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.

Studying charge transport through single molecules tethered between two metal electrodes is of fundamental importance in molecular electronics. Over the years, a variety of methods have been developed in attempts of performing such measurements. However, the limitation of these techniques is still one of the factors that prohibit one from gaining a thorough understanding of single molecule junctions. Firstly, the time resolution of experiments is typically limited to milli to microseconds, while molecular dynamics simulations are carried out on the time scale of pico to nanoseconds. A huge gap therefore persists between the theory and the experiments. This thesis demonstrates a nanosecond scale measurement of the gold atomic contact breakdown process. A combined setup of DC and AC circuits is employed, where the AC circuit reveals interesting observations in nanosecond scale not previously seen using conventional DC circuits. The breakdown time of gold atomic contacts is determined to be faster than 0.1 ns and subtle atomic events are observed within nanoseconds. Furthermore, a new method based on the scanning tunneling microscope break junction (STM-BJ) technique is developed to rapidly record thousands of I-V curves from repeatedly formed single molecule junctions. 2-dimensional I-V and conductance-voltage (G-V) histograms constructed using the acquired data allow for more meaningful statistical analysis to single molecule I-V characteristics. The bias voltage adds an additional dimension to the conventional single molecule conductance measurement. This method also allows one to perform transition voltage spectra (TVS) for individual junctions and to study the correlation between the conductance and the tunneling barrier height. The variation of measured conductance values is found to be primarily determined by the poorly defined contact geometry between the molecule and metal electrodes, rather than the tunnel barrier height. In addition, the rapid I-V technique is also found useful in studying thermoelectric effect in single molecule junctions. When applying a temperature gradient between the STM tip and substrate in air, the offset current at zero bias in the I-V characteristics is a measure of thermoelectric current. The rapid I-V technique allows for statistical analysis of such offset current at different temperature gradients and thus the Seebeck coefficient of single molecule junctions is measured. Combining with single molecule TVS, the Seebeck coefficient is also found to be a measure of tunnel barrier height.

Built-in-Self-Test (BiST) for transmitters is a desirable choice since it eliminates the reliance on expensive instrumentation to do RF signal analysis. Existing on-chip resources, such as power or envelope detectors, or small additional circuitry can be used for BiST purposes. However, due to limited bandwidth, measurement of complex specifications, such as IQ imbalance, is challenging. In this work, a BiST technique to compute transmitter IQ imbalances using measurements out of a self-mixing envelope detector is proposed. Both the linear and non linear parameters of the RF transmitter path are extracted successfully. We first derive an analytical expression for the output signal. Using this expression, we devise test signals to isolate the effects of gain and phase imbalance, DC offsets, time skews and system nonlinearity from other parameters of the system. Once isolated, these parameters are calculated easily with a few mathematical operations. Simulations and hardware measurements show that the technique can provide accurate characterization of IQ imbalances. One of the glaring advantages of this method is that, the impairments are extracted from analyzing the response at baseband frequency and thereby eliminating the need of high frequency ATE (Automated Test Equipment).

Nanowires (NWs) have attracted many interests due to their advance in synthesis and their unique structural, electrical and optical properties. NWs have been realized as promising candidates for future photonic platforms. In this work, erbium chloride silicate (ECS), CdS and CdSSe NWs growth by vapor-liquid-solid mechanism and their characterization were demonstrated. In the ECS NWs part, systematic experiments were performed to investigate the relation between growth temperature and NWs structure. Scanning electron microscopy, Raman spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction and photoluminescence characterization were used to study the NWs morphology, crystal quality and optical properties. At low growth temperature, there was strong Si Raman signal observed indicating ECS NWs have Si core. At high growth temperature, the excess Si signal was disappeared and the NWs showed better crystal quality and optical properties. The growth temperature is the key parameter that will induce the transition from Si/ECS core-shell NWs structure to solid ECS NWs. With the merits of high Er concentration and long PL lifetime, ECS NWs can serve as optical gain material with emission at 1.5 μm for communications and amplifiers. In the CdS, CdSSe NWs part, the band gap engineering of CdSSe NWs with spatial composition tuning along single NWs were demonstrated. The first step of realizing CdSSe NWs was the controlled growth of CdS NWs. It showed that overall pressure would largely affect the lengths of the CdS NWs. NWs with longer length can be obtained at higher pressure. Then, based on CdS NWs growth and by adding CdSe step by step, composition graded CdSSe alloy NWs were successfully synthesized. The temperature control over the source vapor concentration plays the key role for the growth.

