The purpose of this project is to verify if the so called capacitance method is a sensitive enough method to measure micrometer distance changes in an electrode system. This is done by heating up an electrode system to 60°C and make capacitance measurements during the procedure. With the inverse relationship between the capacitance and the distance between the surfaces the distance is attained. The incitement to find a sensitive measurement method is that in a particle accelerator the temperature is down to 4K and the components of an electrode system will contract which can lead to a breakdown of the system. The change in temperature gives a theoretical change in "gap distance" that is close to the measured change in gap distance, therefore the method is a reliable enough method to measure micrometer distance changes. A possible reason for the small deviation is that the measured temperature is the temperature of the surface of the electrode system. It would be preferable to measure the total temperature of the electrodes, not just the surfaces because it is the whole electrode that expands and contracts with the temperature. This could be done with an IR-camera.

In the planned linear accelerator called Compact Linear Collider, CLIC, electrons and positrons will be accelerated to velocities near the speed of light. A limiting factor in accelerating structures are vacuum breakdowns, which are electrical discharges from a surface as a result of a large electric field being applied. In the preparatory studies for the CLIC, Uppsala University in collaboration with The European Organization for Nuclear Research, CERN, is building a DC Spark system to analyze vacuum breakdowns. This system containing large planar electrodes will be cooled down all the way down to around 4 K in order to limit the rate of wich vacuum breakdowns happen. When cooling a system like this, which consists of different components made of different materials there is the question of how the system will be affected. The objective of this project is to investigate how the cooling will affect the stability in terms of stresses and to analyze the cool down time of the system. Another goal is to make a material recommendation for a few parts based on the results. This will be done by simulating the cooling in COMSOL Multiphysics, which is a program that uses finite element analysis to solve complex problems where different branches of physics interact. The conclusion is that the system will most likely be stable as it is and there is no need to redesign it. The choice of recommended material is alumina with the reason being it should cause the least stress and the smallest gap between the electrodes when the cooling is done. There was no big difference in the cool down time between the materials. Further studies and simulations on the system is also recommended since there are many factors not taken into consideration in this study.

This master `s thesis deals about the dielectric properties of water. It describes the basic chemical and physical properties of water and its distribution in terms of structure. It also describes the basic parameters of distilled water, deionized and superclean. In the chapter number 5 described the behavior of dielectrics in an electric field, determining the dipole moment by Claus-Mossotti 'equation, measurement of permittivity and loss factor. Practical part is consists of the design of the electrode systém, of measuring the water quality and evaluation of measured data

Presented Ph.D. Thesis is focused on the development of analytical methods applicable for determination of selected xenobiotic compounds and for monitoring DNA damage they can induce. The main attention has been paid to the development and testing of non-toxic electrode materials for preparation of miniaturized electrochemical devices and novel electrochemical DNA biosensors. 2-Aminofluoren-9-one (2-AFN) was selected as a model environmental pollutant, which belongs to the group of hazardous genotoxic substances. Its carcinogenic and mutagenic effects may represent a risk to living and working environment. 2-AFN has one oxo group, where the cathodic reduction occurs, and one amino group, where the anodic oxidation occurs. The voltammetric behavior of 2-AFN in the negative potential region was investigated at a mercury meniscus modified silver solid amalgam electrode (m-AgSAE) representing a non-toxic and more mechanically robust alternative to mercury electrodes. This working electrode was subsequently used for the development of a newly designed miniaturized electrode system (MES), which has many benefits as the possibility of simple field measurements, easy portability, and the measurement in sample volume 100 µL. Moreover, a glassy carbon electrode (GCE) was used for further investigation of...