The group III nitride semiconductor grown on c-plane sapphire by radio frequency plasma assisted molecular beam epitaxy has been studied. To archive good quality GaN film, nitridation and low temperature buffer layer were applied to overcome the issue of lattice mismatch. Low temperature and long period nitridation process shows better improved of optical properties and crystal quality of GaN film. Buffer layer grown with slightly Ga-rich, substrate temperature at 522¢J, for 2 minutes leads to better GaN film. High substrate temperature and sufficient nitrogen to gallium ratio are two important factors to control the growth of the good quality GaN epilayer. Chemical etching and observation of surface reconstructions were used to characterize the polarity of group III nitrides. The Ga-polarity GaN film shows 2x surface reconstruction with high chemical resistance while the N-polarity is sensitive to chemical and displays the 3x reconstruction pattern. The process of indium incorporated with GaN is very sensitive to growth temperature. The indium content decreased with increasing the substrate temperature and also decreased along the growth direction. The N-polar GaN with an indium-facilitated growth technique was also studied. Upon the incorporation of indium during growth, the photoluminescence intensity and electron mobility of GaN has been enhanced by a factor of 15 and 6 respectively. The electron concentration drastically increases by several orders of magnitude. The biaxial strain of GaN film estimated with Micro-Raman technique reduces from 0.6729 to 0.5044GPa. The full-widths at half maximum of asymmetric (10-12) x-ray reflection which related to the density of overall threading dislocations increases from 593 to744 arcsec. In contrast, the symmetric (0002) reflection related only to threading dislocations having a non-zero c-component Burgers vectors reduces from 528 to 276 arcsec. The enhancement of GaN optical property is generally attributed to the reduction of non-zero c-component dislocations. The reduction in density is confirmed by cross-sectional transmission electron microscopy.

Abstract Recently, titanium dioxide¡]TiO2¡^ is one of the most extensively studied transition-metal oxides because of its remarkable photocatalyst efficiency and electronic properties. In this paper, thin films ware obtained by dual ion beam sputtering. By different processes, these samples can be classified into three categories. Firstly, thin films, deposited on 200 mash copper grids for 15 minutes, were investigated that many TiO grains is about 5 nm in size by transmission electron microscopy¡]TEM¡^. Next, TiO2 thin films, sputtered on si wafers and glass for 180 minutes in an O2 environment by using titanium target, were initially identified by X ray diffraction instrument¡]XRD¡^. The result shows that some thin films have good orientations. By TEM, TiO2 grains on bottom of films are about 20 nm. By scanning electron microscopy¡]SEM¡^, TiO2 grains on the surface are about 1~2 £gm in size and are oblong in shape. The last, TiO thin films were directly deposited on si wafer for 180 minutes in no O2 environment by using titanium target and then annealed to transform from TiO to TiO2. By XRD, the thin film, annealed at 600¢J for 1hr, has good orientation. By TEM, TiO2 grains, annealed at 1000¢J for 24hr, grow up to 1-2 £gm in size and are oblong in shap.

Beam problem is very important for engineering theoretically and practically. In this thesis we study such kind of nonlinear 4-th order ordiniary differential equations with nonlinear boundary conditions. The well-posedness of these boundary value problems will be discussed. Moreover, we will design different schemes to solve them, through differential equation, integral equation or minimization. Each type can further be discretized by finite difference, finite element or spectral method, etc. In the end we will compare all methods and find the best one.

In this thesis, we study a series of Si doped InN films. These samples are grown on sapphire (0001) by molecular beam epitaxy (MBE). We have doped Si in InN films successfully. In this experiment, we control Si cell temperature to change carrier concentration of samples during InN film growth. The carrier concentration and mobility are explored by van der Pauw Hall measurement. As carrier concentration increases, mobility decreases. Carrier concentration changes with Si cell temperature from 6.16x1018 cm-3 to 1.19x1020 cm-3. Photoluminescence (PL) emission peak energy shows blue shift when carrier concentration increases, but the intensity decreases and full width at half maximum (FWHM) broadens. The PL peak of InN film with 1.19x1020 cm-3 split into two peaks 0.74 eV and 0.89 eV. In Raman spectra, Raman modes position and FWHM do not change with carrier concentration. In temperature dependence PL, the dependence of PL spectra shows decrease when carrier concentration increases. In power dependence PL, the PL emission peak energy of InN films with 6.16x1018 cm-3 and 8.50x1018 cm-3 show blue shift, while the PL peaks of InN films with 1.43x1019 cm-3 and 2.27x1019 cm-3 show no significant move. The fitting of power density vs. intensity is linear for all samples, but all slope of them are less than 1 expect for InN film with 1.43x1019 cm-3.

