Barrett, The Honors College Thesis/Creative Project Collection
Barrett, The Honors College at Arizona State University proudly showcases the work of undergraduate honors students by sharing this collection exclusively with the ASU community.
Barrett accepts high performing, academically engaged undergraduate students and works with them in collaboration with all of the other academic units at Arizona State University. All Barrett students complete a thesis or creative project which is an opportunity to explore an intellectual interest and produce an original piece of scholarly research. The thesis or creative project is supervised and defended in front of a faculty committee. Students are able to engage with professors who are nationally recognized in their fields and committed to working with honors students. Completing a Barrett thesis or creative project is an opportunity for undergraduate honors students to contribute to the ASU academic community in a meaningful way.
Filtering by
- All Subjects: Electrical Engineering
atural gas) are our main sources of electricity. However, their cost is increasing, they are nonrenewable, and they are very harmful to the environment. Thus, capacity expansion in the renewable energy sector must be realized to offset higher energy demand and reduce dependence on fossil fuels. Solar energy represents a practical solution, as installed global solar capacity has been increasing exponentially over the past 2 decades. However, even with government incentives, solar energy price ($/kWh) continues to be highly dependent on political climate and raw material (silicon and silver) cost. To realistically and cost effectively meet the projected expansions within the solar industry, silver must be replaced with less costly and more abundant metals (such as copper) in the front-grid metallization process of photovoltaic cells. Copper, while offering both higher achievable efficiencies and a raw material cost nearly 100 times cheaper than silver, has inherent disadvantages. Specifically, copper diffuses rapidly into the silicon substrate, requires more complex and error-prone processing steps, and tends to have less adhesive strength, reducing panel robustness. In this study, nickel deposition via sputtering was analyzed, as well as overall potential of nickel as a seed layer for copper plating, which also provides a barrier layer to copper diffusion in silicon. Thermally-formed nickel silicide also reduces contact resistivity, increasing cell efficiency. It was found that at 400 \u00B0C, ideal nickel silicide formation occurred. By computer modeling, contact resistivity was found to have a significant impact on cell efficiency (up to 1.8%). Finally, sputtering proved useful to analyze nickel silicide formation, but costs and time requirements prevent it from being a practical industrial-scale metallization method.
As the demand for higher computing speeds increases as modern technology develops, so must the complexity of the processors and connections within these devices. Unfortunately, modern wired connections will not be able to sustain the demands several years into the future due to the physical limitations of the connection mediums as well as the limit of space inside a processor or computer chip. Wireless connections serve as a viable alternative to wired connections due to their ability to handle parallel communications far better than wired communications and their ability to handle much higher data rates, as well as their tendency to take up little space. However, electromagnetic wave propagation inside of a closed conductive environment is difficult due to the effects of scattering and multipath, as these waves reflect off of the conductive surfaces and lead to a very cluttered signal at the receiver due to destructive interference. This project aims to solve this issue by introducing a reconfigurable metasurface in the form of a 4x4 patch antenna reflectarray. This device utilizes the resistance and capacitance of PIN Diodes to alter the resonant frequency of each of the patch antennas on the device to alter the propagation behavior of incident electromagnetic waves, allowing for a less scattered signal to reach the receiver. After designing and testing the efficiency of this device, an optimization process will be created to find the optimal PIN Diode configuration (On and Off) so that the best Channel Impulse Response (CIR) can be found, which represents the highest communication efficiency. Once this process is completed, the device can operate at the optimal configuration to perform a specific function at a specific location.