The objective of this research program is to further evaluate the performance and constructability of reinforced concrete (RC) column-steel beam-slab systems (RCS) for use in low- to mid-rise space frame buildings located in regions of high wind loads and/or moderate seismicity. To better understand these systems, two full scale RCS cruciform specimens were tested under bidirectional quasi-static reversed cyclic loading. The experimental portion of this research program included the construction and testing of two full-scale cruciform specimens with identical overall dimensions but with different joint detailing. The two joint details evaluated were joint cover plates and face bearing plates with localized transverse ties. The construction process was recorded in detail and related to actual field construction practices. The specimens were tested experimentally in quasi-static reversed cyclic loading in both orthogonal loading directions while a constant axial force was applied to the column, to simulate the wind loads in a subassembly of a prototype building. To compliment the experimental work, nonlinear analyses were performed to evaluate the specimen strength and hysteretic degradation parameters for RCS systems. In addition, current recommendations in the literature on the design of RCS joints were used to estimate specimen joint strength and were compared with the experimental findings.

Anodisation has been studied for almost eighty years, primary in the field of corrosion science, as a simple and efficient way of producing thick protective oxide coatings on Al, Ti or Zr alloys. Anodisation is an electrochemical oxidation process which relies on the migration of ions across solid films under the action of a large electric field. From the fundamental point of view, many aspects regarding the growth of anodic films have been studied extensively. However, so far, little interest has been devoted to the mechanical aspects involved in the growth process, despite their considerable importance both from an applied as well as from a fundamental point of view. A solid understanding of internal stresses development is indeed crucial in order to guarantee the durability of anodic coatings, their structural and functional properties. In addition, the stress evolution directly reflects the motion of the ions in the film and therefore provides a unique means to investigate in situ the growth mechanisms of anodic films. In this thesis, we have studied the evolution of the internal stresses in anodic TiO2 films in situ during their growth. The stresses have been obtained from changes in the curvature of cantilevered anode samples, measured using a high-resolution multi-beam optical sensor. We demonstrate, for the first time, the capability of this type of curvature sensor for monitoring processes in liquid environments. Experimental data on the internal stresses developing in anodic TiO2 films is provided, and trends regarding the influence of the experimental conditions on the stress evolution are identified. In particular, the evolution of the internal stresses is shown to be strongly correlated with the evolution of the electrochemical variables, which directly demonstrates the interest of curvature measurements as a fundamental technique for investigating the details of the growth process of anodic oxide films. The reversible and irreversible stress contributions associated, respectively, with electrostriction and with growth-related ionic transport have been separated from one another and quantified. A novel constitutive model for the electrostriction stress has been proposed which explicitly takes into account the effect of dielectrostriction.

Contemporary algorithms employed for reconstruction of 3D volumes from helical cone beam projections are so called non-exact algorithms. This means that the reconstructed volumes contain artifacts irrespective of the detector resolution and number of projection angles employed in the process. In this thesis, three iterative schemes for suppression of these so called cone artifacts are investigated. The first scheme, iterative weighted filtered backprojection (IWFBP), is based on iterative application of a non-exact algorithm. For this method, artifact reduction, as well as spatial resolution and noise properties are measured. During the first five iterations, cone artifacts are clearly reduced. As a side effect, spatial resolution and noise are increased. To avoid this side effect and improve the convergence properties, a regularization procedure is proposed and evaluated. In order to reduce the cost of the IWBP scheme, a second scheme is created by combining IWFBP with the so called ordered subsets technique, which we call OSIWFBP. This method divides the projection data set into subsets, and operates sequentially on each of these in a certain order, hence the name “ordered subsets”. We investigate two different ordering schemes and number of subsets, as well as the possibility to accelerate cone artifact suppression. The main conclusion is that the ordered subsets technique indeed reduces the number of iterations needed, but that it suffers from the drawback of noise amplification. The third scheme starts by dividing input data into high- and low-frequency data, followed by non-iterative reconstruction of the high-frequency part and IWFBP reconstruction of the low-frequency part. This could open for acceleration by reduction of data in the iterative part. The results show that a suppression of artifacts similar to that of the IWFBP method can be obtained, even if a significant part of high-frequency data is non-iteratively reconstructed.

