High quality ammonium oxofluorotitanate discoid crystal is successfully grown on glass with an aqueous solution of ammonium hexafluorotitanate and boric acid at the molar ratio of 0.6. The concentration of hydrofluoric acid is less on the glass substrate surface and enhances the ammonium oxofluorotitanate nucleation growth. The growth rate is much higher than that grown on dioctadecyldimethylammonium. From the examinations of X-ray diffraction and high-resolution transmission electron microscopy, the crystal shows high crystalline quality and uniformity. Each titanium oxide octahedral is linked with fluorine and nitrogen atoms. Therefore, ammonium oxofluorotitanate has high potential to be thermally decomposed into high crystalline fluorine and nitrogen co-doped titanium oxide. A simple process for the preparation of nanocrystalline anatase phase titanium oxide converted from ammonium oxofluorotitanate by thermal treatment was developed. The nanocrystalline anatase phase titanium oxide shows a large bandgap reduction due to the co-doping of high concentrations of fluorine and nitrogen. Due to the excellent nanocrystalline quality and the co-doping of higher concentrations of fluorine and nitrogen at the thermal treatment temperature of 800 OC, it is 1.3 times the photocatalytic activities of P-25 due to the visble region usage of Hg lamp light source. The 11.2 times the visible photocatalytic activities of P-25 using blue light-emitting diode as the light source is obtained from thermal treatment temperature of 600 OC. There is one to one correspondence between carrier lifetime and photocatalytic activity. As a result, a highly reactive and visible-light-driven photocatalysis is achieved. The heterostructure of zinc selenide/titanium oxide and zinc sulfide/titanium oxide were prepared by metal-organic chemical vapor deposition on the above-prepared titanium oxide. The energy bandgap of zinc sulfide is much larger than that of titanium oxide and can act as a window for titanium oxide. It would not hinder titanium oxide absorption and preserve the role of fluorine and nitrogen co-doping. The energy bandgap of zinc selenide is near the maximum intensity of solar spectrum and acts as a sensitizer of titanium oxide. The lifetime of electron and hole pairs of heterostructure are about 240 and 207 nsec, which are longer than 65 nsec of titanium oxide prepared at 800 oC thermal treatment. Their photocatalytic activities are further improved to 2.0 and 1.5 times higher than that of commercial P-25. The photocatalysis of titanium oxide is very sensitive to the surface states. Titanium oxide surface defects can act as trapping sites for photo-induced holes and facilitate the separation of photo-induced carriers. Zinc selenide and zinc sulfide can passivate the surface well. It may say that titanium oxide surface defects removal has a negative impact. The density, height, diameter, PL wavelength and intensity of zinc selenide self-assembled quantum dots grown on zinc sulfide/gallium arsenide with the zinc sulfide thickness from 15 to 160 nm are studied. For a fixed 30 sec zinc selenide self-assembled quantum dots growth, it cannot be formed with the zinc sulfide thickness below 15 nm due to the close lattice match between zinc sulfide and gallium arsenide. The zinc sulfide/gallium arsenide is fully lattice relaxed with the zinc sulfide thickness higher than 130 nm examined by X-ray diffraction. The higher quality and density of zinc selenide self-assembled quantum dots can be obtained on zinc sulfide/gallium arsenide with the zinc sulfide thickness far beyond its critical thickness. The maximum zinc selenide self-assembled quantum dots density of 4.9 x 109 cm-2 with the strongest photoluminescence intensity is obtained at the zinc sulfide/gallium arsenide thickness of 130 nm. Clusters are formed on the surface of zinc selenide/gallium arsenide. The selenium segregation is the main mechanism for the formation of clusters. The dislocations will enhance the selenium segregation. Higher zinc selenide cluster corresponds to higher density of dislocations. The non-spherical cluster is formed from the mergence of the two clusters. High quality zinc oxide rods and zinc hydroxide slices are successfully grown on gallium arsenide with the aqueous solution of zinc nitrate and hexamethylenetetramine. The growth can be controlled by the appropriate nitric acid concentration incorporation in the solution. After thermal annealing, the zinc oxide slices transformed from zinc hydroxide slices can contribute much higher photocatalytic activity to 1.2 times to P-25.

