Thesis (Ph. D.)--Florida State University, 2003. / Advisor: Dr. Zachary Fisk, Florida State University, College of Art and Sciences, Dept. of Physics. Title and description from dissertation home page (viewed Mar. 2,2004). Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2002. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 120-132). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2002. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 120-132). Also available on the Internet.

No description available.

High-temperature superconducting materials have found considerable technological application and still have a largely unrealised potential. The key to unlocking this potential depends on a better understanding of their properties; in particular, the maximum 'critical current density' which these materials, in the form of wires, tapes, thin-films and bulk monolithic forms, are able to support for high-current applications. The 'critical current density' in a polycrystalline high-temperature oxide superconductor system is determined by a percolation process of the super current through a three dimensional grain-boundary network. Grain-boundaries in these systems behave as Josephson junction 'weak-links' and they severely limit the critical current density in the presence of even moderate self or applied magnetic fields. In the present work, isothermal quasi-static magnetisation measurements on the polycrystalline YIBa2Cu307-x system are presented and analysed. An effective granular penetration depth in conjunction with a critical state model, which includes an approximate treatment for the percolation process, is used to obtain many of the salient physical parameters of the grain-boundary Josephson junctions and of the three-dimensional grain boundary junction network. Determination of the temperature and magnetic field dependence of several of these parameters, in particular a magnetic field-independent critical current which depends on the micro structure of the grain-boundary junction network, allows for testing and verification of models of the weak-link and network behaviour. This treatment has been carried out specifically on various silver doped polycrystalline Y1Ba2Cu30 7-x specimens in order to determine and quantify the effects of silver doping. An improvement in the critical current density with silver doping is explained in terms of silver scavenging and ridding grain-boundaries of impurities, and a proximity effect where trace amounts of silver residing in the grain-boundaries decreases the normal resistance of the grain-boundary Josephson junction. The insight gained from silver doping experimentation led to a macroscopic investigation into the joining of large single-domain YIBa2Cu307-x specimens for large-scale applications. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2006.

In this thesis defects and impurities in CdTe have been studied with ab initio methods. CdTe is a II-VI semiconductor with many important applications such as γ- and X-ray detectors, solar cells and medical imaging. Even though CdTe has been studied for more than 70 years, some of its properties connected with defects and impurities, are still shrouded in mystery. Todays experimental techniques are highly developed and can provide rather detailed data, but require elaborate theoretical analysis. Here ab initio modelling comes into play and in particular density functional theory (DFT). When reviewing different theoretical studies of defects and impurities in CdTe, one finds a vast number of discrepancies between experiment and theory. Mismatches appear even between different theoretical studies. Although many problems, such as, for example, the semiconductor band gap underestimation or the spurious interaction between charged defects, are avoided by employing corrections or implementing new functionals, some of them still remain. Employing the hybrid functional HSE06, the following topics were studied in this thesis: - Te antisites: Experimental data predict the defect state to appear in the middle of the band gap, thus "pinning" the Fermi level. In contrast, our calculations show that Te antisite alone cannot be the reason for the Fermi level pinning, since it does not form a defect level in the middle of the band gap. Instead we propose that charge compensation between Te antisites in a (+2) state and Cd vacancies in a (-2) state explains the Fermi level pinning. - Cd vacancy: Electron paramagnetic resonance experiments clearly show the existence of a hole polaron for the (-1) charged vacancy. But DFT studies report a completely delocalised hole. In our studies, for the first time, this state was found in its proper geometrical configuration with a hole localisation stabilised by a Jahn-Teller distortion, thereby removing the discrepancy between experiment and theory. - Cd chalcogenides: Additionally, with particular focus on the hole localisation problem, the series of isovalent compounds (CdTe, CdSe and CdS) was studied to understand the mechanism of hole polaron formation. We explain the trend of the hole localisation in terms of Coulomb interaction, explicitly showing that the effect of electron correlation is negligible. - Cl-doped CdTe: The formation of a Cl - Cd vacancy complex explains the selfcompensation and selfpurification mechanism. We find Cl to annihilate the hole polaron. - Te antisite under deformation: In an attempt to tailor the energy position of the Te antisite defect level in the CdTe band gap, we studied CdTe under different deformations. It is shown that by a carefully chosen deformation the defect levels can be pushed closer to the valence and/or conduction band and hence the CdTe detector performance may be improved.

