Nanoscience and Nanotechnology Commons^™

Electrodeposition Of Giant Magnetostrictive Transducers For A Fabricated Mixed Physics Signal Transmission Device, Mina Faltas

Nanoscience and Microsystems ETDs

Non-intrusive solutions for communication through a sealed metal vessel requires the use of piezoelectric transducers to transmit acoustic waves through the vessel wall. This approach suffers the disadvantage of compromised security because a potential eavesdropper could decipher the correlation between digital and electric signals of both sides of the system. One solution is a mixed physics system employing magnetostrictive transducers.

For a magnetostrictive transducer to work well in this application, it would have to have a high piezomagnetic constant. This is influenced by soft magnetism and saturation magnetostriction. Nickel-Iron-Cobalt alloys are modified to retain their soft magnetic properties while increasing …

An Exploration Of Tissue Specific Impedance Using Microneedle Based Wearable Sensors, Kaitlyn J.H. Read

Nanoscience and Microsystems ETDs

Within this research, I have developed a microneedle-based wearable sensor for plants and fungi, to measure the electrical impedance of different tissues. Electrical impedance measures the physical properties of a material while allowing complex biological systems to be modeled onto a simplified electrical circuit. Microneedles allow for electrical impedance to measure specific tissues without the insulative properties of the cuticle and can be applied to delicate tissues. I have demonstrated the tissue specificity, novel attachment methods, as well as use on both plants and fungi. In chapter 1, I applied microneedle-based impedance to the leaf midrib of a sorghum and …

Antimicrobial Activity And Mechanism Of Amyloid Proteins And Synthetic Conjugated Polyelectrolytes, Fahimeh Maghsoodi

Nanoscience and Microsystems ETDs

Although the exact cause of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is still unknown, it is widely considered that the accumulation of amyloid plaques composed of the amyloid-β (Aβ) peptide in the brain is linked to neurodegeneration. Co-localization of viral DNA with Aβ plaques, the association of brain infection and AD, and research indicating the protective effect of Aβ against bacteria and fungi in mice and human cells have led to the hypothesis that Aβ expression and deposition may be central to its function as an antimicrobial peptide (AMP). In my thesis research, we seek to elucidate how Aβ functions as an AMP …

Reducing Agglomeration Of Lab-Synthesized And Functionalized Barium Titanate Nanoparticle Composites, Jessica N. Domrzalski

Nanoscience and Microsystems ETDs

Barium titanate (BTO) has been extensively studied for its promise in increasing device performance with its high dielectric constant. With the world moving toward miniaturization, research in nanotechnology is paving a road for the future of electronics, energy storage, and batteries. A challenge in understanding BTO’s potential lies in the particles’ tendency to agglomerate. Nanoparticles behave differently than their bulk counterparts, so understanding size effects is a crucial step in understanding BTO. In this work, BTO nanoparticles are synthesized via a hydrolysis reaction, then functionalized via a ligand exchange reaction to reduce agglomeration. BTO is added to epoxy composites at …

Vi Energy-Efficient Memristor-Based Neuromorphic Computing Circuits And Systems For Radiation Detection Applications, Jorge Iván Canales Verdial

Electrical and Computer Engineering ETDs

Radionuclide spectroscopic sensor data is analyzed with minimal power consumption through the use of neuromorphic computing architectures. Memristor crossbars are harnessed as the computational substrate in this non-conventional computing platform and integrated with CMOS-based neurons to mimic the computational dynamics observed in the mammalian brain’s visual cortex. Functional prototypes using spiking sparse locally competitive approximations are presented. The architectures are evaluated for classification accuracy and energy efficiency. The proposed systems achieve a 90% true positive accuracy with a high-resolution detector and 86% with a low-resolution detector.