In this work a p-i-n type heterojunction architecture for organic solar cells is shown, where the active region is sandwiched between two doped wide-gap layers. The term p-i-n means here a layer sequence in the form p-doped layer, intrinsic layer and n-doped layer. The doping is realized by controlled coevaporation using organic dopants and leads to conductivities of 10-4 to 10-5 S/cm in the p- and n-doped wide gap layers, respectively. The conductivity and field effect mobility of single doped layers can be described quantitatively in a self-consistent way by a percolation model. For the solar cells the photoactive layer is formed by a mixture of phthalocyanine zinc (ZnPc) and the fullerene C60 and shows mainly amorphous morphology. The solar cells exhibit a maximum external quantum efficiency of 40% between 630nm and 700nm wavelength. With the help of an optical multilayer model, the optical properties of the solar cells are optimized by placing the active region at the maximum of the optical field distribution. The results of the model are largely confirmed by the experimental findings. The optically optimized device shows an internal quantum efficiency of around 85% at short-circuit conditions and a power-conversion efficiency of 1.7%.

A numerical model and results for the quantitative simulation of multilayer organic light emitting diode (OLED) and organic solar cell (OSC) are presented. In the model, effects like bipolar charge carrier drift and diffusion with field-dependent mobilities, trapping, dopants, indirect and direct bimolecular recombination, singlet Frenkel exciton diffusion, normal decay and quenching effects are taken into account. For an adequate description of multilayer devices with energetic barriers at interfaces between two adjacent organic layers, thermally assisted charge carrier hopping through the interface, interface recombination, and formation of interface charge transfer (CT) states have been introduced in the model. For the simulation of OSC, the generation of carrier pairs in the mixed layer or at the interface is additionally implemented. The light absorption profile is calculated from optical simulations and used as an input for the electrical simulation. The model is based on three elements: the Poisson equation, the rate equations for charge carriers and the rate equations for singlet Frenkel excitons. These equations are simultaeously solved by spatial and temporal discretisation using the appropriate boundary conditions and electrical parameters. The solution is found when a steady state is reached, as indicated by a constant value of current density. The simulation provides a detailed look into the distribution of electric field and concentration of free and trapped carriers at a particular applied voltage. For organic light emitting diodes, the numerical model helps to analyze the problems of different structures and provides deeper insight into the relevant physical mechanisms involved in device operation. Moreover, it is possible to identify technological problems for certain sets of devices. For instance, we could show that ? in contrast to literature reports - the contact between Alq3 and LiF/Al did not show ohmic behaviour for the series of devices. The role of an additional organic blocking layer between HTL and EML was presented. The explanation for the higher creation efficiency for singlet excitons in the three-layer structure is found in the separation of free holes and electrons accumulating close to the internal interface 1-Naphdata/Alq3. The numerical calculation has demonstrated the importance of controlled doping of the organic materials, which is a way to obtain efficient light emitting diodes with low operating voltage. The experimental results has been reproduced by numerical simulation for a series of OLEDs with different thicknesses of the hole transport layer and emitting layer and for doped emitting layers. The advantages and drawbacks of solar cells based on flat heterojunctions and bulk heterojunctions are analyzed. From the simulations, it can be understood why bulk-heterojunctions typically yield higher photocurrents while flat heterojunctions typically feature higher fill factors. In p-i-n ?structures, p and n are doped wide gap materials and i is a photoactive donor-acceptor blend layer using, e.g,. zinc phthalocyanine as a donor and C60 as an acceptor component. It is found that by introducing trap states, the simulation is able to reproduce the linear dependence of short circuit currents on the light intensity. The apparent light-induced shunt resistance often observed in organic solar cells can also be explained by losses due to trapping and indirect recombination of photogenerated carriers, which we consider a crucial point of our work. However, these two effects, the linear scaling of the photocurrent with light intensity and the apparent photoshunt, could also be reproduced when field-dependent geminate recombination is assumed to play a dominant role. First results that show a temperature independent short circuit photocurrent favour the model based on trap-mediated indirect recombination.

No description available.

