Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Understanding The Influence Of Non-Covalent Interactions And Nanoparticle Geometries In Carbon Based Polymer Nanocomposites, Bradley Carroll Miller

Doctoral Dissertations

Low-loading polymer nanocomposites (PNC) are an area of great interest in polymer science. As nanoparticles (NP) are typically expensive in comparison to matrix materials; the low loading regime makes the most efficient use of materials, and represents the optimum for realizing cost effective, high-performance PNCs. However, formulating effective low-loading composites is not without challenges. In addition to the typical requirement of good dispersion for efficient translation of NP properties to the bulk, low-loading composites can sometimes exhibit anomalous (non-classical) dynamics, and unpredictable properties. It is within this context that this thesis aims to examine the effects of NP geometry and …

Correlating Morphology To Performance In Conjugated Polymer Nanocomposite Thin Films, Siddharth Pradhan

Masters Theses

The morphology and performance of thin films that consist of conjugated polymers and nanoparticles are investigated in this thesis. In the first system, the morphology of the nanocomposite that consists of low band gap alternating copolymers with a methano-fullerene are determined by neutron scattering and correlated to their photovoltaic performance as polymer solar cells. These results show that the conjugated alternating copolymers have high miscibility relative to other conjugated polymers. The analysis of the scattering data shows that the morphology of the conjugated polymer-fullerene bulk heterojunction can be described as the formation of aggregates on two length scales. Important parameters …

Investigating The Effects That Dipole Moments, Atomic Partial Charges, Vibrational Coupling, And The Potential Energy Function Have On The Hno Molecule (Nitroxyl), James Roger Smith

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

An Investigation Of Inorganic Compound Scattering., Karl Jay Bernstein

Doctoral Dissertations

Raman and its associated forms of spectroscopy are powerful tools that have been under-utilized. Presented within are three inorganic compounds studied with some form of Raman spectroscopy: normal Raman, hyper-Raman (HR), surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS), surface-enhanced hyper-Raman spectroscopy (SEHRS), or resonance Raman spectroscopy (RR).

The first study involves the investigation of phosphine binding with silver metal. Phosphines find wide use in synthetic circles yet have had little study into their method of binding, unlike similar compounds comprised of sulfur. In order to understand the binding of phosphines, several tertiary phosphines, secondary phosphines and secondary phosphine oxides are examined with SERS. …

Development And Demonstration Of Critical Components Of Aluminum Based Energy Storage Devices Using The Chloroaluminate Ionic Liquids, Mengqi Zhang

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation considers the development of porous carbon materials as the substrates for Al deposition/dissolution in an Al based ionic liquid flow battery (ILFB) and demonstration of an Al based hybrid supercapacitor. The Aluminum chloride/ 1-ethyl-3-methylimidazolium chloride chloroaluminate ionic liquid is utilized as the electrolyte for these Al based energy storage devices. The ILFB has less capital cost than the all-vanadium redox flow battery because of the inexpensive AlCl₃. The feasibility to equip a tank of solid aluminum chloride in an ILFB system aiming to improve energy density is investigated. A critical range of temperature data (50-130 celsius …

Computational Electrodynamics And Second Hyper-Raman Scattering, Philip Dwaine Simmons Jr.

Doctoral Dissertations

Surface-enhanced second hyper-Raman spectroscopy is a type of nonlinear light scattering in which three photons are simultaneously annihilated to produce one photon whose color is slightly shifted from its third harmonic. This process, while incredibly weak, can be magnified by many orders of magnitude with the aid of plasmonic substrates. In this dissertation, three different studies are presented probing both the nature of plasmonics and nonlinear Raman scattering. In the first, nanoparticle aggregates were dosed with two isotopologues of Rhodamine 6G to determine single-molecule activity. Plasmon maps of the aggregates were then generated from electron energy-loss spectroscopy (EELS) and 3D …

Investigating The Effects That Dipole Moments, Atomic Partial Charges, Vibrational Coupling, And The Potential Energy Function Have On The Hno Molecule (Nitroxyl), James Roger Smith

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.