Matching Items (142)
Description
Radiation heat transfer can surpass blackbody limit when distance between the hot emitter and cold receiver is less than the characteristic wavelength of electromagnetic radiation. The enhanced radiation heat transfer achieved is also called near-field radiation heat transfer. Several theoretical and experimental studies have demonstrated enhancement in near-field radiation heat transfer for isotropic materials such as silicon carbide (SiC), undoped and doped Si. The enhancement achieved however is narrow-banded. Significant improvement in radiation heat transfer is necessary to satisfy some of the energy demands. So, there is a growing interest to use hyperbolic materials because of its enhancement due to propagating modes. The main objective of the current thesis project is to investigate the control of hyperbolic bands using boron nitride nanotubes (nanostructure of hexagonal boron nitride) for near-field radiative heat transfer. Optical properties of boron nitride nanotubes are calculated using Maxwell-Garnet’s effective medium theory and its corresponding hyperbolic bands are identified. It is observed that the boron nitride nanotubes have only one hyperbolic band located at higher frequencies. Preliminary comparisons of the near-field radiative heat flux calculations with literature are performed using a more general 4×4 transfer matrix method. Due to its high computational time, anisotropic thin film optics is used to calculate near-field radiative heat transfer. Factors contributing to enhancement is investigated. In the end, Spectral allocation ratio, the ratio of heat flux contributed from higher frequencies to the heat flux contributed from lower frequencies is calculated to assess the contribution of each hyperbolic band to total heat flux.
ContributorsRajan, Vishwa Krishna (Author) / Wang, Liping (Thesis advisor) / Phelan, Patrick (Committee member) / Wang, Robert (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2022
Description
There is an estimated five trillion pieces of plastic in the global ocean, with 4.8 to 12.7 million metric tons entering the ocean annually. Much of the plastic in the ocean is in the form of microplastics, or plastic particles <5mm in size. Microplastics enter the marine environment as primary or secondary microplastics; primary microplastics are pre-manufactured micro-sized particles, such as microbeads used in cosmetics, while secondary microplastics form from the degradation of larger plastic objects, such water bottles. Once in the ocean, plastics are readily colonized by a consortium of prokaryotic and eukaryotic organisms, which form dense biofilms on the plastic; this biofilm is termed the “plastisphere”. Despite growing concerns about the ecological impact of microplastics and their respective plastispheres on the marine environment, there is little consensus about the factors that shape the plastisphere on environmentally relevant secondary microplastics. The goal of my dissertation is to comprehensively analyze the role of plastic polymer type, incubation time, and geographic location on shaping plastisphere communities attached to secondary microplastics. I investigated the plastisphere of six chemically distinct plastic polymer types obtained from common household consumer products that were incubated in the coastal Caribbean (Bocas del Toro, Panama) and coastal Pacific (San Diego, CA) oceans. Genotyping using 16S and 18S rRNA gene amplification and next-generation Illumina sequencing was employed to identify bacterial and eukaryotic communities on the polymer surfaces. Statistical analyses show that there were no polymer-specific assemblages for prokaryotes or eukaryotes, but rather a microbial core community that was shared among plastic types. I also found that rare hydrocarbon degrading bacteria may be specific to certain chemical properties of the microplastics. Statistical comparisons of the communities across both sites showed that prokaryotic plastispheres were shaped primarily by incubation time and geographic location. Finally, I assessed the impact of biofilms on microplastic degradation and deposition and conclude that biofilms enhance microplastic sinking of negatively buoyant particles and reduce microplastic degradation. The results of my dissertation increases understanding of the factors that shape the plastisphere and how these communities ultimately determine the fate of microplastics in the marine environment.