<p>SiGe is a significant enabling technology for therealization of integrated circuits used in high performanceoptical networks and radio frequency applications. In order tocontinue to fulfill the demands for these applications, newmaterials and device structures are needed. This thesis focuseson new materials and their integration into heterojunctionbipolar transistor (HBT) structures as well as using devicesimulations to optimize and better understand the deviceoperation. Specifically, a SiGeC HBT platform was designed,fabricated, and electrically characterized. The platformfeatures a non-selectively grown epitaxial SiGeC base,<i>in situ</i>doped polysilicon emitter, nickel silicide,LOCOS isolation, and a minimum emitter width of 0.4 μm.Alternately, a selective epitaxy growth in an oxide window wasused to form the collector and isolation regions. Thetransistors exhibited cutoff frequency (f_T) and maximum frequency of oscillation (f_MAX) of 40-80 GHz and 15-45 GHz, respectively.Lateral design rules allowed the investigation of behavior suchas transient enhanced diffusion, leakage current, and theinfluence of parasitics such as base resistance and C_BC. The formation of nickel silicide on polysiliconSiGe and SiGeC films was also investigated. The formation ofthe low resistivity monosilicide phase was shown to occur athigher temperatures on SiGeC than on SiGe. The stability of themonosilicide was also shown to improve for SiGeC. Nickelsilicide was then integrated into a SiGeC HBT featuring aselectively grown collector. A novel, fully silicided extrinsicbase contact was demonstrated along with the simultaneousformation of NiSi on the<i>in situ</i>doped polysilicon emitter.</p><p>High-resolution x-ray diffraction (HRXRD) was used toinvestigate the growth and stability of SiGeC base layers forHBT integration. HRXRD proved to be an effective, fast,non-destructive tool for monitoring carbon out-diffusion due tothe dopant activation anneal for different temperatures as wellas for inline process monitoring of epitaxial growth of SiGeClayers. The stability of the SiGe layer with 0.2-0.4 at% carbonwhen subjected to dopant activation anneals ranging from1020-1100&#176C was analyzed by reciprocal lattice mapping.It was found that as the substitutional carbon increases theformation of boron clusters due to diffusion is suppressed, buta higher density of carbon clusters is formed.</p><p>Device simulations were performed to optimize the DC and HFperformance of an advanced SiGeC HBT structure with low baseresistance and small dimension emitter widths. The selectivelyimplanted collector (SIC) was studied using a design ofexperiments (DOE) method. For small dimensions the lateralimplantation straggle has a significant influence on the SICprofile (width). A significant influence of the SIC width onthe DC gain was observed. The optimized structure showedbalanced f_T/f_MAXvalues of 200+ GHz. Finally, SOI BJT transistorswith deep trench isolation were fabricated in a 0.25μmBiCMOS process and self-heating effects were characterized andcompared to transistors on bulk silicon featuring deep trenchand shallow trench isolation. Device simulations based on SEMcross-sections and SIMS data were performed and the resultscompared to the fabricated transistors.</p><p><b>Key words:</b>Silicon-Germanium(SiGe), SiGeC,heterojunction bipolar transistor(HBT), nickel silicide,selectively implanted collector(SIC), device simulation, SiGeClayer stability, high resolution x-ray diffraction(HRXRD),silicon-on-insulator(SOI), self-heating.</p>

This thesis deals with the research work carried out on the properties and applications such as GaN nanoparticles, Graphene etc. Chapter 1 of the thesis gives introduction to nanomaterials and various aspects of the thesis. Chapter 2 of the thesis describes the synthesis of GaN nanocrystals and their use as white light sources and as room temperature gas sensors. It also discusses negative differential resistance above room temperature exhibited by GaN. Electroluminescence from GaN-polymer heterojunction forms the last section of this chapter. Chapter 3 demonstrates the role of defect concentration on the photodetecting properties of ZnO nanorods with different defects prepared at different temperatures. Chapter 4 presents remarkable infrared and ultraviolet photodetector properties of reduced graphene oxide and graphene nanoribbons. Chapter 5 presents the infrared detecting properties of graphene-like few-layer MoS2. The summary of the thesis is given at the end of the thesis.

Photocatalytic processes over semiconducting oxide surfaces have attracted worldwide attention aspotentially efficient, environmentally friendly and low cost methods for water/air purification as well as forrenewable hydrogen production. However, some limitations to achieve high photocatalytic efficiencies havebeen found due to the fast recombination of the charge carriers. Development of heterostucture photocatalystsby depositing metals on the surface of semiconductors or by coupling two semiconductors with suitable bandedge position can reduce recombination phenomena by vectorial transfer of charge carriers. To draw newprospects in this domain, three different kinds of heterostructures such as n-type/n-type semiconductor(SnO2/ZnO), metal/n-type semiconductor (RuO2/TiO2 and RuO2/ZnO) and p-type/n-type semiconductor(NiO/TiO2) heterojunction nanomaterials were successfully prepared by solution process. Their composition,texture, structure and morphology were thoroughly characterized by FTIR, X-ray diffraction (XRD), Ramanspectroscopy, transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and N2 sorption measurements. On the other hand, asuitable combination of UV-visible diffuse reflectance spectroscopy (DRS), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy(XPS) and ultraviolet photoemission spectroscopy (UPS) data provided the energy band diagram for eachsystem. The as-prepared heterojunction photocatalysts showed higher photocatalytic efficiency than P25 TiO2for the degradation of organic dyes (i.e. methylene blue and methyl orange) and the production of hydrogen.Particularly, heterostructure RuO2/TiO2 and NiO/TiO2 nanocomposites with optimum loading of RuO2 (5 wt %)and NiO (1 wt %), respectively, yielded the highest photocatalytic activities for the production of hydrogen.These enhanced performances were rationalized in terms of suitable band alignment as evidenced by XPS/UPSmeasurements along with their good textural and structural properties. This concept of semiconductingheterojunction nanocatalysts with high photocatlytic activity should find industrial application in the future toremove undesirable organics from the environment and to produce renewable hydrogen.

