The diffu~ion and permeation of aviation fuel (Avtur) and water in commercial and 'model' polysulphide sealants have been studied using simple gravimetric techniques. For Avtur, the mass uptake behaviour is explicable in terms of normal, Fickian diffusion, and the diffusion coefficient determined has been found to be independent of the experimental method and concentration of the liquid. Water, however, exhibits anomalous diffusion behaviour. Mass uptake by the polysulphides is high and equilibrium is not reached after several months. There is no correlation between the results of permeation, absorption and desorption experiments except at low water concentration ... ,,~ . These anomalies have been explained in terms of the formation of water droplets within the rubber. This study shows that the amount of water absorbed is dependent upon the amount and nature of the curing agent residues. The results have been analysed in terms of the osmotic and water vapour pressure and two equations have been derived which satisfactorily predict the amount of water absorbed at equilibrium. It has been shown that the effect of the water droplets on permeation is negligible, and hence the diffusion coefficient found is a measure of the true rate of diffusion. In contrast, the effect of the droplets on mass uptake experiments is large and the apparent overall diffusion rate is greatly reduced. The apparent diffusion coefficient found is dependent upon the water concentration and the concentration of the water-soluble impurities. An equation has been derived showing the relationship between these variables. The results of this work show that the elastic strength of the rubber has negligible effect in determining the water uptake at equilibrium and the apparent diffusion coefficient. However, deterioration in adhesive and cohesive strength occurs with water uptake. At high uptake some of this loss is irreversible. The deterioration in properties is mainly due to breakage of weak physical bonds and plasticisation effects. -

Optical and electrical properties of solids have a close relationship with their dimensionalities. In this thesis, optical properties of several direct bandgap materials with different dimensionalities were investigated in detail. In three dimensional bulk zinc oxide (ZnO) single crystal, two electron satellite transition (TES) was examined in terms of a radiative Auger effect. On the basis of experimental spectral data, a model was proposed to interpret temperature dependence of its integrated intensity. Meanwhile, the phonon coupling with various excitonic transitions were discussed as a function of temperature in bulk ZnO single crystals. Being as a new family of two dimensional materials, monolayers of transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDCs) have received an increasing research interest in the past few years because they have been proved to be direct bandgap semiconductors. Light emission properties of tungsten sulfide (WS2) monolayers were characterized by using excitation power dependent photoluminescence (PL) technique. Two kinds of emission mechanisms, namely band-edge free excitonic transition and localized-states ensemble emission, were revealed in WS2 monolayers. Meanwhile, PL and Raman mapping for WS2 monolayers were conducted. It was found the relative intensity of inter-plane vibration mode with respect to in-plane mode is critical for monolayer identification with Raman spectroscopic technique and PL mapping can yield more information on the uniformity and quality of the samples. In the third part of this degree research, various low dimensional nanostructures of WS2, ZnO and GaN were studied. WS2 nanotubes were found to show interesting Raman light scattering features, while ZnO nanorods prepared by vapor phase transport method were revealed to have distinctive light emission properties. Finally, by focused ion beam milling, GaN and ZnO nano-array were fabricated. Surface vibration mode was firmly demonstrated to exist in these nanostructures with optical studies and theoretical analysis. / published_or_final_version / Physics / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

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