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Full-Text Articles in Nanoscience and Nanotechnology

Fracture Mechanics-Based Simulation Of Pv Module Delamination, Dominic I. Jarecki, Johanna B. Palsdottir, Peter Bermel, Marisol Koslowski Aug 2015

Fracture Mechanics-Based Simulation Of Pv Module Delamination, Dominic I. Jarecki, Johanna B. Palsdottir, Peter Bermel, Marisol Koslowski

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Photovoltaic (PV) cells are rapidly growing as a renewable alternative to fossil fuels like coal, oil, and natural gas. However, greater adoption has also reduced government subsidies, placing the onus of making solar panels economically competitive on innovative research. While multiple methods have been considered for reducing costs, with each reduction in cost comes the associated peril of reduction in quality and useful lifetime. Several problems considered solved have now resurfaced as potential failure mechanisms with the introduction of cheaper PV cell technologies. However, to remain economically viable, PV modules will not only have to become cheaper, they will have …


Nanomechanics Simulation Toolkit - Dislocations Make Or Break Materials, Michael N. Sakano, Alejandro Strachan, David Johnson, Mitchell Wood Aug 2015

Nanomechanics Simulation Toolkit - Dislocations Make Or Break Materials, Michael N. Sakano, Alejandro Strachan, David Johnson, Mitchell Wood

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

The goal of computational material science is to improve existing materials and design new ones through mathematical calculations. In particular, molecular dynamic simulations can allow for visualization of dislocations in a material, along with its resulting behavior when under stress. For example, plastic deformation and strain hardening result from the movement, multiplication and interaction of dislocations within the crystal structure. A simulation tool to study these phenomena was developed for the nanoHUB web resource as a part of the Network for Computational Nanotechnology at Purdue University and targets audiences ranging from undergraduate students to researchers. We created a user-friendly environment …


Investigations Of Carbon Nanotube Catalyst Morphology And Behavior With Transmission Electron Microscopy, Sammy M. Saber Apr 2015

Investigations Of Carbon Nanotube Catalyst Morphology And Behavior With Transmission Electron Microscopy, Sammy M. Saber

Open Access Dissertations

Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) are materials with significant potential applications due to their desirable mechanical and electronic properties, which can both vary based on their structure. Electronic applications for CNTs are still few and not widely available, mainly due to the difficulty in the control of fabrication. Carbon nanotubes are grown in batches, but despite many years of research from their first discovery in 1991, there are still many unanswered questions regarding how to control the structure of CNTs. This work attempts to bridge some of the gap between question and answer by focusing on the catalyst particle used in common …


Growth Of Low Disorder Gaas/Algaas Heterostructures By Molecular Beam Epitaxy For The Study Of Correlated Electron Phases In Two Dimensions, John D. Watson Apr 2015

Growth Of Low Disorder Gaas/Algaas Heterostructures By Molecular Beam Epitaxy For The Study Of Correlated Electron Phases In Two Dimensions, John D. Watson

Open Access Dissertations

The unparalleled quality of GaAs/AlGaAs heterostructures grown by molecular beam epitaxy has enabled a wide range of experiments probing interaction effects in two-dimensional electron and hole gases. This dissertation presents work aimed at further understanding the key material-related issues currently limiting the quality of these 2D systems, particularly in relation to the fractional quantum Hall effect in the 2nd Landau level and spin-based implementations of quantum computation.^ The manuscript begins with a theoretical introduction to the quantum Hall effect which outlines the experimental conditions necessary to study the physics of interest and motivates the use of the semiconductor growth …