ContributorsDudek, Kassandra Lynn (Author) / Neuer, Susanne (Thesis advisor) / Polidoro, Beth (Committee member) / Garcia-Pichel, Ferran (Committee member) / Cao, Huansheng (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2021
Description
With the development and successful landing of the NASA Perseverance rover, there has been growing interest in identifying how evidence of ancient life may be preserved and recognized in the geologic record. Environments that enable fossilization of biological remains are termed, “taphonomic windows”, wherein signatures of past life may be detected. In this dissertation, I have sought to identify taphonomic windows in planetary-analog environments with an eye towards the exploration of Mars. In the first chapter, I describe how evidence of past microbial life may be preserved within serpentinizing systems. Owing to energetic rock-water reactions, these systems are known to host lithotrophic and organotrophic microbial communities. By investigating drill cores from the Samail Ophiolite in Oman, I report morphological and associated chemical biosignatures preserved in these systems as a result of subsurface carbonation. As serpentinites are known to occur on Mars and potentially other planetary bodies, these deposits potentially represent high-priority targets in the exploration for past microbial life. Next, I investigated samples from Atacama Desert, Chile, to understand how evidence of life may be preserved in ancient sediments formed originally in evaporative playa lakes. Here, I describe organic geochemical and morphological evidence of life preserved within sulfate-dominated evaporite rocks from the Jurassic-Cretaceous Tonel Formation and Oligocene San Pedro Formation. Because evaporative lakes are considered to have been potentially widespread on Mars, these deposits may represent additional key targets to search for evidence of past life. In the final chapter, I describe the fossilization potential of surficial carbonates by investigating Crystal Geyser, an active cold spring environment. Here, carbonate minerals precipitate rapidly in the presence of photosynthetic microbial mat communities. I describe how potential biosignatures are initially captured by mineralization, including cell-like structures and microdigitate stromatolites. However, these morphological signatures quickly degrade owing to diagenetic dissolution and recrystallization reactions, as well as textural coarsening that homogenizes the carbonate fabric. Overall, my dissertation underscores the complexity of microbial fossilization and highlights chemically-precipitating environments that may serve as high-priority targets for astrobiological exploration.
ContributorsZaloumis, Jonathan (Author) / Farmer, Jack D (Thesis advisor) / Garcia-Pichel, Ferran (Committee member) / Trembath-Reichert, Elizabeth (Committee member) / Ruff, Steven W (Committee member) / Shock, Everett L (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2021
Description
Polarization detection and control techniques play essential roles in various applications, including optical communication, polarization imaging, chemical analysis, target detection, and biomedical diagnosis. Conventional methods for polarization detection and polarization control require bulky optical systems. Flat optics opens a new way for ultra-compact, lower-cost devices and systems for polarization detection and control. However, polarization measurement and manipulating devices with high efficiency and accuracy in the mid-infrared (MIR) range remain elusive. This dissertation presented design concepts and experimental demonstrations of full-Stokes parameters detection and polarization generation devices based on chip-integrated plasmonic metasurfaces with high performance and record efficiency. One of the significant challenges for full-Stokes polarization detection is to achieve high-performance circular polarization (CP) filters. The first design presented in this dissertation is based on the direct integration of plasmonic quarter-wave plate (QWP) onto gold nanowire gratings. It is featured with the subwavelength thickness (~500nm) and extinction ratio around 16. The second design is based on the anisotropic thin-film interference between two vertically integrated anisotropic plasmonic metasurfaces. It provides record high efficiency (around 90%) and extinction ratio (>180). These plasmonic CP filters can be used for circular, elliptical, and linear polarization generation at different wavelengths. The maximum degree of circular polarization (DOCP) measured from the sample achieves 0.99998.
The proposed CP filters were integrated with nanograting-based linear polarization (LP) filters on the same chip for single-shot polarization detection. Full-Stokes measurements were experimentally demonstrated with high accuracy at the single wavelength using the direct subtraction method and over a broad wavelength range from 3.5 to 4.5mm using the Mueller matrix method. This design concept was later expanded to a pixelized array of polarization filters. A full-Stokes imaging system was experimentally demonstrated based on integrating a metasurface with pixelized polarization filters arrays and an MIR camera.
ContributorsBai, Jing (Author) / Yao, Yu (Thesis advisor) / Balanis, Constantine A. (Committee member) / Wang, Liping (Committee member) / Zhang, Yong-Hang (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2021
Description
In this dissertation, two types of passive air freshener products from Henkel, the wick-based air freshener and gel-based air freshener, are studied for their wicking mechanisms and evaporation performances.The fibrous pad of the wick-based air freshener is a porous medium that absorbs fragrance by capillary force and releases the fragrance into the ambient air. To investigate the wicking process, a two-dimensional multiphase flow numerical model using COMSOL Multiphysics is built. Saturation and liquid pressure inside the pad are solved. Comparison between the simulation results and experiments shows that evaporation occurs simultaneously with the wicking process. The evaporation performance on the surface of the wicking pad is analyzed based on the kinetic theory, from which the mass flow rate of molecules passing the interface of each pore of the porous medium is obtained. A 3D model coupling the evaporation model and dynamic wicking on the evaporation pad is built to simulate the entire performance of the air freshener to the environment for a long period of time. Diffusion and natural convection effects are included in the simulation. The simulation results match well with the experiments for both the air fresheners placed in a chamber and in the absent of a chamber, the latter of which is subject to indoor airflow.
