Rising environmental concerns due to our rising population ad energy demand along with our excessive dependence on fossil fuels has created an urgent need to find clean, renewable and carbon free source of energy. Photoelectrochemical (PEC) water...
The future of renewable energy technologies involves overcoming difficulties
with the creation of new materials. The use of nanotechnology has allowed for
inexpensive materials to achieve very interesting physical and electronic properties....
Hematite synthesized by low pressure oxygen plasma has been shown previously to exhibit promising characteristics as a photo-anode for a photoelectrochemical water splitting cell. It is cheap, stable and has a 2.1 eV bandgap and exhibits a...
Energy independence requires that the nation reduce its dependence on foreign oil imports. This can be achieved through electrification of transportation vehicles if proper battery technology can be developed. In addition, the renewable energy...
Crystalline beta-Ga2O3 nanowires with two distinct morphologies have been synthesized through simple physical evaporation of Te doped GaAs powder in argon atmosphere. The structure of the nanowires was characterized by SEM, TEM, XRD, EDX, and raman...
Iron oxide, Fe2O3, is a promising material for water splitting reaction using solar
energy due to its stability and optimal bandgap of 2 eV. Even the recent efforts, however,
using Fe2O3 thin film materials reported low efficiencies due to poor...
III-nitrides (InN, GaN, AlN) are some of the most promising materials for making blue light emitting diodes (LED), blue laser diodes (LD) and high power, high temperature field effect transistors (FET). Current techniques produce GaN films with...
The research in this dissertation describes a simple electrochemical approach for fabricating nanoscale (metal/metal) or molecular (metal/polymer or self assembled monolayer (SAM)/metal) junctions. The fabrication involves metal deposition on one...
Liquid gallium (Ga) spontaneously alloys with thin films of metals such as Ag, Au, Pt Al, and Cu at near or even below room temperature resulting in rapid self-assembly of nanostructures. In this dissertation, studies of the formation of these...
A novel catalyst with hydro-desulfurization and hydrogenation capabilities was tested with the aim of producing ultra-low sulfur and aromatics diesel oil. The catalytically active phase is nickel in a reduced valence state on a carrier made of zinc...
We have measured the temperature-dependent thermal conductivity, K(T) of single walled carbon nanotubes from 300 K to 8 K by 3w methods. K(T) exhibits linear temperature dependence in the entire temperature range. Our results are in good agreement...
Cerium dioxide or ceria, CeO2, has been widely used in industry as catalyst for automotive exhaust controls, chemical mechanical polishing (CMP) slurries, and high temperature fuel cells because of its unique metal oxide properties. This well-known...
This dissertation describes galvanic exchange of silver (Ag) nanostructures with PdCl42- in 1) various PdCl42- concentrations, 2) the presence of 0.1 M cetyitrimethylammonium bromide (CTAB), and 3) the presence of 0.1 M potassium bromide (KBr). It...
In this thesis self-assembled growth of Ag2Ga nano-needles on batch fabricated
micro-grippers are reported. The room temperature growth of Ag2Ga nano-needles have
been recently developed as stylus for Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM). Integration...
Dielectrophoresis (DEP) is an electrokinetic force capable of attracting or repelling neutrally charged particles due to a non-uniform electric field [1, 2]. Positive dielectrophoresis attracts particles in the region of the highest electric field...
In this dissertation, standardized methods for measuring electron emission (EE) from nanostructured materials are established. Design of an emitter array platform, synthesis and nanomanipulation of different types of are successfully conducted....
In the present study, we report the synthesis of thermally stable mesoporous gallium oxide and novel gallium-niobium mixed oxides employing Evaporation Induced Self-Assembly (EISA), Self-Assembly Hydrothermal-Assisted (SAHA) and Self-Assembly...
Cardiac mapping has become an important area of research for understanding the mechanisms responsible for cardiac arrhythmias and the associated diseases. Current technologies for measuring electrical potentials on the surface of the heart are...
