Oxide surface structures play a key role in many technological processes, including catalysis, thin film growth, and layered structures, and a thorough understanding of surface structures and surface structure dynamics is required in order to better engineer materials systems for these processes. This research works towards understanding these fundamental principles...
Over the past two decades photonic crystals (PhCs) have emerged as a promising new class of materials which offers unprecedented control of light in materials. Recently, atomic layer deposition (ALD) has been shown to be a powerful tool for the infiltration of 3D templates with dielectric or semiconducting materials, which...
In high power density transmission systems, Ni-Co secondary hardening steels have shown great potential for next-generation gear applications due to their excellent strength, toughness and superior fatigue performance.
Study of residual stress generation and evolution in Ferrium C61 and C67 gear steels revealed that shot peening and laser peening processes...
Novel self-healing alloy composites have been designed to address the need for self-repairable high-strength structural materials. A systems-based materials design approach using computational design tools was used to design a multifunctional biomimetic composite that can repair structural damage. The self-healing composite consists of a controlled-melting alloy matrix reinforced by thermodynamically...
Polymers and polyelectrolytes are ideal tools for the development of novel self-assembled materials. The ability to control the length-scales of self-assembly, and thus the properties, for soft materials lies in the understanding and subsequent manipulation of competing intermolecular interactions, such as hydrophobicity, hydrogen bonding, van der Waals, electrostatics. In this...
Supramolecular chemistry has proven to be an effective strategy for bottom-up fabrication of monodisperse, functional nanostructures. However, most applications require these nanostructures to be spatially or orientationally ordered. This thesis investigates patterning and spatial confinement as tools for controlling order in self-assembling systems.
We first look to improve the ordering...
Using ab initio calculations, we discovered a quasi two-dimensional copper–bismuth nano sheet, which we call cubine. According to our predictions, single layers of cubine can be isolated from the recently reported high-pressure CuBi bulk material at an extremely low energetic cost, comparable to values to separate single layers of graphene...
Ceramic matrix composites are known for their low density, high strength and high stiffness, but lower fracture toughness compared to metal matrix composites. The addition of a reinforcing agent within the matrix can increase the toughness of the composite via many strain energy absorption mechanisms such as plastic deformation. This...
The optical and magneto-optical properties of the ferromagnetic semiconductors, InMnAs and its alloy InMnAsP were investigated to determine the band structure and nature of the ferromagnetism in these materials. Alloys were grown by metal-organic vapor phase epitaxy. Infrared absorption of InMnAs was investigated to determine the presence and properties of...
Fundamental investigations on the origins of friction at the nanoscale were carried out using both theoretical and experimental approaches. A model was developed that analytically solves for friction by the motion of dislocations at atomically flat crystalline interfaces. It combines known concepts from dislocation drag, grain boundary theory, and contact...