This work investigates the fundamental device limits related to operational voltage constraints and linearity in state-of-the-art silicon-germanium (SiGe) heterojunction bipolar transistors (HBTs) in order to support the design of robust next-generation high-frequency transceivers. This objective requires a broad understanding of how much "usable" voltage exists compared to conventionally defined breakdown voltage specifications, so the role of avalanche-induced current-crowding (or "pinch-in") effects on transistor performance and reliability are carefully studied. Also, the effects of intermodulation distortion are examined at the transistor-level for new and better understanding of the limits and trade-offs associated with achieving enhanced dynamic range and linearity performance on existing and future SiGe HBT technology platforms. Based on these investigations, circuits designed for superior dynamic range performance are presented.

Hydrocarbon exploration, global navigation satellite systems, computed tomography, and aircraft avionics are just a few examples of applications that require system operation at an ambient temperature, pressure, or radiation level outside the range covered by military specifications. The electronics employed in these applications are known as "extreme environment electronics." On account of the increased cost resulting from both process modifications and the use of exotic substrate materials, only a handful of semiconductor foundries have specialized in the production of extreme environment electronics. Protection of these electronic systems in an extreme environment may be attained by encapsulating sensitive circuits in a controlled environment, which provides isolation from the hostile ambient, often at a significant cost and performance penalty. In a significant departure from this traditional approach, system designers have begun to use commercial off-the-shelf technology platforms with built in mitigation techniques for extreme environment applications. Such an approach simultaneously leverages the state of the art in technology performance with significant savings in project cost. Silicon-germanium is one such commercial technology platform that demonstrates potential for deployment into extreme environment applications as a result of its excellent performance at cryogenic temperatures, remarkable tolerance to radiation-induced degradation, and monolithic integration with silicon-based manufacturing. In this dissertation the radiation response of silicon-germanium technology is investigated, and novel transistor-level layout-based techniques are implemented to improve the radiation tolerance of HBT digital logic.