Skin electronics is one of the most promising applications of stretchable electronics. The versatility of skin electronics can only be guaranteed when it has conformal contact with human skin. While both analytical and numerical solutions for contact between serpentine interconnects and soft substrate remain unreported, the motivation of this thesis is to render a novel method to numerically study the conformability of the serpentine interconnects. This thesis explained thoroughly how to conduct finite element analysis for the conformability of skin electronics, including modeling, meshing method and step setup etc.. User-defined elements were implemented to the finite element commercial package ABAQUS for the analysis of conformability. With thorough investigation into the conformability of Fermat’s spiral, it has been found that the kirigami based pattern exhibits high conformability. Since thickness is a key factor to design skin electronics, the thesis also talked about how the change of thickness of the skin electronics impacts on the conformability.

In this dissertation, I described my research on the growth and characterization of various nanostructures, such as nanowires, nanobelts and nanosheets, of different semiconductors in a Chemical Vapor Deposition (CVD) system.

In the first part of my research, I selected chalcogenides (such as CdS and CdSe) for a comprehensive study in growing two-segment axial nanowires and radial nanobelts/sheets using the ternary CdSxSe1-x alloys. I demonstrated simultaneous red (from CdSe-rich) and green (from CdS-rich) light emission from a single monolithic heterostructure with a maximum wavelength separation of 160 nm. I also demonstrated the first simultaneous two-color lasing from a single nanosheet heterostructure with a wavelength separation of 91 nm under sufficiently strong pumping power.

In the second part, I considered several combinations of source materials with different growth methods in order to extend the spectral coverage of previously demonstrated structures towards shorter wavelengths to achieve full-color emissions. I achieved this with the growth of multisegment heterostructure nanosheets (MSHNs), using ZnS and CdSe chalcogenides, via our novel growth method. By utilizing this method, I demonstrated the first growth of ZnCdSSe MSHNs with an overall lattice mismatch of 6.6%, emitting red, green and blue light simultaneously, in a single furnace run using a simple CVD system. The key to this growth method is the dual ion exchange process which converts nanosheets rich in CdSe to nanosheets rich in ZnS, demonstrated for the first time in this work. Tri-chromatic white light emission with different correlated color temperature values was achieved under different growth conditions. We demonstrated multicolor (191 nm total wavelength separation) laser from a single monolithic semiconductor nanostructure for the first time. Due to the difficulties associated with growing semiconductor materials of differing composition on a given substrate using traditional planar epitaxial technology, our nanostructures and growth method are very promising for various device applications, including but not limited to: illumination, multicolor displays, photodetectors, spectrometers and monolithic multicolor lasers.

Nanowires are one-dimensional (1D) structures with diameter on the nanometer scales with a high length-to-diameter aspect ratio. Nanowires of various materials including semiconductors, dielectrics and metals have been intensively researched in the past two decades for applications to electrical and optical devices. Typically, nanowires are synthesized using the vapor-liquid-solid (VLS) approach, which allows defect-free 1D growth despite the lattice mismatch between nanowires and substrates. Lattice mismatch issue is a serious problem in high-quality thin film growth of many semiconductors and non-semiconductors. Therefore, nanowires provide promising platforms for the applications requiring high crystal quality materials.

With the 1D geometry, nanowires are natural optical waveguides for light guiding and propagation. By introducing feedback mechanisms to nanowire waveguides, such as the cleaved end facets, the nanowires can work as ultra-small size lasers. Since the first demonstration of the room-temperature ultraviolet nanowire lasers in 2001, the nanowire lasers covering from ultraviolet to mid infrared wavelength ranges have been intensively studied. This dissertation focuses on the optical characterization and laser fabrication of two nanowire materials: erbium chloride silicate nanowires and composition-graded CdSSe semiconductor alloy nanowires.

Chapter 1 – 5 of this dissertation presents a comprehensive characterization of a newly developed erbium compound material, erbium chloride silicate (ECS) in a nanowire form. Extensive experiments demonstrated the high crystal quality and excellent optical properties of ECS nanowires. Optical gain higher than 30 dB/cm at 1.53 μm wavelength is demonstrated on single ECS nanowires, which is higher than the gain of any reported erbium materials. An ultra-high Q photonic crystal micro-cavity is designed on a single ECS nanowire towards the ultra-compact lasers at communication wavelengths. Such ECS nanowire lasers show the potential applications of on-chip photonics integration.

