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Full-Text Articles in Physics
Mesoscale Computational Studies Of Thin-Film Bijels, Joseph M. Carmack
Mesoscale Computational Studies Of Thin-Film Bijels, Joseph M. Carmack
Graduate Theses and Dissertations
Bijels are a relatively new class of soft materials that have many potential applications in the technology areas of energy, medicine, and environmental sustainability. They are formed by the arrest of binary liquid spinodal decomposition by a dispersion of solid colloidal nanoparticles. This dissertation presents an in-depth simulation study of Bijels constrained to thin-film geometries and in the presence of electric fields. We validate the computational model by comparing simulation results with previous computational modeling and experimental research. In the absence of suspended particles, we demonstrate that the model accurately captures the rich kinetics associated with diffusion-based surface-directed spinodal decomposition. …
Nanoscale Manipulation Of Pristine And Functionalized Freestanding Graphene Using Scanning Tunneling Microscopy, Matthew Ackerman
Nanoscale Manipulation Of Pristine And Functionalized Freestanding Graphene Using Scanning Tunneling Microscopy, Matthew Ackerman
Graduate Theses and Dissertations
Over the past ten years the 2D material graphene has attracted an enourmous amount of attention from researchers from across diciplines and all over the world. Many of its outstanding electronic properties are present only when it is not interacting with a substrate but is instead freestanding. In this work I demonstrate that pristine and functionalized freestanding graphene can be imaged using a scanning tunneling microscope (STM) and that imaging a flexible 2D surface is fundamentally different from imaging a bulk material due to the attraction between the STM tip and the sample. This attraction can be used to manipulate …
Plasmonic Nanostructures For The Absorption Enhancement Of Silicon Solar Cells, Nathan Matthias Burford
Plasmonic Nanostructures For The Absorption Enhancement Of Silicon Solar Cells, Nathan Matthias Burford
Graduate Theses and Dissertations
In this work, computational investigation of plasmonic nanostructures was conducted using the commercial finite element electromagnetics solver Ansys® HFSS. Arrays of silver toroid nanoparticles located on the surface of an amorphous silicon thin-film absorbing layer were studied for particle sizes ranging from 20 nm to 200 nm in outer diameter. Parametric optimization by calculating an approximation of the photocurrent enhancement due to the nanoparticles was performed to determine optimal surface coverage of the nanoparticles. A comparison was made between these optimized nanotoroid arrays and optimized nanosphere arrays based on spectral absorption enhancement and potential photocurrent enhancement in an amorphous silicon …