This study sought to improve the performance of Si-based anodes through the use of hierarchically structured electrodes to provide the nanoscale framework needed to accommodate large volume changes while controlling the interfacial area – which affects solid-electrolyte interphase (SEI) formation. To accomplish this, electrodes were fabricated from vertically aligned carbon nanotubes (VACNT) infiltrated with silicon. On the nanoscale, these electrodes allowed us to adjust the surface area, tube diameter, and silicon layer thickness. On the micro-scale, we have the ability to control the electrode thickness and the incorporation of micro-sized features. Treatment of the interfacial area between the electrolyte and the electrode by encapsulating the electrode controls the stabilization and reduction of unstable SEI. Si-VACNT composite electrodes were prepared by first synthesizing VACNTs on Si wafers using photolithography for catalyst patterning, followed by aligned CNT growth. Nano-layers of silicon were then deposited on the aligned carbon nanotubes via LPCVD at 200mTorr and 535°C. A thin copper film was used as the current collector. Electrochemical testing was performed on the electrodes assembled in a CR2025 coin cell with a metallic Li foil as the counter electrode. The impact of the electrode structure on the capacity at various current densities was investigated. Experimental results demonstrated the importance of control over the superficial area between the electrolyte and the electrode on the performance of silicon-based electrodes for next generation lithium ion batteries. In addition, the results show that Si-VACNT height does not limit Li transport for the range of the conditions tested.

Collision detection between deforming models is a difficult problem for collision detection systems to handle. This problem is even more difficult when deformations are unconstrained, objects are in close proximity to one another, and when the entity count is high. We propose a method to perform collision detection between multiple deforming objects with unconstrained deformations that will give good results in close proximities. Currently no systems exist that achieve good performance on both unconstrained triangle level deformations and deformations that preserve edge connectivity. We propose a new system built as a combination of Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) based culling and Axis Aligned Bounding Box (AABB) based culling. Techniques for performing hierarchy-less GPU-based culling are given. We then discuss how and when to switch between GPU-based culling and AABB based techniques.

Organic field-effect transistors (OFETs) have attracted tremendous attention due to their flexibility, transparency, easy processiblity and low cost of fabrication. High-performance OFETs are required for their potential applications in the organic electronic devices such as flexible display, integrated circuit, and radiofrequency identification tags. One of the major limiting factors in fabricating high-performance OFET is the large interfacial barrier between metal electrodes and OSC which results in low charge injection from the metal electrodes to OSC. In order to overcome the challenge of low charge injection, carbon nanotubes (CNTs) have been suggested as a promising electrode material for organic electronic devices. In this dissertation, we study the effect of carbon nanotube (CNT) density in CNT electrodes on the performance of organic field effect transistor (OFETs). The devices were fabricated by thermal evaporation of pentacene on the Pd/single walled CNT (SWCNT) electrodes where SWCNTs of different density (0-30/um) were aligned on Pd using dielectrophoresis (DEP) and cut via oxygen plasma etching to keep the length of nanotube short compared to the channel length. From the electronic transport measurements of 40 devices, we show that the average saturation mobility of the devices increased from 0.02 for zero SWCNT to 0.06, 0.13 and 0.19 cm2/Vs for low (1-5 /µm), medium (10-15 /µm) and high (25-30 /µm) SWCNT density in the electrodes, respectively. The increase is three, six and nine times for low, medium and high density SWCNTs in the electrode compared to the devices that did not contain any SWCNT. In addition, the current on-off ratio and on-current of the devices are increased up v to 40 times and 20 times with increasing SWCNT density in the electrodes. Our study shows that although a few nanotubes in the electrode can improve the OFET device performance, significant improvement can be achieved by maximizing SWCNT/OSC interfacial area. The improved OFET performance can be explained due to a reduced barrier height of SWCNT/pentacene interface compared to metal/pentacene interface which provides more efficient charge injection pathways with increased SWCNT/pentacene interfacial area.

Mémoire numérisé par la Division de la gestion de documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal.

