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Metal hydrides can be used as hydrogen storage materials for fuel cells and batteries, and as sensors for detecting hydrogen gas. The use of metal hydrides for hydrogen storage can be hindered by poor kinetics and low capacity. Moreover, poor sensitivity, long recovery and response time, limit the applications of metal hydrides as hydrogen sensors. Diffusion is an important factor affecting the hydrogen kinetics and response time. Hysteresis effects accompany the phase transition of hydrogen in metals and can influence the properties of metal hydrides as well. These need to be considered in their applications as storage materials or sensors. This thesis concerns the possibility of tuning hydrogen diffusion and studies the mechanism of hysteresis effects of hydrogen absorption in metals. In these experiments, nano-sized vanadium is used as the model system for these studies. Hydrogen concentration is determined by the light transmission. By measuring the concentration profiles and isotherms of hydrogen, it is possible to determine the diffusion coefficients and hysteresis effects. A profound decrease of hydrogen diffusion in Fe/V(001) superlattice has been found, as compared to that in bulk vanadium. This result is interpreted as lower zero-point energy in octahedral site than that in tetrahedral site. Profound isotope effect on diffusion has also been found. Influence of clamping of the substrate on the diffusion of hydrogen with concentration in vanadium thin film is discovered. The diffusion coefficient below c = 0.1 [H/V] is close to that in bulk vanadium and decreases substantially when c > 0.1 [H/V] compared with that in bulk vanadium. This finding is interpreted as the site change from tetrahedral to octahedral occupancy when the hydrogen concentration increases. Large finite size effect on deuterium chemical diffusion is observed, which is concluded to be caused by D-D interaction change that will influence the deuterium chemical diffusion at different thickness of vanadium layers. However, finite size has no effect on hydrogen transport at extremely low hydrogen concentrations in Fe/V (001) superlattices, this illustrates that the interface can not influence the mean free path of hydrogen in any way. This is completely different from electron transport condition in nano-sized metals. Hysteresis effect is observed below critical temperature in Fe/V(001) superlattices; this occurrence confirms the hypothesis that hysteresis effect is caused by coherency strain in coherent  transformation.

Photodynamic therapy (PDT) is a form of local cancer treatment in which cell death is caused by photochemical reactions involving an exogenous photosensitizer. The photosensitizer, which is preferentially retained in malignant tissues, is photoactivated and cell death results from the generation of reactive products -most likely excited molecular (singlet) oxygen. The development of in vivo PDT dosimetry would be greatly aided by the ability to directly measure the local concentration of this product by non-invasive means. In condensed media singlet oxygen will, with some small probability, undergo a radiative transition to the ground state with emission at 1270 nm. This infrared phosphorescence may provide a means for monitoring the production of singlet oxygen in vivo. Unfortunately the background infrared fluorescence observed from tissue may be many times the expected magnitude of the 1270 nm phosphorescence, even within the bandwidth encompassing the peak. The principal aim of this project was the design of a system optimized for the in vivo detection of the singlet oxygen emission. The system makes use of the most sensitive commercially available detector and uses phase sensitive detection to discriminate against infrared fluorescence. The system's performance matched theoretical expectations for the photosensitizer Photofrin II in aqueous and methanol solutions. However, a discrepancy in the observed and theoretical values was noted for aluminum chlorosulphonated phthalocyanine suggesting a deviation from simple first order kinetics. Singlet oxygen phosphorescence was not observed during PDT of cell suspensions or mouse tumours even though considerable cell death and tumour necrosis were observed. The most likely explanation of this failure is that, due to quenching by biomolecules, the lifetime of singlet oxygen in cells or tissue is much lower than in solution so that the probability of emission is reduced accordingly. Quantitative calibration of the system yielded a lower limit of approximately 0.1 us on the singlet oxygen lifetime in tissue. This suggests that singlet oxygen is generated in a protein environment. / Thesis / Master of Science (MS)