The gel-based air freshener can be constructed as a porous medium in which the solid network of particles spans the volume of the fragrance liquid. To predict the evaporation performance of the gel, two approaches are tested for gel samples in hemispheric shape. The first approach is the sessile drop model commonly used for the drying process of a pure liquid droplet. It can be used to estimate the weight loss rate and time duration of the evaporation. Another approach is to simulate the concentration profile outside the gel and estimate the evaporation rate from the surface of the gel using the kinetic theory. The evaporation area is updated based on the change of pore size. A 3D simulation using the same analysis is further applied to the cylindrical gel sample. The simulation results match the experimental data well.
ContributorsYuan, Jing (Author) / Chen, Kangping (Thesis advisor) / Herrmann, Marcus (Committee member) / Huang, Huei-Ping (Committee member) / Wang, Liping (Committee member) / Jiao, Yang (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2021
Description
The relationships between the properties of materials and their microstructures have been a central topic in materials science. The microstructure-property mapping and numerical failure prediction are critical for integrated computational material engineering (ICME). However, the bottleneck of ICME is the lack of a clear understanding of the failure mechanism as well as an efficient computational framework. To resolve these issues, research is performed on developing novel physics-based and data-driven numerical methods to reveal the failure mechanism of materials in microstructure-sensitive applications.
First, to explore the damage mechanism of microstructure-sensitive materials in general loading cases, a nonlocal lattice particle model (LPM) is adopted because of its intrinsic ability to handle the discontinuity. However, the original form of LPM is unsuitable for simulating nonlinear behavior involving tensor calculation. Therefore, a damage-augmented LPM (DLPM) is proposed by introducing the concept of interchangeability and bond/particle-based damage criteria. The proposed DLPM successfully handles the damage accumulation behavior in general material systems under static and fatigue loading cases.
Then, the study is focused on developing an efficient physics-based data-driven computational framework. A data-driven model is proposed to improve the efficiency of a finite element analysis neural network (FEA-Net). The proposed model, i.e., MFEA-Net, aims to learn a more powerful smoother in a multigrid context. The learned smoothers have good generalization properties, and the resulted MFEA-Net has linear computational complexity. The framework has been applied to efficiently predict the thermal and elastic behavior of composites with various microstructural fields. Finally, the fatigue behavior of additively manufactured (AM) Ti64 alloy is analyzed both experimentally and numerically. The fatigue experiments show the fatigue life is related with the contour process parameters, which can result in different pore defects, surface roughness, and grain structures. The fractography and grain structures are closely observed using scanning electron microscope. The sample geometry and defect/crack morphology are characterized through micro computed tomography (CT). After processing the pixel-level CT data, the fatigue crack initiation and growth behavior are numerically simulated using MFEA-Net and DLPM. The experiments and simulation results provided valuable insights in fatigue mechanism of AM Ti64 alloy.
ContributorsMeng, Changyu (Author) / Liu, Yongming (Thesis advisor) / Hoover, Christian (Committee member) / Li, Lin (Committee member) / Peralta, Pedro (Committee member) / Wang, Liping (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2023
Description
Vanadium-dioxide-based devices show great switchability in their optical properties due to its dramatic thermochromic phase transition from insulator to metal, but generally have concerns due to its relatively high transition temperature at 68 °C. Doping the vanadium dioxide with tungsten has been shown to reduce its transition temperature at the cost lower optical property differences between its insulating and metallic phases. A recipe is developed through parametric experimentation to fabricate tungsten-doped vanadium dioxide consisting of a novel dual target co-sputtering deposition, a furnace oxidation process, and a post-oxidation annealing process. The transmittance spectra of the resulting films are measured via Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy at different temperatures to confirm the lowered transition temperature and analyze their thermal-optical hysteresis behavior through the transition temperature range. Afterwards, the optical properties of undoped sputtered vanadium films are modeled and effective medium theory is used to explain the effect of tungsten dopants on the observed transmittance decrease of doped vanadium dioxide. The optical modeling is used to predict the performance of tungsten-doped vanadium dioxide devices, in particular a Fabry-Perot infrared emitter and a nanophotonic infrared transmission filter. Both devices show great promise in their optical properties despite a slight performance decrease from the tungsten doping. These results serve to illustrate the excellent performance of the co-sputtered tungsten-doped vanadium dioxide films.