Les travaux entrepris dans le cadre de la présente thèse portent sur l’analyse de l’équivalence terminologique en corpus parallèle et en corpus comparable. Plus spécifiquement, nous nous intéressons aux corpus de textes spécialisés appartenant au domaine du changement climatique. Une des originalités de cette étude réside dans l’analyse des équivalents de termes simples. Les bases théoriques sur lesquelles nous nous appuyons sont la terminologie textuelle (Bourigault et Slodzian 1999) et l’approche lexico-sémantique (L’Homme 2005). Cette étude poursuit deux objectifs. Le premier est d’effectuer une analyse comparative de l’équivalence dans les deux types de corpus afin de vérifier si l’équivalence terminologique observable dans les corpus parallèles se distingue de celle que l’on trouve dans les corpus comparables. Le deuxième consiste à comparer dans le détail les équivalents associés à un même terme anglais, afin de les décrire et de les répertorier pour en dégager une typologie. L’analyse détaillée des équivalents français de 343 termes anglais est menée à bien grâce à l’exploitation d’outils informatiques (extracteur de termes, aligneur de textes, etc.) et à la mise en place d’une méthodologie rigoureuse divisée en trois parties. La première partie qui est commune aux deux objectifs de la recherche concerne l’élaboration des corpus, la validation des termes anglais et le repérage des équivalents français dans les deux corpus. La deuxième partie décrit les critères sur lesquels nous nous appuyons pour comparer les équivalents des deux types de corpus. La troisième partie met en place la typologie des équivalents associés à un même terme anglais. Les résultats pour le premier objectif montrent que sur les 343 termes anglais analysés, les termes présentant des équivalents critiquables dans les deux corpus sont relativement peu élevés (12), tandis que le nombre de termes présentant des similitudes d’équivalence entre les corpus est très élevé (272 équivalents identiques et 55 équivalents non critiquables). L’analyse comparative décrite dans ce chapitre confirme notre hypothèse selon laquelle la terminologie employée dans les corpus parallèles ne se démarque pas de celle des corpus comparables. Les résultats pour le deuxième objectif montrent que de nombreux termes anglais sont rendus par plusieurs équivalents (70 % des termes analysés). Il est aussi constaté que ce ne sont pas les synonymes qui forment le groupe le plus important des équivalents, mais les quasi-synonymes. En outre, les équivalents appartenant à une autre partie du discours constituent une part importante des équivalents. Ainsi, la typologie élaborée dans cette thèse présente des mécanismes de l’équivalence terminologique peu décrits aussi systématiquement dans les travaux antérieurs. / The research undertaken for this thesis concerns the analysis of terminological equivalence in a parallel corpus and a comparable corpus. More specifically, we focus on specialized texts related to the domain of climate change. A unique aspect of this study is based on the analysis of the equivalents of single word terms. The theoretical frameworks on which we rely are the terminologie textuelle (Bourigault et Slodzian 1999) and the lexico-sémantique approaches (L’Homme 2005). This study has two objectives. The first is to perform a comparative analysis of terminological equivalents in the two types of corpora in order to verify if the equivalents found in the parallel corpus are different from the ones observed in the comparable corpora. The second is to compare in detail equivalents associated with a same English term, in order to describe them and define a typology. A detailed analysis of the French equivalents of 343 English terms is carried out with the help of computer tools (term extractor, text aligner, etc.) and the establishment of a rigorous methodology divided into three parts. The first part, common to both objectives of the research concerns the elaboration of the corpus, the validation of the English terms and the identification of the French equivalents in the two corpora. The second part describes the criteria on which we rely to compare the equivalents of the two types of corpora. The third part sets up the typology of equivalents associated with a same English term. The results for the first objective shows that of the 343 English words analyzed, terms with equivalents that can be criticized in both corpora are relatively low in number (12), while the number of terms with similar equivalences between the two corpora is very high (272 identical and 55 equivalents not objectionable). The analysis described in this chapter confirms our hypothesis that terminology used in parallel corpora does not differ from that used in comparable corpora. The results of the second objective show that many English terms are rendered by several equivalents (70% of analyzed terms). It is also noted that synonyms are not the largest group of equivalents but near-synonyms. Also, equivalents from another part of speech constitute an important part of the equivalents analyzed. Thus, the typology developed in this thesis presents terminological equivalent mechanisms rarely described as systematically in previous work.

