Theses and Dissertations
This collection includes both ASU Theses and Dissertations, submitted by graduate students, and the Barrett, Honors College theses submitted by undergraduate students.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 198
Description
As the 3rd generation solar cell, quantum dot solar cells are expected to outperform the first 2 generations with higher efficiency and lower manufacture cost. Currently the main problems for QD cells are the low conversion efficiency and stability. This work is trying to improve the reliability as well as the device performance by inserting an interlayer between the metal cathode and the active layer. Titanium oxide and a novel nitrogen doped titanium oxide were compared and TiOxNy capped device shown a superior performance and stability to TiOx capped one. A unique light anneal effect on the interfacial layer was discovered first time and proved to be the trigger of the enhancement of both device reliability and efficiency. The efficiency was improved by 300% and the device can retain 73.1% of the efficiency with TiOxNy when normal device completely failed after kept for long time. Photoluminescence indicted an increased charge disassociation rate at TiOxNy interface. External quantum efficiency measurement also inferred a significant performance enhancement in TiOxNy capped device, which resulted in a higher photocurrent. X-ray photoelectron spectrometry was performed to explain the impact of light doping on optical band gap. Atomic force microscopy illustrated the effect of light anneal on quantum dot polymer surface. The particle size is increased and the surface composition is changed after irradiation. The mechanism for performance improvement via a TiOx based interlayer was discussed based on a trap filling model. Then Tunneling AFM was performed to further confirm the reliability of interlayer capped organic photovoltaic devices. As a powerful tool based on SPM technique, tunneling AFM was able to explain the reason for low efficiency in non-capped inverted organic photovoltaic devices. The local injection properties as well as the correspondent topography were compared in organic solar cells with or without TiOx interlayer. The current-voltage characteristics were also tested at a single interested point. A severe short-circuit was discovered in non capped devices and a slight reverse bias leakage current was also revealed in TiOx capped device though tunneling AFM results. The failure reason for low stability in normal devices was also discussed comparing to capped devices.
ContributorsYu, Jialin (Author) / Jabbour, Ghassan E. (Thesis advisor) / Alford, Terry L. (Thesis advisor) / Yu, Hongbin (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
Concrete columns constitute the fundamental supports of buildings, bridges, and various other infrastructures, and their failure could lead to the collapse of the entire structure. As such, great effort goes into improving the fire resistance of such columns. In a time sensitive fire situation, a delay in the failure of critical load bearing structures can lead to an increase in time allowed for the evacuation of occupants, recovery of property, and access to the fire. Much work has been done in improving the structural performance of concrete including reducing column sizes and providing a safer structure. As a result, high-strength (HS) concrete has been developed to fulfill the needs of such improvements. HS concrete varies from normal-strength (NS) concrete in that it has a higher stiffness, lower permeability and larger durability. This, unfortunately, has resulted in poor performance under fire. The lower permeability allows for water vapor to build up causing HS concrete to suffer from explosive spalling under rapid heating. In addition, the coefficient of thermal expansion (CTE) of HS concrete is lower than that of NS concrete. In this study, the effects of introducing a region of crumb rubber concrete into a steel-reinforced concrete column were analyzed. The inclusion of crumb rubber concrete into a column will greatly increase the thermal resistivity of the overall column, leading to a reduction in core temperature as well as the rate at which the column is heated. Different cases were analyzed while varying the positioning of the crumb-rubber region to characterize the effect of position on the improvement of fire resistance. Computer simulated finite element analysis was used to calculate the temperature and strain distribution with time across the column's cross-sectional area with specific interest in the steel - concrete region. Of the several cases which were investigated, it was found that the improvement of time before failure ranged between 32 to 45 minutes.
