Phase shifting interferometry is one of the most promising methods for testing aspheres. However, one will encounter the following problems when it is applied to test an asphere: (1) very tight fringes produced by a strong asphere exceed the test system's resolution, (2) a test wavefront suffers from system aberrations of the interferometer that cause measurement errors, and (3) the wavefront immediately after reflection does not necessarily represent the shape of the test asphere. This thesis used a high density array sensor to detect the dense fringes. In order to solve the system aberration and the ray retrace problems, it is necessary to incorporate a ray trace code and phase shifting interferometry. This measurement principle was applied for an aspheric surface whose asphericity was 100 waves. A phase shifting Fizeau interferometer was incorporated with an optical design program. The attained accuracy was approximately one-tenth of a wave.

This thesis presents studies on light management in optoelectronic devices. The broad aim of the thesis is to improve the efficiency of optoelectronic devices by optimised light usage. The studies emphasise the design and fabrication of nanostructures for optimised photon control. A key hypothesis guiding the research is that better designs can be achieved by ab initio identification of their desired Fourier properties. The specific devices studied are organic Distributed Feedback (DFB) lasers, organic solar cells and silicon solar cells. The impact of a substructured grating design capable of affording unprecedented control over the balance between feedback and output coupling in DFB organic lasers was investigated both experimentally and theoretically. It was found experimentally that such gratings can halve the threshold of organic DFB lasers. The reduction in the laser threshold is associated with reduced output coupling and higher feedback provided by the substructured gratings. The possibility of improving the efficiency of organic solar cells by trapping light into the absorbing medium was investigated. It was found that the low refractive index of the organic gain medium compromises the light trapping performance. It was found that strong absorption enhancement, however, can be achieved using plasmonic nanostructures. Finally, a novel design concept for light trapping in silicon solar cells is proposed. This design takes advantage of grating structures with long periods that are capable of providing broad-band light trapping, which is an important requirement for silicon solar cells. The design is based on a supercell that enables better light injection through manipulation of the grating's Fourier properties. The design idea leads to the formation of quasi-random nanostructures that afford great versatility for photon control. Strong light trapping was achieved and characterised both theoretically and experimentally.

Zinc oxide is a semiconducting material that has received lot of attention due to its numerous proeprties such as wide direct band gap, piezoelectricity, and numerous low cost and robust methods of synthesizing nanomaterials. Its piezoelectric properties have been harnessed for use in energy production through nanogenerators, and to tune carrier transport, birthing a field known as piezotronics. However, one weakness of ZnO is that it is notoriously difficult to dope p-type. Antimony was investigated as a p-type dopant for ZnO, and found to have a stability of up to 3 years, which is completely unprecedented in the literature. Furthermore, a variety of zinc oxide structures ranging from ultra-long nanowires to thin films were produced and their piezotronic properties were demonstrated. By making p-n homojunctions using doped and undoped ZnO, enhanced nanogenerators were produced which could see application in gesture recognition. As a proof of concept, a simple photodetector was also derived from a core-shell nanowire structure. Finally, the ability to integrate this material with other semiconductors was demonstrated by growing a heterojunction with silicon nanowires, and investigating its electrical properties. All this work together lays the foundation for a fundamentally new material that could see application in future electronics, optoelectronics, and human-machine interfacing.

published_or_final_version / abstract / Physics / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

Hybrid perovskites are a new class of semiconductor which have proven to be an ideal material for making thin film solar cells. They have the advantages of flexibility, low cost, and easy processing, whilst achieving efficiencies competitive with monocrystalline silicon. Many of the properties which make them ideal for solar cells are also applicable to light emitting devices, and there is now increasing interest in their application for light emitting diodes (LEDs) and lasers. This thesis aims to use a range of novel spectroscopy techniques to investigate the origin of these favourable properties, and to exploit these properties to produce high performance distributed feedback lasers. A detailed understanding of the origins of the excellent properties of hybrid perovskites is of crucial importance in the search for new variations with improved performance or lowered toxicity. This thesis uses Kelvin probe, air photoemission, and resonant ultrasound spectroscopy to probe deeply into the underlying physics of hybrid perovskite single crystals and devices. Using these techniques, we are able to produce detailed maps of the energy levels in a common perovskite solar cell, and we also gain strong insight into the underlying strains and instabilities in the perovskite structure that give rise to their elastic properties. The strong light emission of hybrid perovskites is then exploited to produce high quality distributed feedback lasers emitting in the green and infrared part of the spectrum. These lasers are observed to have superior stability, good thresholds, and many interesting beam parameters owing to their high refractive index. We explore a wide range of processing methods in order to achieve the lowest lasing threshold and the best stability. Finally, we investigate the properties of low dimensional perovskites and investigate their potential in optoelectronic applications.