ContributorsChao, Jeremy (Author) / Wang, Liping (Thesis advisor) / Wang, Robert (Committee member) / Tongay, Sefaattin (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2022
Description
The study of organismal adaptations oftentimes focuses on specific, constant conditions, but environmental parameters are characterized by more or less marked levels of variability, rather than constancy. This is important in environments like soils where microbial activity follows pulses of water availability driven by precipitation. Nowhere are these pulses more variable and unpredictable than in arid soils. Pulses constitute stressful conditions for bacteria because they cause direct cellular damage that must be repaired and they force cells to toggle between dormancy and active physiological states, which is energetically taxing. I hypothesize that arid soil microorganisms are adapted to the variability in wet/dry cycles itself, as determined by the frequency and duration of hydration pulses. To test this, I subjected soil microbiomes from the Chihuahuan Desert to controlled incubations for a total common growth period of 60 hours, but separated into treatments in which the total active time was reached with hydration pulses of different length with intervening periods of desiccation, so as to isolate pulse length and frequency as the varying factors in the experiment. Using 16S rRNA amplicon data, I characterized changes in microbiome growth, diversity, and species composition, and tracked the individual responses to treatment intensity in the 447 most common bacterial species (phylotypes) in the soil. Considering knowledge of extremophile microbiology, I hypothesized that growth yield and diversity would decline with shorter pulses. I found that microbial diversity was indeed a direct function of pulse length, but surprisingly, total yield was an inverse function of it. Pulse regime treatments resulted in progressively more significant differences in community composition with increasing pulse length, as differently adapted phylotypes became more prominent. In fact, more than 30% of the most common bacterial phylotypes demonstrated statistically significant population growth responses to pulse length. Most responsive phylotypes were apparently best adapted to short pulse regimes (known in the literature as Nimble Responders or NIRs), while fewer did better under long pulse regimes (known as TORs or Torpid Responders). Examples of extreme NIRs and TORs could be found among bacteria from different phyla, indicating that these adaptations have occurred multiple times during evolution.
ContributorsKut, Patrick John (Author) / Garcia-Pichel, Ferran (Thesis advisor) / Sala, Osvaldo (Committee member) / Zhu, Qiyun (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2023
Description
Organic electronics have remained a research topic of great interest over the past few decades, with organic light emitting diodes (OLEDs) emerging as a disruptive technology for lighting and display applications. While OLED performance has improved significantly over the past decade, key issues remain unsolved such as the development of stable and efficient blue devices. In order to further the development of OLEDs and increase their commercial potential, innovative device architectures, novel emissive materials and high-energy hosts are designed and reported.
OLEDs employing step-wide graded-doped emissive layers were designed to improve charge balance and center the exciton formation zone leading to improved device performance. A red OLED with a peak efficiency of 16.9% and an estimated LT97 over 2,000 hours at 1,000 cd/m2 was achieved. Employing a similar structure, a sky-blue OLED was demonstrated with a peak efficiency of 17.4% and estimated LT70 over 1,300 hours at 1,000 cd/m2. Furthermore, the sky-blue OLEDs color was improved to CIE coordinates of (0.15, 0.25) while maintaining an efficiency of 16.9% and estimated LT70 over 600 hours by incorporating a fluorescent sensitizer. These devices represent literature records at the time of publication for efficient and stable platinum phosphorescent OLEDs.
A newly developed class of emitters, metal-assisted delayed-fluorescence (MADF), are demonstrated to achieve higher-energy emission from a relatively low triplet energy. A green MADF device reaches a peak efficiency of 22% with an estimated LT95 over 350 hours at 1,000 cd/m2. Additionally, a blue charge confined OLED of PtON1a-tBu demonstrated a peak efficiency above 20%, CIE coordinated of (0.16, 0.27), and emission onset at 425 nm.
High triplet energy hosts are required for the realization of stable and efficient deep blue emission. A rigid “M”-type carbazole/fluorene hybrid called mDCzPF and a carbazole/9-silafluorene hybrid called mDCzPSiF are demonstrated to have high triplet energies ET=2.88 eV and 3.03 eV respectively. Both hosts are demonstrated to have reasonable stability and can serve as a template for future material design. The techniques presented here demonstrate alternative approaches for improving the performance of OLED devices and help to bring this technology closer to widespread commercialization.
OLEDs employing step-wide graded-doped emissive layers were designed to improve charge balance and center the exciton formation zone leading to improved device performance. A red OLED with a peak efficiency of 16.9% and an estimated LT97 over 2,000 hours at 1,000 cd/m2 was achieved. Employing a similar structure, a sky-blue OLED was demonstrated with a peak efficiency of 17.4% and estimated LT70 over 1,300 hours at 1,000 cd/m2. Furthermore, the sky-blue OLEDs color was improved to CIE coordinates of (0.15, 0.25) while maintaining an efficiency of 16.9% and estimated LT70 over 600 hours by incorporating a fluorescent sensitizer. These devices represent literature records at the time of publication for efficient and stable platinum phosphorescent OLEDs.
