Engineering Commons^™

Light Downshifting Zinc Oxide-Ethylene Vinyl Acetate Nanocomposite Greenhouse Films, David V. Hiscott

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

One method to increase the productivity of greenhouse agriculture is to increase the amount of photosynthetically available light within. This was accomplished through the use of nanocomposite greenhouse film comprised of light downshifting zinc oxide quantum dots and ethylene vinyl acetate copolymer. As this material will be used on a commodity scale, two different approaches – a large batch process and continuous plug flow reactor – were designed for mass production of zinc oxide. A design of experiment was performed to determine which synthesis parameters contribute more strongly to the quantum dot’s growth. This was done for a small-scale batch …

Fabricating Cost-Effective Nanostructures For Biomedical Applications, Erden Ertorer

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

In this thesis we described inexpensive alternatives to fabricate nanostructures on planar substrates and provided example applications to discuss the efficiency of fabricated nanostructures.

The first method we described is forming large area systematically changing multi-shape nanoscale structures on a chip by laser interference lithography. We analyzed the fabricated structures at different substrate positions with respect to exposure time, exposure angle and associated light intensity profile. We presented experimental details related to the fabrication of symmetric and biaxial periodic nanostructures on photoresist, silicon surfaces, and ion-milled glass substrates. Behavior of osteoblasts and osteoclasts on the nanostructures was investigated. These results …

Exploring Bacterial Nanowires: From Properties To Functions And Implications, Kar Man Leung

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The discovery of electrically conductive bacterial nanowires from a broad range of microbes provides completely new insights into microbial physiology. Shewanella oneidensis strain MR-1, a dissimilatory metal-reducing bacterium, produces extracellular bacterial nanowires up to tens of micrometers long, with a lateral dimension of ~10 nm. The Shewanella bacterial nanowires are efficient electrical conductors as revealed by scanning probe techniques such as CP-AFM and STM.

Direct electrical transport measurements along Shewanella nanowires reveal a measured nanowire resistivity on the order of 1 Ω∙cm. With electron transport rates up to 10⁹/s at 100 mV, bacterial nanowires can serve as a …