ContributorsZiadeh, Bassam Mohammed (Author) / Phelan, Patrick (Thesis advisor) / Kaloush, Kamil (Thesis advisor) / Jiang, Hanqing (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
A workload-aware low-power neuromorphic controller for dynamic power and thermal management in VLSI systems is presented. The neuromorphic controller predicts future workload and temperature values based on the past values and CPU performance counters and preemptively regulates supply voltage and frequency. System-level measurements from stateof-the-art commercial microprocessors are used to get workload, temperature and CPU performance counter values. The controller is designed and simulated using circuit-design and synthesis tools. At device-level, on-chip planar inductors suffer from low inductance occupying large chip area. On-chip inductors with integrated magnetic materials are designed, simulated and fabricated to explore performance-efficiency trade offs and explore potential applications such as resonant clocking and on-chip voltage regulation. A system level study is conducted to evaluate the effect of on-chip voltage regulator employing magnetic inductors as the output filter. It is concluded that neuromorphic power controller is beneficial for fine-grained per-core power management in conjunction with on-chip voltage regulators utilizing scaled magnetic inductors.
ContributorsSinha, Saurabh (Author) / Cao, Yu (Thesis advisor) / Bakkaloglu, Bertan (Committee member) / Yu, Hongbin (Committee member) / Christen, Jennifer B. (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
Pb-free solders are used as interconnects in various levels of micro-electronic packaging. Reliability of these interconnects is very critical for the performance of the package. One of the main factors affecting the reliability of solder joints is the presence of porosity which is introduced during processing of the joints. In this thesis, the effect of such porosity on the deformation behavior and eventual failure of the joints is studied using Finite Element (FE) modeling technique. A 3D model obtained by reconstruction of x-ray tomographic image data is used as input for FE analysis to simulate shear deformation and eventual failure of the joint using ductile damage model. The modeling was done in ABAQUS (v 6.10). The FE model predictions are validated with experimental results by comparing the deformation of the pores and the crack path as predicted by the model with the experimentally observed deformation and failure pattern. To understand the influence of size, shape, and distribution of pores on the mechanical behavior of the joint four different solder joints with varying degrees of porosity are modeled using the validated FE model. The validation technique mentioned above enables comparison of the simulated and actual deformation only. A more robust way of validating the FE model would be to compare the strain distribution in the joint as predicted by the model and as observed experimentally. In this study, to enable visualization of the experimental strain for the 3D microstructure obtained from tomography, a three dimensional digital image correlation (3D DIC) code has been implemented in MATLAB (MathWorks Inc). This developed 3D DIC code can be used as another tool to verify the numerical model predictions. The capability of the developed code in measuring local displacement and strain is demonstrated by considering a test case.
ContributorsJakkali, Vaidehi (Author) / Chawla, Nikhilesh K (Thesis advisor) / Jiang, Hanqing (Committee member) / Solanki, Kiran (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
Increasing demand for high strength powder metallurgy (PM) steels has resulted in the development of dual phase PM steels. In this work, the effects of thermal aging on the microstructure and mechanical behavior of dual phase precipitation hardened powder metallurgy (PM) stainless steels of varying ferrite-martensite content were examined. Quantitative analyses of the inherent porosity and phase fractions were conducted on the steels and no significant differences were noted with respect to aging temperature. Tensile strength, yield strength, and elongation to fracture all increased with increasing aging temperature reaching maxima at 538oC in most cases. Increased strength and decreased ductility were observed in steels of higher martensite content. Nanoindentation of the individual microconstituents was employed to obtain a fundamental understanding of the strengthening contributions. Both the ferrite and martensite hardness values increased with aging temperature and exhibited similar maxima to the bulk tensile properties. Due to the complex non-uniform stresses and strains associated with conventional nanoindentation, micropillar compression has become an attractive method to probe local mechanical behavior while limiting strain gradients and contributions from surrounding features. In this study, micropillars of ferrite and martensite were fabricated by focused ion beam (FIB) milling of dual phase precipitation hardened powder metallurgy (PM) stainless steels. Compression testing was conducted using a nanoindenter equipped with a flat punch indenter. The stress-strain curves of the individual microconstituents were calculated from the load-displacement curves less the extraneous displacements of the system. Using a rule of mixtures approach in conjunction with porosity corrections, the mechanical properties of ferrite and martensite were combined for comparison to tensile tests of the bulk material, and reasonable agreement was found for the ultimate tensile strength. Micropillar compression experiments of both as sintered and thermally aged material allowed for investigation of the effect of thermal aging.
