Engineering Commons^™

Investigation Of Bipolar Electrochemically Exfoliated Graphene For Supercapacitor Applications, Iman Khakpour

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Developing a reliable, simple, cost-efficient and eco-friendly method for scale-up production of high-quality graphene-based materials is essential for the broad applications of graphene. Up to now, various manufacturing methods have been employed for synthesizing high quality graphene, however aggregation and restacking has been a major issue and the majority of commercially available graphene products are actually graphite microplates. In this study, bipolar electrochemistry techniques have been used to exfoliate and deposit graphene nanosheets in a single-step process to enable high performance device application.

In the first part of this study, bipolar electrochemistry concept is utilized to design a single-step and …

Study Of Charge Carrier Transport In Graphene And Graphite As Two Dimensional And Quasi-Two Dimensional Materials And Their Interfaces, Nalat Sornkhampan

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Evidence of superconductivity in phosphorous-doped graphite and graphene has been observed at temperatures in the vicinity of 260 K. This evidence includes transport current, magnetic susceptibility, Hall and Nernst measurements. All of these measurements indicate a transition of a type II superconductor without a phase of type I until below the limits of the measurement capabilities.

Vortex states are inferred from periodically repeated steps in the R vs. T characteristics of Highly Oriented Pyrolytic Graphite and exfoliated doped multilayer graphene. The presence of vortices has been confirmed with thermal gradient driven Nernst measurements. Magnetic susceptibility measurements have shown results qualitatively …

Band Gap Engineering Of 2d Nanomaterials And Graphene Based Heterostructure Devices, Md Monirojjaman Monshi

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Two-Dimensional (2D) materials often exhibit distinguished properties as compared to their 3D counterparts and offer great potential to advance technology. However, even graphene, the first synthesized 2D material, still faces several challenges, despite its high mobility and high thermal conductivity. Similarly, germanene and silicene face challenges due to readily available semiconducting properties to be used in electronics, photonics or photocatalysis applications. Here, we propose two approaches to tune the band gap: One is by forming nanoribbon and edge functionalization and another by doping using inorganic nanoparticle’s interaction with 2D nanomaterials.

Edge functionalization of armchair germanene nanoribbons (AGeNRs) has the potential …

Electronic And Magnetic Properties Of Two-Dimensional Nanomaterials Beyond Graphene And Their Gas Sensing Applications: Silicene, Germanene, And Boron Carbide, Sadegh Mehdi Aghaei

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The popularity of graphene owing to its unique properties has triggered huge interest in other two-dimensional (2D) nanomaterials. Among them, silicene shows considerable promise for electronic devices due to the expected compatibility with silicon electronics. However, the high-end potential application of silicene in electronic devices is limited owing to the lack of an energy band gap. Hence, the principal objective of this research is to tune the electronic and magnetic properties of silicene related nanomaterials through first-principles models.

I first explored the impact of edge functionalization and doping on the stabilities, electronic, and magnetic properties of silicene nanoribbons (SiNRs) and …

Sonochemical Synthesis Of Zinc Oxide Nanostructures For Sensing And Energy Harvesting, Phani Kiran Vabbina

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Semiconductor nanostructures have attracted considerable research interest due to their unique physical and chemical properties at nanoscale which open new frontiers for applications in electronics and sensing. Zinc oxide nanostructures with a wide range of applications, especially in optoelectronic devices and bio sensing, have been the focus of research over the past few decades. However ZnO nanostructures have failed to penetrate the market as they were expected to, a few years ago. The two main reasons widely recognized as bottleneck for ZnO nanostructures are (1) Synthesis technique which is fast, economical, and environmentally benign which would allow the growth on …

Microstructure And Mechanical Properties Of Nanofiller Reinforced Tantalum-Niobium Carbide Formed By Spark Plasma Sintering, Christopher Charles Rudolf

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Ultra high temperature ceramics (UHTC) are candidate materials for high temperature applications such as leading edges for hypersonic flight vehicles, thermal protection systems for spacecraft, and rocket nozzle throat inserts due to their extremely high melting points. Tantalum and Niobium Carbide (TaC and NbC), with melting points of 3950°C and 3600°C, respectively, have high resistivity to chemical attack, making them ideal candidates for the harsh environments UHTCs are to be used in. The major setbacks to the implementation of UHTC materials for these applications are the difficulty in consolidating to full density as well as their low fracture toughness. In …

Advanced Graphene Microelectronic Devices, Chowdhury G. Al-Amin

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The outstanding electrical and material properties of Graphene have made it a promising material for several fields of analog applications, though its zero bandgap precludes its application in digital and logic devices. With its remarkably high electron mobility at room temperature, Graphene also has strong potential for terahertz (THz) plasmonic devices. However there still are challenges to be solved to realize Graphene’s full potential for practical applications.

In this dissertation, we investigate solutions for some of these challenges. First, to reduce the access resistances which significantly reduces the radio frequency (RF) performance of Graphene field effect transistors (GFETs), a novel …

C-Mems Based Micro Enzymatic Biofuel Cells, Yin Song

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Miniaturized, self-sufficient bioelectronics powered by unconventional micropower may lead to a new generation of implantable, wireless, minimally invasive medical devices, such as pacemakers, defibrillators, drug-delivering pumps, sensor transmitters, and neurostimulators. Studies have shown that micro-enzymatic biofuel cells (EBFCs) are among the most intuitive candidates for in vivo micropower.

In the fisrt part of this thesis, the prototype design of an EBFC chip, having 3D intedigitated microelectrode arrays was proposed to obtain an optimum design of 3D microelectrode arrays for carbon microelectromechanical systems (C-MEMS) based EBFCs. A detailed modeling solving partial differential equations (PDEs) by finite element techniques has been developed …

A Comparison Between Graphene And Ws2 As Solid Lubricant Additives To Aluminum For Automobile Applications, Sara Rengifo

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this thesis was to compare graphene nanoplatelets (GNP) and WS₂ as solid lubricant additives to aluminum in order to reduce friction and wear. The central hypothesis of this work relied on lubricating properties of 2D materials, which consist layers that slip under a shear force.

Two aluminum composites were made (Al-2 vol.% GNP and Al-2 vol.% WS₂) by spark plasma sintering. Tribological properties were evaluated by ball-on-disk wear tests at room temperature (RT) and 200^°C.

WS₂ not only presented the lowest COF (0.66) but also improved the wear resistance of aluminum …

Enhanced 3-Dimensional Carbon Nanotube Based Anodes For Li-Ion Battery Applications, Chi Won Kang

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

A prototype 3-dimensional (3D) anode, based on multiwall carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs), for Li-ion batteries (LIBs), with potential use in Electric Vehicles (EVs) was investigated. The unique 3D design of the anode allowed much higher areal mass density of MWCNTs as active materials, resulting in more amount of Li⁺ ion intake, compared to that of a conventional 2D counterpart. Furthermore, 3D amorphous Si/MWCNTs hybrid structure offered enhancement in electrochemical response (specific capacity 549 mAhg^-1). Also, an anode stack was fabricated to further increase the areal or volumetric mass density of MWCNTs. An areal mass density of the anode …