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Full-Text Articles in Physical Sciences and Mathematics

Ab-Initio And Empirical Simulations Of Aluminum And Copper Metal, William Wolfs Dec 2021

Ab-Initio And Empirical Simulations Of Aluminum And Copper Metal, William Wolfs

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

In this work, I perform detailed calculations on the bulk and electronic properties of aluminum and copper metal. Originally, I was motivated by experimental work on the solidsolid phase changes in pure aluminum. These phase changes were well predicted by density functional theory(DFT) but difficult or impossible to predict using embedded atom method potentials(EAM). EAM potentials are in wide use to describe many properties of bulk materials, and it seemed worrying that something so basic as a phase change could not be predicted. I began running high precision calculations with DFT and compared the results to EAM potentials which had …


Electronic Structure And Stability Of Ligated Superatoms And Bimetallic Clusters, William H. Blades Jan 2016

Electronic Structure And Stability Of Ligated Superatoms And Bimetallic Clusters, William H. Blades

Theses and Dissertations

Quantum confinement in small metal clusters leads to a bunching of states into electronic shells reminiscent of shells in atoms. The addition of ligands can tune the valence electron count and electron distribution in metal clusters. A combined experimental and theoretical study of the reactivity of methanol with AlnIm clusters reveals that ligands can enhance the stability of clusters. In some cases the electronegative ligand may perturb the charge density of the metallic core generating active sites that can lead to the etching of the cluster. Also, an investigation is conducted to understand how the bonding …


The Influence Of Copper Substrate Orientation On Graphene Growth, Zachary Robert Robinson Jan 2012

The Influence Of Copper Substrate Orientation On Graphene Growth, Zachary Robert Robinson

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

This dissertation is focused on determining the influence of the copper substrate on graphene grown by \ac{CVD}. Graphene, which can be grown in single atomic layers on copper substrates, has potential applications in future electronic devices. One of the key issues for the use of graphene grown by chemical vapor deposition for device applications is the influence of defects on the transport properties of the graphene. For instance, growth on metal foil substrates results in multi-domain graphene growth because the foil substrates themselves have a variety of different surface terminations. Therefore, they don't serve as a very good template for …


Compensation And Characterization Of Gallium Arsenide, Randy A. Roush Jan 1995

Compensation And Characterization Of Gallium Arsenide, Randy A. Roush

Electrical & Computer Engineering Theses & Dissertations

The properties of transition metals in gallium arsenide have been previously investigated extensively with respect to activation energies, but little effort has been made to correlate processing parameters with electronic characteristics. Diffusion of copper in gallium arsenide is of technological importance due to the development of GaAs:Cu bistable photoconductive devices. Several techniques are demonstrated in this work to develop and characterize compensated gallium arsenide wafers. The material is created by the thermal diffusion of copper into silicon-doped GaAs. Transition metals generally form deep and shallow acceptors in GaAs, and therefore compensation is possible by material processing such that the shallow …