Physics Commons^™

Organic Solar Cells: Electrodes, Performance Enhancement And Degradation Mechanisms, Reginald J. Bauld

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

In this thesis I focus on a number of aspects associated with the fabrication and characterization of organic photovoltaics. Specifically, my work focuses on evaluating solution processed graphene electrodes for use in organic photovoltaics, improving the performance of indium tin oxide transparent contacts by coating them with Au nanoparticles, and understanding the degradation pathways of Poly(3-hexylthiophene-2,5-diyl): Phenyl-C61-butyric acid methyl ester (P3HT:PCBM) organic solar cells. In my work on graphene electrodes for organic solar cells I worked out a relationship between the sheet resistance and the film transmittance that is useful to optimize such electrodes. Investigation of organic solar cell degradation …

Nonlinear Magnetic Dynamics And The Switching Phase Diagrams In Spintronic Devices, Shu Anthoney Yan

Theses and Dissertations

Spin-transfer torque induced magnetic switching, by which the spin-polarized current transfers its magnetic moment to the ferromagnetic layer and changes its magnetization, holds great promise towards faster and smaller magnetic bits in data-storage applications due to the lower power consumption and better scalability.

We propose an analytic approach which can be used to calculate the switching phase diagram of a nanomagnetic system in the presence of both magnetic field and spin-transfer torque in an exact fashion. This method is applied to the study of switching conditions for the uniaxial, single domain magnetic layers in different spin-transfer devices. In a spin …