ContributorsStewart, Jennifer (Author) / Chawla, Nikhilesh (Thesis advisor) / Jiang, Hanqing (Committee member) / Krause, Stephen (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
CMOS technology is expected to enter the 10nm regime for future integrated circuits (IC). Such aggressive scaling leads to vastly increased variability, posing a grand challenge to robust IC design. Variations in CMOS are often divided into two types: intrinsic variations and process-induced variations. Intrinsic variations are limited by fundamental physics. They are inherent to CMOS structure, considered as one of the ultimate barriers to the continual scaling of CMOS devices. In this work the three primary intrinsic variations sources are studied, including random dopant fluctuation (RDF), line-edge roughness (LER) and oxide thickness fluctuation (OTF). The research is focused on the modeling and simulation of those variations and their scaling trends. Besides the three variations, a time dependent variation source, Random Telegraph Noise (RTN) is also studied. Different from the other three variations, RTN does not contribute much to the total variation amount, but aggregate the worst case of Vth variations in CMOS. In this work a TCAD based simulation study on RTN is presented, and a new SPICE based simulation method for RTN is proposed for time domain circuit analysis. Process-induced variations arise from the imperfection in silicon fabrication, and vary from foundries to foundries. In this work the layout dependent Vth shift due to Rapid-Thermal Annealing (RTA) are investigated. In this work, we develop joint thermal/TCAD simulation and compact modeling tools to analyze performance variability under various layout pattern densities and RTA conditions. Moreover, we propose a suite of compact models that bridge the underlying RTA process with device parameter change for efficient design optimization.
ContributorsYe, Yun, Ph.D (Author) / Cao, Yu (Thesis advisor) / Yu, Hongbin (Committee member) / Song, Hongjiang (Committee member) / Clark, Lawrence (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
Semiconductor nanowires (NWs) are one dimensional materials and have size quantization effect when the diameter is sufficiently small. They can serve as optical wave guides along the length direction and contain optically active gain at the same time. Due to these unique properties, NWs are now very promising and extensively studied for nanoscale optoelectronic applications. A systematic and comprehensive optical and microstructural study of several important infrared semiconductor NWs is presented in this thesis, which includes InAs, PbS, InGaAs, erbium chloride silicate and erbium silicate. Micro-photoluminescence (PL) and transmission electron microscope (TEM) were utilized in conjunction to characterize the optical and microstructure of these wires. The focus of this thesis is on optical study of semiconductor NWs in the mid-infrared wavelengths. First, differently structured InAs NWs grown using various methods were characterized and compared. Three main PL peaks which are below, near and above InAs bandgap, respectively, were observed. The octadecylthiol self-assembled monolayer was employed to passivate the surface of InAs NWs to eliminate or reduce the effects of the surface states. The band-edge emission from wurtzite-structured NWs was completely recovered after passivatoin. The passivated NWs showed very good stability in air and under heat. In the second part, mid-infrared optical study was conducted on PbS wires of subwavelength diameter and lasing was demonstrated under optical pumping. The PbS wires were grown on Si substrate using chemical vapor deposition and have a rock-salt cubic structure. Single-mode lasing at the wavelength of ~3000-4000 nm was obtained from single as-grown PbS wire up to the temperature of 115 K. PL characterization was also utilized to demonstrate the highest crystallinity of the vertical arrays of InP and InGaAs/InP composition-graded heterostructure NWs made by a top-down fabrication method. TEM-related measurements were performed to study the crystal structures and elemental compositions of the Er-compound core-shell NWs. The core-shell NWs consist of an orthorhombic-structured erbium chloride silicate shell and a cubic-structured silicon core. These NWs provide unique Si-compatible materials with emission at 1530 nm for optical communications and solid state lasers.
ContributorsSun, Minghua (Author) / Ning, Cun-Zheng (Thesis advisor) / Yu, Hongbin (Committee member) / Carpenter, Ray W. (Committee member) / Johnson, Shane (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
Advanced composites are being widely used in aerospace applications due to their high stiffness, strength and energy absorption capabilities. However, the assurance of structural reliability is a critical issue because a damage event will compromise the integrity of composite structures and lead to ultimate failure. In this dissertation a novel homogenization based multiscale modeling framework using semi-analytical micromechanics is presented to simulate the response of textile composites. The novelty of this approach lies in the three scale homogenization/localization framework bridging between the constituent (micro), the fiber tow scale (meso), weave scale (macro), and the global response. The multiscale framework, named Multiscale Generalized Method of Cells (MSGMC), continuously bridges between the micro to the global scale as opposed to approaches that are top-down and bottom-up. This framework is fully generalized and capable of modeling several different weave and braids without reformulation. Particular emphasis in this dissertation is placed on modeling the nonlinearity and failure of both polymer matrix and ceramic matrix composites.