Two types of photodetectors containing Ge/Si quantum dots have been fabricated based on materials grown by molecular beam epitaxy and characterized with several experimental techniques. The aim was to study new device architectures with the implementation of Ge nanostructures, in order to obtain high detection efficiency in the near infrared range at room temperature. Heterojunction bipolar phototransistors were fabricated with 10 Ge dot layers in the base-collector (b-c) junction. With the illumination of near infrared radiation at 1.31 to 1.55 µm, the incident light would excite the carriers. The applied field across the b-c junction caused hole transport into the base, leading to a reduced potential barrier between the emitter-base (e-b) junction. Subsequently, this resulted in enhanced injection of electrons across the base into the collector, i.e., forming an amplified photo-induced current. We have therefore obtained significantly enhanced photo-response for the Ge-dot based phototransistors, compared to corresponding quantum dot p-i-n photodiodes. Responsivity values up to 470 mA/W were measured at 1.31 µm using waveguide geometry, and ∼2.5 A/W at 850 nm, while the dark current was as low as 0.01 mA/cm2 at –2 V. Metal-oxide field-effect phototransistors were also studied. These lateral detectors were processed with three terminals for source, drain and gate contacts. The Ge quantum dot layers were sandwiched between pseudomorphically grown SiGe quantum wells. The detector devices were processed using a multi-finger comb structure with an isolated gate contact on top of each finger and patterned metal contacts on the side edges for source and drain. It was found that the photo-responsivity was increased by a factor of more than 20 when a proper gate bias was applied. With VG above threshold, the measured response was 350 and >30 mA/W at 1.31 and 1.55 µm, respectively. Properties of Si/Si1-xGex nanostructures were examined, in order to facilitate proper design of the above mentioned transistor types of photodetectors. The carrier recombination processes were characterized by photoluminescence measurements, and the results revealed a gradual change from spatially indirect to direct transitions in type II Si1-xGex islands with increased measurement temperature. Energy dispersive X-ray spectrometry of buried Ge islands produced at different temperatures indicated a gradual decrease of the Ge concentration with temperature, which was due to the enhanced intermixing of Si and Ge atoms. At a deposition temperature of 730°C the Ge concentration was as low as around 40 %. Finally, the thermal stability of the Si/SiGe(110) material system, which is a promising candidate for future CMOS technology due to its high carrier mobility, was investigated by high resolution X-ray diffraction reciprocal space mapping. Anisotropic strain relaxation was observed with maximum in-plane lattice mismatch in the [001] direction. / On the day of the defence date the status of article IV was Manuscript and the title was "A three-terminal Ge dot/SiGe quantum well MOSFET photodetector for near infrared light detection"; the status of article VI was Submitted and the title was "Band alignment studies in Si/Ge quantum dots based on optical and structural investigations"; the status of article VII was Manuscript and the title was "Thermal stability of SiGe/Si(110) investigated by high-resolution X-ray diffraction reciprocal space mapping".

In this project several tests were performed to evaluate the performance of an On-Board Imager® (OBI) mounted on a clinical linear accelerator. The measurements were divided into three parts; geometric accuracy, image registration and couch shift accuracy, and image quality. A cube phantom containing a radiation opaque marker was used to study the agreement with treatment isocenter for both kV-images and cone-beam CT (CBCT) images. The long term stability was investigated by acquiring frontal and lateral kV images twice a week over a 3 month period. Stability in vertical and longitudinal robotic arm motion as well as the stability of the center-of-rotation was evaluated. Further, the agreement of kV image and CBCT center with MV image center was examined. A marker seed phantom was used to evaluate and compare the three applications in image registration; 2D/2D, 2D/3D and 3D/3D. Image registration using kV-kV image sets were compared with MV MV and MV-kV image sets. Further, the accuracy in 2D/2D matches with images acquired at non-orthogonal gantry angles was evaluated. The image quality in CBCT images was evaluated using a Catphan® phantom. Hounsfield unit (HU) uniformity and linearity was compared with planning CT. HU accuracy is crucial for dose verification using CBCT data. The geometric measurements showed good long term stability and accurate position reproducibility after robotic arm motions. A systematic error of about 1 mm in lateral direction of the kV-image center was detected. A small difference between kV and CBCT center was observed and related to a lateral kV detector offset. The vector disagreement between kV- and MV-image centers was  2 mm at some gantry angles. Image registration with the different match applications worked sufficiently. 2D/3D match was seen to correct more accurately than 2D/2D match for large translational and rotational shifts. CBCT images acquired with full-fan mode showed good HU uniformity but half fan images were less uniform. In the soft tissue region the HU agreement with planning CT was reasonable while a larger disagreement was observed at higher densities. This work shows that the OBI is robust and stable in its performance. With regular QC and calibrations the geometric precision of the OBI can be maintained within 1 mm of treatment isocenter.

