Diamond is widely known for its extraordinary properties, such as high hardness, thermal conductivity, electron mobility, energy bandgap and durability making it a very attractive material for many applications. Synthetic diamonds retain most of the attractive properties of natural diamond. Among the types of synthetic diamonds, nanocrystalline diamond (NCD) is being developed for electrical, tribological, optical, and biomedical applications. In this research work, NCD films were grown by the pulsed electron beam ablation (PEBA) method at different process conditions such as accelerating voltage, pulse repetition rate, substrate material and temperature. PEBA is a relatively novel deposition technique, which has been developed to provide researchers with a new means of producing films of equal or better quality than more conventional methods such as Pulsed Laser Deposition, Sputtering, and Cathodic Vacuum Arc. The deposition process parameters have been defined by estimating the temperature and pressure of the plasma particles upon impact with the substrates, and comparing the data with the carbon phase diagram. Film thickness was measured by visible reflectance spectroscopy technique and was in the range of 40 – 230 nm. The nature of chemical bonding, namely, the ratio (sp3/sp3+sp2) and nanocrystallinity percentage were estimated using visible Raman spectroscopy technique. The films prepared from the ablation of a highly ordered pyrolytic graphite (HOPG) target on different substrates consisted mainly of nanocrystalline diamond material in association with a diamond-like carbon phase. The micro-structural properties and surface morphology of the films were studied by atomic force microscopy (AFM) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The mechanical properties of the NCD films were evaluated by nano-indentation.

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Two sets of nanostructured Zinc Oxide (ZnO) thin films doped with varying nominal concentrations of rare earth (RE) ions were prepared by pulsed laser deposition (PLD). One set was doped with europium ions (ZnO:Eu³⁺) while the other was doped with erbium ions (ZnO:Er³⁺). The nominal concentration of RE ions ranged from 0.025 to 5 atomic %. The produced films were structurally, morphologically and optically characterised using different techniques such as X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), photoluminescence (PL), combined excitation and emission spectroscopy (CEES) and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). All films were found to possess a single-crystal hexagonal structure and were strongly oriented along the c-axis. However, the crystallinity of the investigated films seemed to deteriorate as the concentration of the rare earth ions increased. This deterioration is assumed to be due to the local distortion of the ZnO structure (host material) caused by the insertion of the relatively large RE ions, hence inducing structural stresses. Importantly, XRD measurements showed that no other crystalline phases related to europium or erbium, such as Eu₂O₃ or Er₂O₃, were observed. Surprisingly, the ZnO lattice constant (c) tended to become smaller as more RE³⁺ ions were added to the films. An explanation is offered whereby this observation can be taken as further evidence that Zn²⁺ ions were successfully substituted by RE³⁺ ions. Interestingly, doping ZnO films with RE³⁺ ions of a nominal concentration of ≥ 0.5 at.% or higher exhibited a drastic effect on the optical properties of the host matrix (ZnO) in which the near band edge luminescence characteristic of pure ZnO completely disappeared. According to SEM images, morphological changes also occur as dopant concentrations increase. Well-defined grains (crystallites) were clearly seen in films doped with ˂ 0.5 at.% of RE ions. However, these grains became hardly distinguishable at higher RE ion concentrations. Typical intra-4f shell transitions of RE³⁺ ions were observed when these ions were non-resonantly excited with UV radiation, indicating that energy had been efficiently transferred from ZnO to the rare earth ions. A plausible physical mechanism for this energy transfer is proposed. The radiative optical centres of rare earth ions were studied by CEES. In these experiments, both sets of films exhibited multiple optical sites. ZnO:Eu³⁺ thin films were found to have two distinct optical sites with differing site symmetries, whereas up to four optical sites were detected in the ZnO:Er³⁺ films.