ContributorsLiu, Guang (Author) / Chattopadhyay, Aditi (Thesis advisor) / Mignolet, Marc (Committee member) / Jiang, Hanqing (Committee member) / Li, Jian (Committee member) / Rajadas, John (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
This thesis investigated two different thermal flow sensors for intravascular shear stress analysis. They were based on heat transfer principle, which heat convection from the resistively heated element to the flowing fluid was measured as a function of the changes in voltage. For both sensors, the resistively heated elements were made of Ti/Pt strips with the thickness 0.12 µm and 0.02 µm. The resistance of the sensing element was measured at approximately 1.6-1.7 kohms;. A linear relation between the resistance and temperature was established over the temperature ranging from 22 degree Celsius to 80 degree Celsius and the temperature coefficient of resistance (TCR) was at approximately 0.12 %/degree Celsius. The first thermal flow sensor was one-dimensional (1-D) flexible shear stress sensor. The structure was sensing element sandwiched by a biocompatible polymer "poly-para-xylylene", also known as Parylene, which provided both insulation of electrodes and flexibility of the sensors. A constant-temperature (CT) circuit was designed as the read out circuit based on 0.6 µm CMOS (Complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor) process. The 1-D shear stress sensor suffered from a large measurement error. Because when the sensor was inserted into blood vessels, it was impossible to mount the sensor to the wall as calibrated in micro fluidic channels. According to the previous simulation work, the shear stress was varying and the sensor itself changed the shear stress distribution. We proposed a three-dimensional (3-D) thermal flow sensor, with three-axis of sensing elements integrated in one sensor. It was in the similar shape as a hexagonal prism with diagonal of 1000 µm. On the top of the sensor, there were five bond pads for external wires over 500 µm thick silicon substrate. In each nonadjacent side surface, there was a bended parylene branch with one sensing element. Based on the unique 3-D structure, the sensor was able to obtain data along three axes. With computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model, it is possible to locate the sensor in the blood vessels and give us a better understanding of shear stress distribution in the presence of time-varying component of blood flow and realize more accurate assessment of intravascular convective heat transfer.
ContributorsTang, Rui (Author) / Yu, Hongyu (Thesis advisor) / Jiang, Hanqing (Committee member) / Pan, George (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
Semiconductor devices are generally analyzed with relatively simple equations or with detailed computer simulations. Most text-books use these simple equations and show device diagrams that are frequently very simplified and occasionally incorrect. For example, the carrier densities near the pinch-off point in MOSFETs and JFETs and the minority carrier density in the base near the reverse-biased base-collector junction are frequently assumed to be zero or near zero. Also the channel thickness at the pinch-off point is often shown to approach zero. None of these assumptions can be correct. The research in thesis addresses these points. I simulated the carrier densities, potentials, electric fields etc. of MOSFETs, BJTs and JFETs at and near the pinch-off regions to determine exactly what happens there. I also simulated the behavior of the quasi-Fermi levels. For MOSFETs, the channel thickness expands slightly before the pinch-off point and then spreads out quickly in a triangular shape and the space-charge region under the channel actually shrinks as the potential increases from source to drain. For BJTs, with collector-base junction reverse biased, most minority carriers diffuse through the base from emitter to collector very fast, but the minority carrier concentration at the collector-base space-charge region is not zero. For JFETs, the boundaries of the space-charge region are difficult to determine, the channel does not disappear after pinch off, the shape of channel is always tapered, and the carrier concentration in the channel decreases progressively. After simulating traditional sized devices, I also simulated typical nano-scaled devices and show that they behave similarly to large devices. These simulation results provide a more complete understanding of device physics and device operation in those regions usually not addressed in semiconductor device physics books.
ContributorsYang, Xuan (Author) / Schroder, Dieter K. (Thesis advisor) / Vasileska, Dragica (Committee member) / Yu, Hongbin (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011