In modern wireless communication and radar systems, filters play an important role in getting a high-quality signal while rejecting spurious and neighboring unwanted signals. The filters with reconfigurable features, such as tunable bandwidths or switchable dual bands, also play a key part both in realizing the compact size of the system and in supporting multi-communication services. The Chapters II-IV of this dissertation show the studies of the filters for microwave communication. Bandpass filters realized in ring resonators with stepped impedance stubs are introduced. The effective locations of resonant frequencies and transmission zeros are analyzed, and harmonic suppression by interdigital-coupled feed lines is discussed. To vary mid-upper and mid-lower passband bandwidths separately, the characteristic impedances of the open-circuited stubs are changed. Simultaneous change of each width of the open-circuited stub results in variable passband bandwidths. Asymmetric stepped-impedance resonators are also used to develop independently controllable dual-band (2.4 and 5.2 GHz) bandpass filters. By extending feed lines, a transmission zero is created, which results in the suppression of the second resonance of 2.4-GHz resonators. To determine the precise transmission zeros, an external quality factor at feeders is fixed while extracting coupling coefficients between the resonators. Two kinds of feed lines, such as hook-type and spiral-type, are developed, and PIN diodes are controlled to achieve four states of switchable dual-band filters. Beam-scanning features of the antennas are very important in the radar systems. Phase shifters using piezoelectric transducers and dielectric leaky-wave antennas using metal strips are studied in the Chapters V-VII of this dissertation. Meandered microstrip lines are used to reduce the size of the phase shifters working up to 10 GHz, and reflection-type phase shifters using piezoelectric transducers are developed. A dielectric film with metal strips fed by an image line with a high dielectric constant is developed to obtain wide and symmetrical beam-steering angle. In short, many techniques are presented for realizing reconfigurable filters and large beam-scan features in this dissertation. The result of this work should have many applications in various wireless communication and radar systems.