S.O. / Le présent mémoire vise à faire l’étude des procédés d’explicitation dans les traductions anglais-français de textes spécialisés de l’environnement. Plus précisément, notre but est d’identifier l'éventail de ces procédés d'explicitation, de faire leur analyse, de les classifier et de proposer quelques pistes quant aux causes possibles de l’explicitation dans la traduction. Nous présentons d’abord quelques travaux antérieurs qui ont porté sur l’explicitation dans des corpus de langue générale et dans des corpus spécialisés. Notre recherche a ceci de particulier qu’elle porte sur l’explicitation dans un corpus spécialisé, plus particulièrement dans des textes du domaine de l’environnement. L’explicitation est peu étudiée dans les textes spécialisés et, à notre connaissance, aucune étude n’a porté sur l’explicitation dans des textes environnementaux. Pour notre recherche, nous avons élaboré d’abord un corpus de textes anglais-français portant sur l’environnement. Notre corpus a ensuite été aligné au moyen de l’aligneur LogiTerm Pro. Cet aligneur nous permet de créer un corpus aligné qui est utile pour observer les manifestations d’explicitation. Les stratégies d'explicitation identifiées et classées par Pápai (2004) ont servi de base à notre propre classement. Nous avons découvert que les procédés d’explicitation se produisent à cinq niveaux : des relations logiques et visuelles, lexical et grammatical, syntaxiques I et II, textuel et extralinguistique. Le nombre total de procédés d’explicitation que nous avons identifiés est de 13. Le plus grand nombre de cas d’explicitations (445) se situe au niveau lexical et grammatical. Parmi les cas d’explicitations au niveau lexical et grammatical, le remplissage d’ellipses sémantiques présente le nombre le plus élevé de cas (186) dans notre corpus spécialisé. L’explicitation au niveau syntaxique I s’observe dans 173 cas; l’explicitation au niveau des relations logiques et visuelles s’observe dans 101 cas; l’explication au niveau syntaxique II a été relevée dans 50 cas. Enfin, l’explication se produit au niveau textuel et extralinguistique dans 37 cas. Après avoir observé notre corpus et d’après les résultats obtenus, nous avons pu constater que le nombre et la variété d’explicitations étaient élevés dans les traductions anglais-français de textes spécialisés environnementaux. / This work aims to study the explicitation strategies in English-French translations of specialized texts related to the field of environment. More specifically, our goal is to identify the range of these explicitation strategies, analyze and classify them. We will also offer some explanations of possible causes of explicitation in translation. First, we present some previous work on explicitation in general language corpora and in specialized corpora. A particularity of our own research is that it focuses on explicitation in a specialized corpus, more specifically in texts in the field of environment. Explicitation has seldom been studied in specialized texts and, to our knowledge, no study focused on explicitation in environmental texts. For our research, we compiled a corpus of English-French environment texts. Our corpus was then aligned using the aligner LogiTerm Pro. This aligner allows us to create aligned corpora that are useful to observe the linguistic instances of explicitation. The explicitation strategies identified and classified by Pápai (2004) have served as the basis for our own analysis. We found that the explicitation strategies occur at five levels: logical and visual relations, lexical and grammatical, syntactic I and II, textual and extra-linguistic. The total number of explicitation strategies that we have identified is 13. The largest number of explicitation instances (445) occurs on the lexical and grammatical level. Among explicitation instances on the lexical and grammatical level, filling semantic ellipses present the highest number of instances (186) in our specialized corpus. Explicitation on the syntactic level I was observed in 173 instances; explicitation on the logical and visual relations level in 101 instances; explicitation on the syntactic level II was found in 50 instances. Finally, explicitation occurred on the textual and extra-linguistic level in 37 instances. After observing our corpus and according to the results obtained, we have found that the number and variety of instances of explicitation are high in English-French translations of specialized texts in the field of the environment.

This research explains the role of aligned inter-firm performance measures as a predictor of success in of contractual alliances. Contractual alliances, a popular type of inter-firm relations, are also known as non-equity alliances and often display conflicting objectives in their contractual agreements. This research proposes that the assessment of contractual alliances performance must go beyond the contract’s ability to deliver to its internal performance targets or service level agreements (SLA). The success of contractual alliances lies in the alliance’s capability to contribute to the specific performance objectives of the firms involved as well as to fulfil its internal SLAs. This capability is called alignment and the results of this research show that is critical to the success of inter-firm relationships. The data for the research was gathered from outsourcing contracts between a logistics service provider and 149 users. Each contract includes its SLAs and two years of actual performance measures. The research design considers the firms’ financial measures as a proxy for their performance objectives during the same period of time. The alignment construct was operationalised by creating an inter-firm alignment (IFA) coefficient calculated with mathematical techniques to assess multi-dimensional fit amongst constructs. The three dimensions included in the IFA coefficient are i) alignment of contract’s SLAs and actual performance values, ii) alignment of contract’s SLAs and provider’s performance objectives, and iii) alignment of contract’s SLAs and user’s performance objectives. Success of contractual alliances was operationalised using known measures from the inter-firm management literature, such as longevity, stability, formality and relative profitability of the relationship. Information for all determinants was available in the 149 contracts. The quantitative correlations were specified and calculated using structural equation models (SEM). The results show that aligned inter-firm performance measures are a strong predictor of contractual alliance success. The empirical model supports the positive correlation of longevity and formality as measures of contractual alliance success, as stated in extant literature. The findings dispute the expected positive correlation between formality and stability with alliance success as described in the alliance literature. The results confirm the positive role of renegotiations as stated in the organization learning literature. Additional in-depth interviews were conducted with relationship managers, during the pilot study. The qualitative results support the quantitative findings. This research contributes to theory by: a) conceptualising and measuring the concept alignment to inter-firm performance measures; b) estimating the contribution of relation-specific measures to contractual alliance success, and c) introducing alignment of inter-firm performance measures as a predictor of contractual alliance success. The research and its results fill a substantive gap in managing contractual alliances. It provides the outsourcing industry with a tool that predicts the likelihood of relationship survival based on the degree of alignment of the inter-firm’s performance measures. The quantitative methods employed in the research extend the use of current techniques for assessing ‘fit’ in the strategy literature, into the field of performance measurement systems.