For Laplace's eigenvalue problems, this thesis presents new algorithms of the Trefftz method (i.e. the boundary approximation method), which solve the Helmholtz equation and then use a iteration process to yield approximate eigenvalues and eigenfunctions. The new iteration method has superlinear convergence rates and gives a better performance in numerical testing, compared with the other popular methods of rootfinding. Moreover, piecewise particular solutions are used for a basic model of eigenvalue problems on the unit square with the Dirichlet condition. Numerical experiments are also conducted for the eigenvalue problems with singularities. Our new algorithms using piecewise particular solutions are well suited to seek very accurate solutions of eigenvalue problems, in particular those with multiple singularities, interfaces and those on unbounded domains. Using piecewise particular solutions has also the advantage to solve complicated problems because uniform particular solutions may not always exist for the entire solution domain.

The fabrication characteristic of focused ion beam (FIB) for Pyrex glass was investigated. FIB has several advantages such as high sensitivity, high material removal rates, low forward scattering, and direct fabrication in selective area without any etching mask, etc. In this study, FIB etched Pyrex glass was used for fast fabrication of 3-D submicron structures. A high-aspect-ratio (HRA) glass structure of 5 (1.97µm depth/0.39µm width) was fabricated. The experimental results in terms of limiting beam size, ion dose¡]ion/cm2¡^, beam current, etc was discussed. Xenon difluoride (XeF2) was applied to enhance the FIB process. Its influence on glass fabrication is studied and characterized.

Focused Ion Beam (FIB) has several advantages such as high sensitivity, high material removal rates, low forward scattering and directing fabrication. Without any etched mask, processing time can be reduced. Pyrex glass etched by FIB is used for fast fabrication of 3-D submicron structure mold. In this study, glass is used as substrate. The UV-cured resin that spin-coated onto a mold has 3-D structure patterns. 3-D structure patterns are transferred on the plate to investigate the effects of parameters of UV cured, pressure and exposure time on the occurrence of defects. The relationship of these processing parameters for the imprinting process is also realized. Besides, the material property of UV-cured resin is investigated. UV-Cured resin is investigated by thermogravimetric Analysis (TGA) to measure the degradation temperature (Td). The hardness and modulus of UV-Cured resin was measured by nanoindentation to realize deformed ability of material for the imprinting process. Moreover, the contact angle of Pyrex glass is measured to investigate its surface quality for the imprint process.

Minimum requirements for lap splices in reinforced concrete members, stated in building codes of TS-500 and ACI-318, have a certain factor of safety. These standards have been prepared according to research results conducted previously and they are being updated according to results of recent studies. However the reliability of lap splices for minimum requirements needs to be investigated. For this purpose, 6 beam specimens were prepared according to minimum provisions of these standards. The test results were investigated by analytical procedures and also a parametric study was done to compare two standards. For smaller diameter bars both standards give safe results. Results showed that the minimum clear cover given in TS500 is insufficient for lap spliced bars greater than or equal to 26 mm diameter.

In this thesis, a hybrid-stress finite element is developed for nonuniform Timoshenko beams. The element stiffness matrix is obtained by assuming a stress field only. Since element boundaries are simply the element nodes, a displacement assumption is not necessary. Geometric and mass stiffness matrices are obtained via equilibrium and kinematics of deformation equations which are derived in the beam arbitrary cross-section. Utilizing this method eliminates the displacement assumption for the geometric and mass stiffness matrices. The element has six degrees of freedom at each node. Axial, flexural and torsional effects are considered. The torsional and distortional warping effects are omitted. Deformations due to shear is also taken into account. Finally, some sample problems are solved with the element and results are compared with the solutions in the literature and commercial finite element programs (i.e. MSC/NASTRAN&reg / ).

In recent years, artificial neural networks (ANNs) have been employed for estimation and prediction purposes in many areas of civil/structural engineering. In this thesis, multilayered feedforward backpropagation algorithm is used for the approximate analysis and calibration of RC T-beam bridges and modeling of bridge ratings of these bridges. Currently bridges are analyzed using a standard FEM program. However, when a large population of bridges is concerned, such as the one considered in this project (Pennsylvania T-beam bridge population), it is impractical to carry out FEM analysis of all bridges in the population due to the fact that development and analysis of every single bridge requires considerable time as well as effort. Rapid and acceptably approximate analysis of bridges seems to be possible using ANN approach. First part of the study describes the application of neural network (NN) systems in developing the relationships between bridge parameters and bridge responses. The NN models are trained using some training data that are obtainedfrom finite-element analyses and that contain bridge parameters as inputs and critical responses as outputs. In the second part, ANN systems are used for the calibration of the finite element model of a typical RC T-beam bridge -the Manoa Road Bridge from the Pennsylvania&rsquo / s T-beam bridge population - based on field test data. Manual calibration of these models are extremely time consuming and laborious. Therefore, a neural network- based method is developed for easy and practical calibration of these models. The ANN model is trained using some training data that are obtained from finite-element analyses and that contain modal and displacement parameters as inputs and structural parameters as outputs. After the training is completed, fieldmeasured data set is fed into the trained ANN model. Then, FE model is updated with the predicted structural parameters from the ANN model. In the final part, Neural Networks (NNs) are used to model the bridge ratings of RC T-beam bridges based on bridge parameters. Bridge load ratings are calculated more accurately by taking into account the actual geometry and detailing of the T-beam bridges. Then, ANN solution is developed to easily compute bridge load ratings.