In this dissertation, I summarize my findings of the dynamics of colloidal suspensions over a large range of volume fractions in two systems: drop impact and film rupture. The existence of a deformable surface in both these systems allows me to capture the consequences of non-Newtonian flow using high-speed imaging....
The increasing demand for green energy has created great demand for high purity lanthanide elements because of their wide range of applications, such as in permanent magnets, batteries, and high-energy capacitors. Solvent extraction, which transfers ions from aqueous solutions to organic liquid phases with the support of extractant molecules, is...
The field of time-domain astronomy has seen significant advancements in the latest years as increasingly sensitive, deep and wide-field surveys of the sky at all wavelengths are being carried out more and more frequently. Furthermore, the addition of gravitational wave detectors around the world has opened an entirely new window...
New capabilities in x-ray microscopy have been enabled by rapid advances in synchrotronlight sources and in high performance computing. We present here conceptual and computational
advances in two areas of x-ray microscopy. One involves ptychography, where computation is
used to obtain images from diffraction patterns as a finite coherent illumination...
Engineering responses of soft materials at hierarchical time and length scales is of great interest to both fundamental science and technological applications. In recent years, the hybridization between emerging soft condense matters and conventional hard condense matters keeps enriching the materials library of humankind and opens another largely-uncharted venue for...
Interfacial science brings together diverse areas of interest such as electronic materials, quantum materials, bio-membranes and catalysts. In-situ X-ray characterization techniques can be used to understand the assembly of atoms, molecules and supported nanoparticles at interfaces in complex environments. This thesis work focuses on the use of various X-ray characterization...
I present concepts and methods for evaluating infrared camera systems. The individual components of camera systems are fairly well understood, but the system is more than the sum of its parts. Many of the usual techniques for measuring individual photodetectors are inapplicable to pixels which are permanently bonded to a...
Since its discovery in 2012 at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), efforts have beenmade to measure and characterize the properties of the Higgs boson. Among these efforts
have been searches for rare decays of the Higgs predicted by the standard model (SM) of
particle physics. One such decay is the...
As fourth-generation synchrotron x-ray sources start to come online, they bring with them the promise of increased imaging speed and resolution for current imaging modalities, while enabling entirely new ones. Employing the increased brightness at hard x-ray energies begins with having efficient focusing optics in place. Zone plates are popular...
Engineering heat transport in materials is essential for thermal management in a wide range of technologies, from batteries to thermoelectrics. Materials host a wide spectrum of heat-carrying phonons, which vary in their frequency, spatial extent, and degree of plane-wave character. This diversity in phonon properties leads to complex behavior, especially...