Using the case study of 21st century Piracy as it affects the small islands archipelagic state of the Seychelles, this paper sets the stage for a broader discussion on the sovereignty of small island states in international law. Sovereignty can be viewed through different lenses; sovereignty denied considers the many challenges faced by small island states and their claim to the traditional concept of sovereignty, as promoted during the decolonisation era and projected by the right of self determination. On the other hand sovereignty can also be yielded by small island states, where the jurisdiction of the state becomes a resource. This is demonstrated through the degree of international assistance afforded to the Seychelles in dealing with pirates and more generally, through the development of offshore companies in small island states. Consequently, this paper suggests that international law is both the problem and solution to the sovereignty of small island states.

Using the case study of 21st century Piracy as it affects the small islands archipelagic state of the Seychelles, this paper sets the stage for a broader discussion on the sovereignty of small island states in international law. Sovereignty can be viewed through different lenses; sovereignty denied considers the many challenges faced by small island states and their claim to the traditional concept of sovereignty, as promoted during the decolonisation era and projected by the right of self determination. On the other hand sovereignty can also be yielded by small island states, where the jurisdiction of the state becomes a resource. This is demonstrated through the degree of international assistance afforded to the Seychelles in dealing with pirates and more generally, through the development of offshore companies in small island states. Consequently, this paper suggests that international law is both the problem and solution to the sovereignty of small island states.

Carbon nanotube (CNT) forests are an important class of nanomaterials with many potential applications due to their unique properties such as mechanical compliance, thermal and electrical conductance, etc. Their deformation and failure in compression loading is critical in any application involving contact because the deformation changes the nature of the contact and thus impacts the transfer of load, heat, and charge carriers across the interface. The micro- and nano-structure of the CNT forest can vary along their height and from sample to sample due to different growth parameters. The morphology of CNTs and their interaction contribute to their mechanical behavior with change of load distribution in the CNT forest. However, the relationship is complicated due to involvement of many factors such as density, orientation, and entanglement of CNTs. None of these effects, however, are well understood. This dissertation aims to advance the knowledge of the structure-property relation in CNT forests and find methodologies for tuning their mechanical behavior. The mechanical behavior of CNT forests grown with different methodologies is studied. Furthermore, the effects of coating and wetting of CNT forests are investigated as methods to tailor the degree of interaction between CNTs. In situ micro-indentation of uncoated CNT forests with distinct growth-induced structures are performed to elucidate the effects of change of morphology along the height of CNT forests on their deformation mechanism. CNT aerial density and tortuosity are found to dictate the location of incipient deformation along height of CNT forests. Macro-compression testing of uncoated CNT forests reveals mechanical failure of CNT forests by delamination at the CNT-growth substrate. Tensile loading of CNT roots due to post-buckling bending of CNTs is proposed to be the cause of this failure and simple bending theory is shown to estimate the failure load to be on the same order of magnitude as experimental measurements. Furthermore, delamination is observed to occur in the in situ micro-indentation of CNT forests coated with aluminum on the top surface, which demonstrates the role of the mechanical constraints within the CNT forest in the occurrence of delamination at the CNT-substrate interface. In addition, this dissertation explores the mechanical behavior of CNT forests coated conformally (from top to bottom) with alumina by atomic layer deposition. In situ micro-indentation testing demonstrates that the deformation mechanism of CNT forests does not change with a thin coating (2 nm) but does change with a sufficiently thick coating (10 nm) that causes fracturing of the hybrid nanotubes. Ex situ flat punch and Berkovich indentations reveal an increase in stiffness of the CNT forests that are in range with those predicted by compression and bending theories. An increase in the recoverability of the CNTs is also detected. Finally, solvent infiltration is proposed as a method of decreasing stiffness of CNT forests and changing the deformation mechanism from local to global deformations (i.e., buckling in the entire height). Presence of solvents between CNTs decreases the van der Waals forces between them and produces CNT forests with lower stiffness. The results demonstrate the effect of interaction between CNTs on the mechanical behavior. This dissertation reveals important information on the mechanical behavior of CNT forests as it relates to CNT morphology and tube-to-tube interactions. In addition, it provides a framework for future systematic experimental and theoretical investigations of the structure-property relationship in CNT forests, as well as a framework for tuning the properties of CNT forests for diverse applications.