Electrochemical cell devices are increasingly being sought for energy conversion and storage applications due to their high efficiencies and their potential for operating free of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Solid Acid Electrochemical Cells (SAECs), which most commonly employ CsH2PO4 (CDP) as the electrolyte component, are uniquely suited to meet the...
Two-dimensional (2D) materials and heterostructures have attracted significant attention for a variety of nanoelectronic and optoelectronic applications. At the atomically thin limit, the material characteristics and functionalities are dominated by surface chemistry and interface coupling. Therefore, methods for comprehensively characterizing and precisely controlling surfaces and interfaces are required to realize...
Throughout history, the development of materials has relied heavily on the empirical judgment of scientists and engineers and on prolonged experiments proton to errors. Due to the complexity of material behavior, successful discovery of new candidates has been serendipitous, and down-selection of candidates remains a time-consuming process that requires repetitive...
Use of bio-renewable polysaccharides to produce materials with a high technological impact has gained a lot of attention recently. Efforts have been made, for example to produce triboelectric generators from cotton, as well as, nanostructures of chitosan gels for drug delivery. Another well-known example is the use of β-Cyclodextrin (β...
A fundamental materials science question is “why and how will this material form?” The experimental,computation, and time resources necessary to answer this question consume significant resources due to the
predominantly trial-and-error based approaches common in materials research. This dissertation reintroduces
a number of fundamental thermodynamics-based tools for the study of...
The extracellular matrix (ECM) is a masterwork of biology, and its development was a key part of the transformation from monocellular to multicellular life. With an ECM, cells acquired the ability to cooperatively build a dynamic support network that facilitated their movement, specialization, and communication. This ECM is a hierarchical...
Deformation in materials with a hierarchical microstructure is expected to be complex because of the interaction between the units that form such a microstructure. The complexity of deformation would be even higher when additional inelastic deformation modes are active in such materials, apart from traditional elastic and plastic deformation modes....
This dissertation presents a comprehensive study of thin-film LiMn2O4 (LMO) cathodes applied in lithium ion batteries (LIBs). The primary aim was to establish fundamental understanding of the relationship between interfacial LMO chemistry/electrochemistry and its detrimental drawback, i.e. fast capacity fade over long term cycling, and then develop effective mitigation methods....
Understanding organization of soft materials on mesoscopic and nanoscopic scales is importantfor materials design. In this regard, non-van der Waals interactions such as hydrogen
bonding and electrostatic interactions offer great opportunities due to the richness and diversity
in morphological structures they produce. The primary reason for this is that these...
Protein-based biomaterials are widely used in biomedical applications and mechanical support because of their novel structural flexibility, biocompatibility and mechanical properties. Protein-based biomaterials outperform traditional synthetic materials in various environments as traditional materials lack the diverse chemical functionalities that proteins offer. Novel bioinspired techniques such as directed evolution offer the...
Semiconductor nanowires, such as group IV and III-V nanowires, shows distinct electrical, optical and mechanical properties from their bulk counterparts due to their nanoscale size and 1-D morphology. For example, the quantum confinement effect modulates the band gap of a semiconductor nanowire when its diameter approaches or below the exciton...
The demand for low cost, unconventional electronics requires new materials with unique characteristics that the traditionally used silicon-based technologies cannot provide. Metal oxide semiconductors, such has amorphous indium gallium zinc oxide (a-IGZO), have made impressive strides as alternatives to amorphous silicon for electronics applications. However, to achieve the full potential...
There is no group of materials as diverse, complex, and ubiquitous as polymers. From plastic bags, to rubber tires, electronics, food packaging, water filtration and even aerospace applications, the penetration of polymer materials into all aspects of life make them very important materials throughout all engineering fields. However, this breadth...
Low-dimensional materials have emerged as a promising platform for ultrathin electronic and optoelectronic devices. The span of electronic properties covers the spectrum from metallic through small and medium bandgap semiconductors to large bandgap insulators, providing all the necessary components to fabricate a variety of devices. Compared to bulk-semiconductor based devices,...
Metal–Organic Frameworks (MOFs) is a class of material comprising organic linkers and inorganic, metal-ion-containing nodes, with diverse functionalities and wide-range of applications. Because of their porous nature and functional nodes and linkers, they are competent candidates for gas storage, separation, catalysis, and so on. Most MOFs, however, are intrinsically insulating,...
Mixed-dimensional heterojunctions between two-dimensional (2D) materials and organic semiconductors is a rapidly growing field. This is motivated by the promise of leveraging the extraordinary properties of 2D materials with the synthetic tunability and reconfigurability of organic electronics, allowing the realization of new physics or devices that are not possible in...
Thermoelectric materials are of particular interest in a variety of fields because of their ability to directly convert heat to electricity (and vice versa), however, they struggle to gain widespread adoption because of their low efficiency. A common strategy in the field of thermoelectricity is to introduce material defects into...
Solvent-rich polyelectrolyte complexes display a wide range of rheological properties, when different environmental parameters are applied. Due to the low energy barrier of the complexation (~10 kT), these materials possess tunable properties, with the states of these materials varying from Newtonian liquids to very tough hydrogels. This thesis aims to...
The advancement of nanotechnology is at least partially dependent on the ability to synthesize and arrange complex nanostructures on a substrate. Nanolithography, or the patterning of materials at the sub-micrometer length-scale, has been traditionally performed using a number of methods such as conventional photolithography, ion-beam etching, and electron-beam lithography. While...
Connecting structure and function in nanoscale engineered materials and devices relies on the analysis of the fundamental arrangement of matter, frequently under dynamic conditions. The demand to image structures at fundamental length scales has touched inorganic materials, biology, and frequently hybrid hard/soft materials with unique phenomena driven by heterogeneous components....