The strain introduced by lattice mismatch is a built-in characteristic in Si/SiGe heterostructures, which has significant influences on various material properties. Proper design and precise control of strain within Si/SiGe heterostructures, i.e. the so-called “strain engineering”, have become a very important way not only for substantial performance enhancement of conventional microelectronic devices, but also to allow novel device concepts to be integrated with Si chips for new functions, e.g. Si-based optoelectronics. This thesis thus describes studies on two subjects of such strain-engineered Si/SiGe heterostructures grown by molecular beam epitaxy (MBE). The first one focuses on the growth and characterizations of delicately strain-symmetrized Si/SiGe multi-quantum-well/superlattice structures on fully relaxed SiGe virtual substrates for light emission in the THz frequency range. The second one investigates the strain relaxation mechanism of thin SiGe layers during MBE growth and post-growth processes in non-conventional conditions. Two types of THz emitters, based on different quantum cascade (QC) intersubband transition schemes, were studied. The QC emitters using the diagonal transition between two adjacent wells were grown with Si/Si0.7Ge0.3 superlattices up to 100 periods. It was shown that nearly perfect strain symmetry in the superlattice with a high material quality was obtained. The layer parameters were precisely controlled with deviations of ≤ 2 Å in layer thickness and ≤ 1.5 at. % in Ge composition from the designed values. The fabricated emitter devices exhibited a dominating emission peak at ~13 meV (~3 THz), which was consistent with the design. An attempt to produce the first QC THz emitter based on the bound-to-continuum transition was made. The structures with a complicated design of 20 periods of active units were extremely challenging for the growth. Each unit contained 16 Si/Si0.724Ge0.276 superlattice layers, in which the thinnest one was only 8 Å. The growth parameters were carefully studied, and several samples with different boron δ-doping concentrations were grown at optimized conditions. Extensive material characterizations revealed a high crystalline quality of the grown structures with an excellent growth control, while the heavy δ-doping may introduce layer undulations as a result of the non-uniformity in the strain field. Moreover, carrier lifetime dynamics, which is crucial for the THz QC structure design, was also investigated. Strain-symmetrized Si/SiGe multi-quantum-well structures, designed for probing the carrier lifetime of intersubband transitions inside a well between heavy hole 1 (HH1) and light hole 1 (LH1) states with transition energies below the optical phonon energy, were grown on SiGe virtual substrates. The lifetime of the LH1 excited state was determined directly with pump-probe spectroscopy. The measurements indicated an increase of lifetime by a factor of ~2 due to the increasingly unconfined LH1 state, which agreed very well with the theory. It also showed a very long lifetime of several hundred picoseconds for the holes excited out of the well to transit back to the well through a diagonal process. Strained SiGe grown on Si (110) substrates has promising potentials for high-speed microelectronics devices due to the enhanced carrier mobility. Strain relaxation of SiGe/Si(110) subjected to different annealing treatments was studied by X-ray reciprocal space mapping. The in-plane lattice mismatch was found to be asymmetric with the major strain relaxation observed in the lateral [001] direction. It was concluded that this was associated to the formation and propagation of conventional a/2<110> dislocations oriented along [110]. This was different from the relaxation observed during growth, which was mainly along in-plane [110]. A novel MBE growth process to fabricate thin strain-relaxed Si0.6Ge0.4 virtual substrates involving low-temperature (LT) buffer layers was investigated. At a certain LT-buffer growth temperature, a dramatic increase in the strain relaxation accompanied with a decrease of surface roughness was observed in the top SiGe, together with a cross-hatch/cross-hatch-free transition in the surface morphology. It was explained by the association with a certain onset stage of the ordered/disordered transition during the growth of the LT-SiGe buffer. / Kisel(Si)-baserad mikroelektronik har utvecklats under en femtioårsperiod till att bli basen för vår nuvarande informationsteknologi. Förutom att integrera fler och mindre komponenter på varje kisel-chip så utvecklas metoder att modifiera och förbättra materialegenskaperna för att förbättra prestanda ytterligare. Ett sätt att göra detta är att kombinera kisel med germanium (Ge) bl.a. för att skapa kvantstrukturer av nanometer-storlek. Eftersom Ge-atomerna är större än Si-atomerna kan man skapa en töjning i materialet vilket kan förbättra egenskaperna, ex.vis hur snabbt laddningarna (elektronerna) rör sig i materialet. Genom att variera Gekoncentrationen i tunna skikt kan man skapa skikt som är antingen komprimerade eller expanderade och därmed ger möjlighet att göra strukturer för tillverkning av nya typer av komponenter för mikroelektronik eller optoelektronik. I detta avhandlingsarbete har Si/SiGe nanostrukturer tillverkats med molekylstråle-epitaxi-teknik (molecular beam epitaxy, MBE). Med denna teknik byggs materialet upp på ett substrat, atomlager för atomlager, med mycket god kontroll på sammansättningen av varje skikt. Samtidigt kan töjningen av materialet designas så att inga defekter skapas alternativt många defekter genereras på ett kontrollerat sätt. I denna avhandling beskrivs detaljerade studier av hur töjda i/SiGe-strukturer kan tillverkas och ge nya potentiella tillämpningar ex.vis som källa för infraröd strålning. Studierna av de olika töjda skikten har framför allt gjorts med avancerade röntgendiffraktionsmätningar och transmissionselektronmikroskopi.

Plasma physics governs the area of interactions between charged particles. As 99% of the visible universe is in a plasma state, it is an important topic in astronomy and space physics, where we already at an altitude of 60 km reach the plasma environment surrounding our planet in the form of the ionosphere. The search for fusion, the source of power for the sun, as well as industrial use have been the main topics for earth bound plasma reasurch. A plasma is composed of charged particles which interact by the electromagnetic force. In the kinetic description, via the Vlasov-Maxwell equations, the system is described in terms of probability distribution functions for each particle species, expressed in terms of particles position and velocity. The particles interact via self-consistent fields as determined by Maxwell's equations. For understanding the complex behaviour of the system, we need numerical solvers. These come in two flavours, Lagrangian methods, dealing with the moving around of synthetic particles, and Eulerian methods, which solve the set of partial differential, Vlasov and Maxwell equations. To perform the computations within reasonable time, we need to distribute our calculations on multiple machines, i.e. parallel programming, with the best possible matching between our computational needs and the need of splitting algorithms to adapt to our processing environment. Paper I studies electron and ion beams within a Lagrangian and fluid model and compare the results with experimental observations. This is continued with studies of a full kinetic system, using an Eulerian solver, for a closer look at electron-ion interactions in relation to ionospheric observations, (Papers II and IV). To improve the performance of the Eulerian solver it was parallelised (Paper III). The thesis is ending with the possibility to observe ultrahigh energy neutrinos from an orbiting satellite by using the Moon's surface as a detector Paper V.