High voltage treatment technology has been developed in this thesis and had initially shown promise in its effectiveness in reducing microorganisms found in water supplies. Initial testing found that the high voltage could destroy over 99.9% of the bacteria S. marcescens (a 3-log reduction). Cited literature on the effects of high voltage pulsed electric fields (PEFs) on various microorganisms have shown that high destruction rates of up to 9-log can be achieved. Thus by increasing the electric field strength or exposure time, or by improving the design of the electrode flow chamber, better results should be achieved using high voltage on water. However, contrary to this, upon further design improvements the 99.9% destruction threshold was rarely increased. The initial slow flow device of one litre-per-minute (1 LPM) was scaled up to flows of 10 LPM and 33 LPM. However, these faster flow devices were even less effective in the destruction of bacteria, destroying only 99% of S. marcescens (2-log reduction). No physical or technical design parameters could account for this low performance. One possible reason for these low results was in the preparation of the bacteria themselves. It was discovered that the growth stage of bacteria prepared for experiments had a large effect on the results. Bacteria harvested in the early growth stage could be nearly all destroyed by the high voltage (greater then 4-log reduction), whereas those harvested in the late stationary stage were much more resistant (less than 0.5-log reduction). Bacteria naturally occurring in water supplies will mostly be in a non-metabolising state. This implies that they will be more resistant to high voltage exposure than bacteria grown in a laboratory under standard testing procedures. Thus standard testing procedures for this device do not give accurate results. Further research into the mechanism behind the bacterial resistance is required to improve the performance of high voltage devices. A combination of different technologies may also prove effective in overcoming the resistance mechanism. These improvements are required before high voltage treatment can be properly developed and commercially exploited.

Integrally heated composite tooling (IHCT) is seen as a low cost alternative to autoclave manufacturing of polymer matrix composites (PMCs). IHCTs consist of a composite tool heated by surface heaters; temperature distribution is ensured by a thermally conductive metallic layer. The main original contributions of this thesis was the development of a new method for applying copper coatings onto carbon fibre/epoxy PMCs using pulsed gas dynamic spraying, the production of larger size samples, and the characterisation of the performance of the coatings and laminates obtained. It was shown that this method has potential for producing the thermally conductive layer in an IHCT. Another contribution was the characterisation of parameters affecting temperature distribution across IHCTs through heat transfer simulations, leading to guidelines for IHCT design.

Vertically aligned nanocomposite (VAN) oxide thin films are unique nanostructures with two-phase self-assembled, heteroepitaxially grown on single-crystal substrates. Both phases tend to grow vertically and simultaneously on a given substrate with lattice matching in the system. The nanostructured thin film system could form different in-plane morphologies including nano-checkerboard, nanopillar in matrix and nanomaze structures. The VAN thin films with tunable vertical lattice strain and novel microstructures provide fascinating approaches to achieve enhanced functionalities. In this dissertation, the microstructure and vertical strain effect on low-field magnetoresistance (LFMR) have been investigated in heteroepitaxial La0.7Sr0.3MnO3 (LSMO):CeO2 and LSMO:ZnO VAN thin films with a vertical strain of 0.13 % and 0.5 %, respectively. We demonstrate that LFMR can be tuned by column width and vertical strain in these VAN systems, i.e., smaller column width and larger vertical strain could result in a larger LFMR in the vertical nanocomposite heteroepitaxial thin films. The physical mechanism of enhanced LFMR in LSMO-based VAN has been explored. Single-phase LSMO and LSMO-based VANs have been grown on different substrates with different secondary phase compositions. Substrate effect in single-phase LSMO films shows that LFMR tends to increase with grain misorientation factor because the cross-section of electron conduction paths reduces as grain misorientation factor increases. (LSMO)1-x:(ZnO)x VAN heteroepitaxial films without large angle grain boundary (GB) have been used to study the pure phase boundary (PB) effect on the LFMR. It shows that increased PBs tends to reduce the cross-section of the conducting path and thus favor the spin-dependent tunneling in nanomaze structures with ferromagnetic/insulating/ferromagnetic vertical sandwiches. Tilted aligned LSMO nanostructured films with artificial GBs have been designed to investigate pure GBs influence on LFMR. The results indicate that decoupling of neighboring ferromagnetic (FM) domains by artificial GBs is necessary to achieve enhanced LFMR properties; and the strength of the GBs can be controlled by post-annealing to tune the LFMR effect. The VAN heteroepitaxial films display excellent microstructure compatibility and strain tuning. Perovskite oxides can be combined with many other oxide materials to form VAN architectures. The microstructure and lattice strain in the unique heteroepitaxial VANs can be used to engineer and tune the existing/new functionalities.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Missouri University of Science and Technology, 2008. / Vita. The entire thesis text is included in file. Title from title screen of thesis/dissertation PDF file (viewed April 21, 2008) Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Wollongong, 2005. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Oregon State University, 2008. / Printout. Includes bibliographical references. Also available on the World Wide Web.

Thesis (M.S.)--Auburn University, 2008. / Abstract. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 55-57).