A newly developed class of emitters, metal-assisted delayed-fluorescence (MADF), are demonstrated to achieve higher-energy emission from a relatively low triplet energy. A green MADF device reaches a peak efficiency of 22% with an estimated LT95 over 350 hours at 1,000 cd/m2. Additionally, a blue charge confined OLED of PtON1a-tBu demonstrated a peak efficiency above 20%, CIE coordinated of (0.16, 0.27), and emission onset at 425 nm.
High triplet energy hosts are required for the realization of stable and efficient deep blue emission. A rigid “M”-type carbazole/fluorene hybrid called mDCzPF and a carbazole/9-silafluorene hybrid called mDCzPSiF are demonstrated to have high triplet energies ET=2.88 eV and 3.03 eV respectively. Both hosts are demonstrated to have reasonable stability and can serve as a template for future material design. The techniques presented here demonstrate alternative approaches for improving the performance of OLED devices and help to bring this technology closer to widespread commercialization.
ContributorsKlimes, Kody George (Author) / Li, Jian (Thesis advisor) / Adams, James (Committee member) / Wang, Liping (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2019
Description
The residential building sector accounts for more than 26% of the global energy consumption and 17% of global CO2 emissions. Due to the low cost of electricity in Kuwait and increase of population, Kuwaiti electricity consumption tripled during the past 30 years and is expected to increase by 20% by 2027. In this dissertation, a framework is developed to assess energy savings techniques to help policy-makers make educated decisions. The Kuwait residential energy outlook is studied by modeling the baseline energy consumption and the diffusion of energy conservation measures (ECMs) to identify the impacts on household energy consumption and CO2 emissions.
The energy resources and power generation in Kuwait were studied. The characteristics of the residential buildings along with energy codes of practice were investigated and four building archetypes were developed. Moreover, a baseline of end-use electricity consumption and demand was developed. Furthermore, the baseline energy consumption and demand were projected till 2040. It was found that by 2040, energy consumption would double with most of the usage being from AC. While with lighting, there is a negligible increase in consumption due to a projected shift towards more efficient lighting. Peak demand loads are expected to increase by an average growth rate of 2.9% per year. Moreover, the diffusion of different ECMs in the residential sector was modeled through four diffusion scenarios to estimate ECM adoption rates. ECMs’ impact on CO2 emissions and energy consumption of residential buildings in Kuwait was evaluated and the cost of conserved energy (CCE) and annual energy savings for each measure was calculated. AC ECMs exhibited the highest cumulative savings, whereas lighting ECMs showed an immediate energy impact. None of the ECMs in the study were cost effective due to the high subsidy rate (95%), therefore, the impact of ECMs at different subsidy and rebate rates was studied. At 75% subsidized utility price and 40% rebate only on appliances, most of ECMs will be cost effective with high energy savings. Moreover, by imposing charges of $35/ton of CO2, most ECMs will be cost effective.
The energy resources and power generation in Kuwait were studied. The characteristics of the residential buildings along with energy codes of practice were investigated and four building archetypes were developed. Moreover, a baseline of end-use electricity consumption and demand was developed. Furthermore, the baseline energy consumption and demand were projected till 2040. It was found that by 2040, energy consumption would double with most of the usage being from AC. While with lighting, there is a negligible increase in consumption due to a projected shift towards more efficient lighting. Peak demand loads are expected to increase by an average growth rate of 2.9% per year. Moreover, the diffusion of different ECMs in the residential sector was modeled through four diffusion scenarios to estimate ECM adoption rates. ECMs’ impact on CO2 emissions and energy consumption of residential buildings in Kuwait was evaluated and the cost of conserved energy (CCE) and annual energy savings for each measure was calculated. AC ECMs exhibited the highest cumulative savings, whereas lighting ECMs showed an immediate energy impact. None of the ECMs in the study were cost effective due to the high subsidy rate (95%), therefore, the impact of ECMs at different subsidy and rebate rates was studied. At 75% subsidized utility price and 40% rebate only on appliances, most of ECMs will be cost effective with high energy savings. Moreover, by imposing charges of $35/ton of CO2, most ECMs will be cost effective.
ContributorsAlajmi, Turki (Author) / Phelan, Patrick E (Thesis advisor) / Kaloush, Kamil (Committee member) / Huang, Huei-Ping (Committee member) / Wang, Liping (Committee member) / Hajiah, Ali (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2019