pcs and Pc-nanoparticles was assessed by the phototrasfromation of organic pollutants, methyl orange and Rhodamine 6G as model dyes. Upon conjugating phthalocyanines to nanoparticles, there was a great increase in the rate of photodegradation of the model dyes. The photodynamic activity of the novel phthalocyanines upon conjugating to nanoparticles and selected targeting agents is also reported. The targeting agents employed in this study are folic acid and polylysine. Conjugating the phthalocyanines to folic acid or polylysine improved the solubility of the phthalocyanines in aqueous media. The potency of the conjugates was investigated on breast (MCF-7), prostate and melanoma cancer cell lines. The phthalocyanines showed no toxicity in the absence of light. However, upon illumination, a concentration dependent cellular decrease was observed.

Organic solar cells (OSCs) have attracted significant attention due to their potential of large area solution fabrication capability at low-cost. For bulk heterojunction (BHJ) OSCs, a thin film of transparent conducting indium tin oxide (ITO), coated on glass or flexible plastic substrate, is widely used as a front electrode. However, indium is not abundant on Earth. Its price has increased continuously over the past 10 years and will likely become an obstacle for the commercialization of OSCs at low cost. Aluminum-doped zinc oxide (AZO) is a promising ITO alternative due to its advantages of high electric conductivity, optical transparency, non-toxicity and low cost. However, reports on OSCs using AZO electrode are quite limited, due to the relatively lower power conversion efficiency (PCE) of AZO-based OCSs as compared to that of ITO-based OCSs. This work focused on studies of high performance AZO-based OSCs through AZO surface modification, absorption enhancement and process optimization. The optical and electronic properties of AZO film including transmittance, sheet resistance, surface morphology and surface work function were characterized. AZO-based OSCs with conventional and inverted structures were fabricated. It was found that AZO-based OSCs with inverted structure demonstrated superior performance than the ones with conventional structure. The inverted structure avoids the use of acidic PEDOT:PSS hole transporting layer, allows the improving of the absorbance of the OSCs and therefore its efficiency. An AZO front transparent cathode was used for application in high performance inverted BHJ OSCs. The photoactive layer consisted a blend of poly[[4,8-bis[(2- ethylhexyl)oxy] benzo [1,2-b:4,5-b'] dithiophene-2,6- diyl][3-fluoro- 2-[(2-ethylhexyl) carbonyl]thieno[3,4-b]thiophenediyl]](PTB7):3'H-Cyclopropa[8,25][5,6]fullerene- C70- D5h(6)-3'-butanoicacid, 3'-phenyl-, methyl ester (PC70BM). A structurally identical control OSC having an ITO front cathode was also fabricated for comparison studies. The structure of OSCs was optimized to achieving absorption enhancement in the active layer. AZO and ITO were modified with a 10 nm thick solution-processed ZnO interlayer to facilitate the efficient electron extraction. The results revealed that bilayer AZO/ZnO and the ITO/ZnO cathodes possess similar electron extraction property. AZO layer has a transparency cutoff at wavelength < 380 nm, results in a slight decrease in the short-circuit current density (JSC). However, the decrease in JSC is very small because the main energy of solar irradiation falls in the spectrum with wavelength > 380 nm. It shows that AZO-based OSCs have a promising PCE of 6.15%, which is slightly lower than that of a control ITO-based OSC (6.57%). AZO-based OSCs, however, demonstrate an obvious enhancement in the stability under an ultraviolet (UV)-assisted acceleration aging test. The significant enhancement in the stability of AZO-based OSCs arises from the tailored absorption of AZO electrode in wavelength < 380 nm, which serves as a UV filter to inhibit an inevitable degradation process in ITO-based OSCs due to the UV irradiation. In order to further investigate the degradation mechanism of OSCs under UV exposure, the change in charge collection characteristics of the OSCs made with ITO/ZnO and AZO/ZnO front cathode before and after UV exposure was examined. It was found that there was an obvious decrease in the charge extraction efficiency of ITO-based OSCs after UV exposure, while there was no observable change in the charge extraction efficiency of OSCs made with AZO/ZnO cathode under the same acceleration aging test. This work demonstrates that AZO is a suitable ITO alternative for application in OSCs, offering an improved device stability, comparable PCE and cell fabrication processes with an attractive commercial potential.