Two dimensional transition metal dichalcogenides provide a host of unique optoelectronic properties, attributed to their two dimensional nature and unique band structure, making them promising for future optoelectronics device applications. In the work presented in this thesis, we focus on the theoretical understanding and modelling of the optoelectronic properties of monolayer transition metal dichalcogenides, their heterostructures and multilayers. We studied the relaxation rates of photo-excited carriers leading to the formation of electron-hole pairs and their subsequent radiative recombination, resulting in emission of light. We find sub-ps relaxation times, attributed to the strong coupling of carriers with optical phonons, allowing the efficient formation of strongly bound multi-particle complexes such as excitons, trions and biexcitons, which can recombine radiatively if allowed by selection rules. We classify the various complexes according to their optical activity, and predict using diffusion quantum Monte Carlo calculations the resulting photoluminescence spectra in these materials. We proposed a novel, material specific, Auger process in WS2 and WSe2 involving dark excitons, which dominates over radiative processes for relatively low carrier densities, providing an explanation to the observed low quantum efficiencies in these materials. In the same pair of materials, we have shown how the ground state dark trions and biexcitons can become bright and recombine radiatively through an electron-electron intervalley scattering process, resulting in new observable lines in the photoluminescence spectra of these materials. The ability to form van der Waals heterostructures of two or more layers of these materials, allows for new degrees of freedom to be explored and utilised. The heterobilayer system made of MoSe2/WSe2 has a type-II band alignment, allowing for the formation of interlayer bound complexes with carriers localized on opposite layers. We studied the bound complexes formed in this bilayer system, localized on donor impurities. We used quantum Monte Carlo methods to obtain binding energies and wave functions, and calculated the radiative rates and doping dependent photoluminescence spectra of these complexes for closely aligned layers, and asymptotic behaviour for strongly misaligned layers. Finally, we studied few-layers of 2H-stacked transition metal dichalcogenides. The van der Waals quantum well structure results in the splitting of the conduction and valence bands into multiple subbands with energy spacings covering densely the infrared to far-infrared spectral range. We developed a hybrid k.p-tight binding model parameterised by DFT calculations of monolayer and bulk crystals of the studied materials. We used the model to describe the subband dispersions, transition energies, phonon induced broadening and resulting absorption lineshapes for both p-doped and n-doped few-layer films.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Delaware, 2009. / Principal faculty advisor: Kristi L. Kiick, Dept. of Materials Science & Engineering. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (MTech (Electrical Engineering))--Peninsula Technikon, 1998. / Word processed copy. Summary in English. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 97-104). Also available online.

Thesis (DTech (Electrical Engineering))--Peninsula Technikon, 2002. / Word processed copy. Summary in English. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 189-199). Also available online.

We derive an analytical model for the depletion capacitance of silicon-on-insulator (SOI) optical modulation diodes. This model accurately describes the parasitic fringe capacitances due to a lateral pn junction and can be extended to other geometries, such as vertical and interleaved junctions. Analytical results show excellent agreement with numerical simulations. The model is used to identify the waveguide slab to rib height ratio as a key geometric scaling parameter for the modulation e ciency and bandwidth for lateral diodes. We characterise the fringe capacitance as a parasitic e ffect that leads to a decrease of about 20% in modulation bandwidth of typical SOI diodes without a corresponding increase in modulation effi ciency. From the scaling relations, the most e ffective way to increase the modulation bandwidth is to reduce the series resistance of the diode. In the light of our analysis, we propose high-speed and low power microdisk structures for future SOI modulators.