Chapter 6 – 7 presents the design and demonstration of dynamical color-controllable lasers on a single CdSSe alloy nanowire. Through the defect-free VLS growth, engineering of the alloy composition in a single nanowire is achieved. The alloy composition of CdSxSe1-x uniformly varies along the nanowire axis from x=1 to x=0, giving the opportunity of multi-color lasing in a monolithic structure. By looping the wide-bandgap end of the alloy nanowire through nanoscale manipulation, the simultaneous two-color lasing at green and red colors are demonstrated. The 107 nm wavelength separation of the two lasing colors is much larger than the gain bandwidth of typical semiconductors. Since the two-color lasing shares the output port, the color of the total lasing output can be controlled dynamically between the two fundamental colors by changing the relative output power of two lasing colors. Such multi-color lasing and continuous color tuning in a wide spectral range would eventually enable color-by-design lasers to be used for lighting, display and many other applications.

Soft magnetic materials have been studied extensively in the recent past due to their applications in micro-transformers, micro-inductors, spin dependent memories etc. The unique features of these materials are the high frequency operability and high magnetic anisotropy. High uniaxial anisotropy is one of the most important properties for these materials. There are many methods to achieve high anisotropy energy (Hk) which include sputtering with presence of magnetic field, exchange bias and oblique angle sputtering.

This research project focuses on analyzing different growth techniques of thin films of Cobalt, Zirconium Tantalum Boron (CZTB) and the quality of the films resulted. The measurements include magnetic moment measurements using a Vibrating Sample Magnetometer, electrical measurements using 4 point resistivity methods and structural characterization using Scanning Electron Microscopy. Subtle changes in the growth mechanism result in different properties of these films and they are most suited for certain applications.

The growth methods presented in this research are oblique angled sputtering with localized magnetic field and oblique sputtering without presence of magnetic field. The uniaxial anisotropy can be controlled by changing the angle during sputtering. The resulting film of CZTB is tested for magnetic anisotropy and soft magnetism at room temperature by using Lakeshore 7500 Vibrating Sample Magnetometer. The results are presented, analyzed and explained using characterization techniques. Future work includes magnetic field presence during deposition, magnetic devices of this film with giga hertz range operating frequencies.

We present fast and robust numerical algorithms for 3-D scattering from perfectly electrical conducting (PEC) and dielectric random rough surfaces in microwave remote sensing. The Coifman wavelets or Coiflets are employed to implement Galerkin’s procedure in the method of moments (MoM). Due to the high-precision one-point quadrature, the Coiflets yield fast evaluations of the most off-diagonal entries, reducing the matrix fill effort from O(N^2) to O(N). The orthogonality and Riesz basis of the Coiflets generate well conditioned impedance matrix, with rapid convergence for the conjugate gradient solver. The resulting impedance matrix is further sparsified by the matrix-formed standard fast wavelet transform (SFWT). By properly selecting multiresolution levels of the total transformation matrix, the solution precision can be enhanced while matrix sparsity and memory consumption have not been noticeably sacrificed. The unified fast scattering algorithm for dielectric random rough surfaces can asymptotically reduce to the PEC case when the loss tangent grows extremely large. Numerical results demonstrate that the reduced PEC model does not suffer from ill-posed problems. Compared with previous publications and laboratory measurements, good agreement is observed.

The microelectronics technology has seen a tremendous growth over the past sixty years. The advancements in microelectronics, which shows the capability of yielding highly reliable and reproducible structures, have made the mass production of integrated electronic components feasible. Miniaturized, low-cost, and accurate sensors became available due to the rise of the microelectronics industry. A variety of sensors are being used extensively in many portable applications. These sensors are promising not only in research area but also in daily routine applications.

However, many sensing systems are relatively bulky, complicated, and expensive and main advantages of new sensors do not play an important role in practical applications. Many challenges arise due to intricacies for sensor packaging, especially operation in a solution environment. Additional problems emerge when interfacing sensors with external off-chip components. A large amount of research in the field of sensors has been focused on how to improve the system integration.

This work presents new methods for the design, fabrication, and integration of sensor systems. This thesis addresses these challenges, for example, interfacing microelectronic system to a liquid environment and developing a new technique for impedimetric measurement. This work also shows a new design for on-chip optical sensor without any other extra components or post-processing.