?rea de concentra??o: Produtos e coprodutos. / Submitted by Jos? Henrique Henrique (jose.neves@ufvjm.edu.br) on 2017-10-03T14:42:21Z No. of bitstreams: 2 license_rdf: 0 bytes, checksum: d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e (MD5) wayler_silva_santos.pdf: 9149649 bytes, checksum: 7d300a18f29fb2d1bfa9a3ab5c806ad3 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Rodrigo Martins Cruz (rodrigo.cruz@ufvjm.edu.br) on 2017-10-09T14:02:32Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 2 license_rdf: 0 bytes, checksum: d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e (MD5) wayler_silva_santos.pdf: 9149649 bytes, checksum: 7d300a18f29fb2d1bfa9a3ab5c806ad3 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2017-10-09T14:02:32Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 license_rdf: 0 bytes, checksum: d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e (MD5) wayler_silva_santos.pdf: 9149649 bytes, checksum: 7d300a18f29fb2d1bfa9a3ab5c806ad3 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2017 / Universidade Federal dos Vales do Jequitinhonha e Mucuri (UFVJM) / Funda??o de Amparo ? Pesquisa do Estado de Minas Gerais (FAPEMIG) / A convers?o da energia da radia??o solar em H2(g), combust?vel verde, usando-se c?lulas fotoeletroqu?micas (PEC) ? uma estrat?gia atraente para armazenar energia e minimizar o uso extensivo de combust?veis f?sseis. Neste trabalho, foram fabricados fotoeletrodos por deposi??o spray pyrolysis de um comp?sito de BiVO4/Bi4V2O11 puro ou dopado com W, depositado diretamente sobre um substrato condutor FTO (sigla para fluorine-doped tin oxide) ou sobre uma camada de SnO2 previamente depositada sobre o substrato FTO. Inicialmente, os materiais foram testados na clivagem molecular da ?gua. Verificou?se a forma??o de uma camada de invers?o de buracos induzida pela perovskita ferroel?trica Bi4V2O11 na interface com BiVO4 de tipo?n criando uma jun??o p?n virtual. A fotovoltagem de sa?da elevada da jun??o, em rela??o a uma heterojun??o p?n convencional, que pode ser ainda aumentada alterando-se a polariza??o e dopando-se o material ferroel?trico com tungst?nio, acarreta diminui??o da recombina??o dos pares el?tron?buracos fotogerados na superf?cie e aumenta a fotocorrente em at? 180%. O comportamento de semicondutores de tipo?p e n quando iluminados sugere o uso potencial da heterojun??o como fotoanodo e fotocatodo em uma c?lula PEC (ou photoelectrochemical cell) com dois fotoeletrodos. Este conceito foi comprovado pela conex?o do fotoanodo BiVO4/Bi4V2O11 dopado com 1% em massa de tungst?nio com o fotocatodo BiVO4/Bi4V2O11 n?o dopado. O sistema formado pelo acoplamento fotoanodo-fotocatodo produziu uma fotovoltagem de 1,54 V, e 0,36% de efici?ncia STH (solar-to-hydrogen efficiency). Um fotoeletrodo BiVO4/Bi4V2O11 dopado com 2% em massa de W foi otimizado. Evidenciou-se a forma??o da camada de invers?o de buracos na interface semicondutora no filme mais denso. Este ?ltimo foi testado em diferentes solu??es, obtendo-se elevadas densidades de corrente em NaAc 0,5 mol L-1, ? medida que se adicionou glicerina e vinha?a. Obteve?se a menor resist?ncia na transfer?ncia de cargas na interface eletrodo/eletr?lito 1,16 k? sob ilumina??o, utilizando a solu??o NaAc 0,5 mol L-1 contendo 20 %v/v de vinha?a. Nessas condi??es, a efici?ncia da convers?o de energia foi aumentada em aproximadamente 100%, e dependendo do potencial aplicado a efici?ncia aumentou cerca de 30% em solu??o contendo 10 %v/v de glicerina, com rela??o ? solu??o NaAc 0,5 mol L-1 pura, demonstrando que glicerina e vinha?a atuam como agentes de sacrif?cio eficazes no sequestro de buracos eletr?nicos, para evitar a recombina??o dos pares de el?tron?buraco, no processo de foto?oxida??o acionado por buracos. / Tese (Doutorado) ? Programa de P?s-gradua??o em Biocombust?veis, Universidade Federal dos Vales do Jequitinhonha e Mucuri, 2017. / The conversion of solar energy into green fuel H2(g) using photoelectrochemical cells (PEC) is an attractive strategy for storing energy and minimizing the extensive use of fossil fuels. In this work, photoelectrodes were prepared by pyrolysis spray deposition from a pure or W?doped BiVO4/Bi4V2O11 composite deposited directly onto an FTO (fluorine-doped tin oxide) electron-conductive substrate or onto a SnO2 layer previously deposited on an FTO substrate. Initially, these materials were tested for molecular water cleavage. It was observed a hole inversion layer induced by the ferroelectric perovskite Bi4V2O11 at the interface of the n?type BiVO4; a virtual p?n junction with high output photovoltage in relation to a conventional p?n heterojunction was also created. Altering the polarization and doping the ferroelectric material with tungsten may increase the p-n heterojunction. This polarization also reduces the recombination of the photogenerated electron?hole pairs on the surface, to increase the photocurrent to as much as 180%. This characteristic behavior of the p?type and n?type semiconductors when illuminated suggests the use of such a heterojunction as photoanode and photocatode in a PEC cell with two coupled photoelectrodes. This concept was proved to effectively work, by connecting the photovoltaic BiVO4/Bi4V2O11 doped with 1 mass% of W to the non?doped BiVO4/Bi4V2O11 photocathode, which produced a high photovoltage of 1.54 V, and 0.36% STH (solar-to-hydrogen) efficiency. A BiVO4/Bi4V2O11 photoelectrode doped with 2 mass% tungsten was optimized, evidencing the inversion of the hole layer at the semiconductor interface in the resulting denser film. This film tested in different liquid solutions revealed to produce high current densities in 0.5 mol L-1 sodium acetate (NaAc), if glycerol and vinasse were added. The electric resistance in the charge transfer at the electrode/electrolyte interface was relatively low, or 1.16 k? under illumination using 0.5 mol L-1 NaAc solution containing 20 %v/v vinasse. Adding vinasse meant an increase of the energy conversion efficiency corresponding to approximately 100%, and depending on the applied potential efficiency increased by about 30% in solution containing 10% v/v glycerin, relatively to the pure 0.5 mol L-1 NaAc solution. These results evidence that glycerin and vinasse act as effective sacrificing agents, to sequester holes and avoid the recombination of electron?hole pairs in the photo?oxidation driven by holes.