This thesis demonstrates the effective use of low temperature molecular beam epitaxy to encapsulate planar Si:P (phosphorus-in-silicon) devices lithographically patterned by scanning tunnelling microscopy (STM) without significant redistribution of the dopants. To achieve this goal, low temperature magnetotransport is used in combination with STM, Auger electron spectroscopy and secondary ion-mass spectrometry to analyse Si:P ??-doped samples fabricated under different doping and growth conditions. An important aspect of this project is the use of large 1 ?? 1 cm2 Si(001) samples which are about five times larger than standard STM samples. The larger sample size is necessary for post-STM fabrication lithography processes in a cleanroom but presents problems for preparing atomically clean surfaces. The ability to prepare clean and atomically flat Si(001) surfaces for STM lithography on such 1 ?? 1 cm2 samples is demonstrated, and it is shown that Si:P ??-doped layers fabricated on these surfaces exhibit complete electrical activation. Two dopant sources (gaseous PH3 and solid GaP source) were investigated to assess their compatibility with STM-lithography on the H:Si(001) surface. The findings show that while the PH3 and GaP sources result in near identical electrical qualities, only PH3 molecules are compatible with H-resist based lithography for controlled nano-scale doping. For achieving complete activation of the P dopants, it is shown that an anneal to ??? 350 ???C to incorporate P atoms into the Si surface prior to encapsulation is critical. While it is known that the presence of H during growth degrades the quality of Si epitaxy, investigations in this thesis indicate that it has no significant effect on dopant activation. Systematic studies performed to assess the impact of growth temperature recommend an encapsulation temperature of 250 ???C for achieving optimal electrical qualities with minimal dopant segregation. In addition, it is shown that rapid thermal anneals (RTAs) at temperatures &lt 700 ???C provide only marginal improvement in the electrical quality of Si:P ??-doped samples encapsulated at 250 ???C, while RTA temperatures &gt 700 ???C should be avoided due to the high probability of dopant redistribution. To elucidate the nature of 2D transport in Si:P ??-doped devices, a detailed analysis of the low temperature magnetotransport for Si:P ??-doped layers with doping densities in the range ??? 0.2 ??? 2 ?? 1014 cm???2 was carried out. Using conventional 2D theories for disordered systems, both weak localisation (WL) and electron-electron interactions (EEI) are shown to contribute almost equal corrections to the 2D conductivity. In particular, it is found that EEI can introduce a significant correction in the Hall coefficient RH (hence Hall density) especially in the low density/temperature regime and the need to correct for this when using the Hall density to estimate the activated electron density is highlighted. While the electronic mean free path in such highly doped ??-layers is typically &lt 10 nm making ballistic transport in these devices difficult to observe, the phase coherence length can extend to almost 200 nm at about 0.3???0.5 K for doping densities of ??? 1 ??? 2 ?? 1014 cm???2. Finally, the optimised encapsulation strategy developed in this thesis is applied to a 2D square device fabricated by STM. The device exhibits Ohmic conductivity with complete dopant activation. An analysis of its low temperature magnetotransport shows that the device behaves similarly to a Si:P ??-doped layer encapsulated under similar conditions, thus highlighting that the STM patterning process had no adverse effect on device quality.

Thesis (M.S.)--Ohio University, March, 2000. / Title from PDF t.p.

Thesis (M.S.)--Ohio University, August, 1998. / Title from PDF t.p.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Oregon State University, 2009. / Printout. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 142-148). Also available on the World Wide Web.