The purpose of the work presented in this thesis is to implement co-rotational beam elements and branch-switching procedures in order to analyse elastic and elastoplasticinstability problems. For the 2D beam elements, the co-rotational framework is taken from Crisfield [23]. The main objective is to compare three different local elasto-plastic elements. The 3D co-rotational formulation is based on the work of Pacoste and Eriksson [73],with new items concerning the parameterisation of the finite rotations, the definitionof the local frame, the inclusion of warping effects through the introduction of aseventh nodal degree of freedom and the consideration of rigid links. Differenttypes of local formulations are considered, including or not warping effects. It isshown that at least some degree of non-linearity must be introduced in the localstrain definition in order to obtain correct results for certain classes of problems. Within the present approach any cross-section can be modelled, and particularly, the centroid and shear center are not necessarily coincident.Plasticity is introduced via a von Mises material with isotropic hardening. Numericalintegration over the cross-section is performed. At each integration point, theconstitutive equations are solved by including interaction between the normal andshear stresses. Concerning instabilities, a new numerical method for the direct computation of elasticcritical points is proposed. This is based on a minimal augmentation procedure asdeveloped by Eriksson [32–34]. In elasto-plasticity, a literature survey, mainly concernedwith theoretical aspects is first presented. The objective is to get a completecomprehension of the phenomena and to give a basis for the two branch-switchingprocedures presented in this thesis.A large number of examples are used in order to assess the performances of the elements and the path-following procedures. / QC 20100512

The field of Information and Communication Technologies is witnessing a development speed unprecedented in history. Moore’s law proves that the processor speed and memory size are roughly doubling each 18 months, which is expected to continue in the next decade. If photonics is going to play a substantial role in the ICT market, it will have to follow the same dynamics. There are mainly two groups of components that need to be integrated. The active components, including light sources, electro-optic modulators, and detectors, are mostly fabricated in III-V semiconductors. The passive components, such as waveguides, resonators, couplers and splitters, need no power supply and can be realized in silicon-related semiconductors. The prospects of silicon photonics are particularly promising, the fabrication is mostly compatible with standard CMOS technology and the on-chip optical interconnects are expected to increase the speed of microprocessors to the next generation. This thesis starts with designs of various silicon-based devices using finite-difference time-domain simulations. Parallel computation is a powerful tool in the modeling of large-scale photonic circuits. High Q cavities and resonant channel drop filters are designed in photonic crystal platform. Different methods to couple light from a single mode fiber to silicon waveguides are studied by coupled-mode theory and verified using parallel simulations. The performance of waveguide grating coupler for vertical radiation is also studied. The fabrication of silicon-based photonic devices involves material deposition, E-beam or optical lithography for pattern defining, and plasma/wet-chemistry etching for pattern transfer. For nanometer-scaled structures, E-beam lithography is the most critical process. Depending on the structures of the devices, both positive resist (ZEP520A) and negative resist (maN2405) are used. The proximity and stitch issues are addressed by careful dose correction and patches exposure. Some examples are given including photonic crystal surface mode filter, micro-ring resonators and gold grating couplers. In particular, high Q (2.6×105), deep notch (40 dB) and resonance-splitting phenomenon are demonstrated for silicon ring resonators. It is challenging to couple light into photonic integrated circuits directly from a single-mode fiber. The butt-coupled light-injecting method usually causes large insertion loss due to small overlap of the mode profiles and large index mismatch. Practically it is not easy to cleave silicon sample with smooth facet where the waveguide exposes. By adding gold gratings to the waveguides, light can be injected and collected vertically from single-mode fiber. The coupling efficiency is much higher. There is no need to cleave the sample. The access waveguides are much shortened and the stitch problem in E-beam lithography is avoided. In summary, this thesis introduces parallel simulations for the design of modern large-scale photonic devices, addresses various issues with Si-based fabrication, and analyses the data from the characterization. Several novel devices using silicon nanowire waveguides and 2D photonic crystal structures have been demonstrated for the first time. / QC 20100923