Study of transport properties and defect density profile in nanocrystalline silicon germanium devices

Nanocrystalline Silicon-Germanium (nc-SiGe:H) is a useful material for photovoltaic devices and photo-detectors. Its bandgap can be tuned between Si (~1.1 eV) and Ge (~0.7 eV) by changing the alloy composition during growth. The material exhibits a good absorption extending to the infrared region even with thin layers. However previous work has shown that devices with higher Ge content have poor device performance. Also, very little work has been done previously to measure and understand the defect spectrum of nanocrystalline (Si,Ge). Defects control recombination, and hence, the performance of solar cell devices. This work deals with studying the fundamental device physics of nc-SiGe:H including defect density, lifetime and mobility and their relationship with impurities, grain size and Hydrogen bonding. Capacitance-Frequency measurements at different temperatures are used to estimate the trap density profile within the bandgap of nc-SiGe:H. We also study device performance and how to maintain uniform crystallinity in intrinsic layers of devices so as to obtain the best device performance. We show that one can use hydrogen grading or power grading to produce films with uniform crystallinity. We will report on a systematic study of the varying Germanium content in nc-SiGe:H the relationship between Ge content and transport properties. It is found that upon adding Ge to Si during growth, the intrinsic layer changes from n-type to p-type. This can be reversed back by using ppm levels of phosphorus doping, and devices of reasonable quality can then be obtained. Measurement of defect densities showed that adding ppm levels of phosphine reduced the midgap defect densitie

Robust String Stability of Vehicle Platoons with Communication

This work investigates longitudinal spacing policies and vehicular communication strategies that can reduce inter-vehicular spacing between the vehicles of automated highway platoons, in the presence of parasitic actuation lags. Currently employed platooning technologies rely on the vehicle’s onboard sensors for information of the neighboring vehicles, due to this they may require large spacing between the vehicles to ensure string stability in the presence of uncertainties, such as parasitic actuation lags. More precisely, they require that the minimum employable time headway (hmin) must be lower bounded by 2τ₀ for string stability, where τ₀ is the maximum parasitic actuation lag. Recent studies have demonstrated that using vehicular communication one may be able to employ smaller spacing between vehicles while ensuring robustness to parasitic lags. However, precise results on the extent of such reduction are sparse in the literature. In this work, platoon string stability is used as a metric to study controllers that require vehicular communication, and find the amount of reduction in spacing such controllers can offer. First, the effects of multiple vehicle look ahead in vehicle platoons that employ a Constant Spacing Policy (CSP) based controller without lead vehicle information in the presence of parasitic lags is studied and string instability of such platoons is demonstrated. A robustly string stable CSP controller that employs information from the leader and the immediate predecessor is considered to determine an upper bound on the allowable parasitic lag; for this CSP controller, a design procedure for the selection of controller gains for a given parasitic lag is also provided. For a string of vehicles adopting a Constant Time Headway Policy (CTHP), it is demonstrated that the minimum employable time headway can be further decreased via vehicular communication in the following manner: (1) if the position, velocity and acceleration of the immediate predecessor vehicle is used, then the ii minimum employable time headway hmin can be reduced to τ₀; (2) if the position and velocity information of r immediately preceding vehicles is used, then hmin can be reduced to 4τ₀/(1 + r); (3) furthermore, if the acceleration of ‘r’ immediately preceding vehicles is used, then hmin can be reduced to 2τ₀/(1 + r); and (4) if the position, velocity and acceleration of the immediate and the r-th predecessors are used, then hmin = 2τ₀/(1 + r). Note that cases (3) and (4) provide the same lower bound on the minimum employable time headway; however, case (4) requires much less communicated information. Representative numerical simulations that are conducted to corroborate the above results are discussed. Vehicle formations employing ring structured communication strategies are also studied in this work and a combinatorial approach for developing ring graphs for vehicle formations is proposed. Stability properties of the platoons with ring graphs, limitations of using ring graphs in platoons, and methods to overcome such limitations are explored. In addition, with ring communication structure, it is possible to devise simple ways to recon- figure the graph when vehicles are added to or removed from the platoon or formation, which is also discussed in this work. Further, experimental results using mobile robots for platooning and two-dimensional formations using ring graphs are discussed

Computational investigations of molecular transport processes in nanotubular and nanocomposite materials

The unique physical properties of nanomaterials, attributed to the combined effects of their size, shape, and composition, have sparked significant interest in the field of nanotechnology. Fabrication of nanodevices using nanomaterials as building-blocks are underway to enable novel technological applications. A fundamental understanding on the structure-property relationships and the mechanism of synthesizing nanomaterials with tailored physical properties is critical for a rationale design of functional nanodevices. In this thesis, molecular simulations that employ a detailed atomistic description of the nanoscopic structures were used to understand the structure-transport property relationships in two novel classes of porous nanomaterials, namely, polymer/porous inorganic layered nanocomposite materials and single-walled metal oxide nanotubes, and provide predictions for the design of nanodevices using these nanomaterials. We employed molecular dynamics to study transport of gas molecules (in particular He, H2, N2 and O2) through a polydimethylsiloxane/porous layered silicate (AMH-3) nanocomposite membrane material as a function of its composition. Gas separation performance of the nanocomposite was found to be substantially enhanced for H2/N2 and H2/O2 compared to pure polymeric material due to the molecular sieving effect of AMH-3, suggesting the possibility of developing a new class of superior separation devices. We also developed force field parameters for layered aluminophosphates that are emerging as potential inorganic layers for construction of nanocomposite materials. We presented preliminary work on developing Transition State Approach-Monte Carlo simulation method for calculating gas transport properties of nanocomposite materials. We investigated in detail the diameter control phenomenon in single-walled metal oxide nanotubes using molecular dynamics simulations and demonstrated the existence of a thermodynamic 'handle' for tuning the nanotube diameters and derived a unique correlation between nanotube energy, composition, and diameter to precisely predict nanotube diameters. Finally, using a combination of molecular dynamics, monte carlo and sorption experiments, we investigated adsorption and diffusion properties of water in single-walled aluminosilicate nanotubes. We predicted high water fluxes in these nanotubes, due to short lengths, hydrophilic interior and near-bulk-water diffusivities. Overall, my research represents two examples of the progress in developing a predictive basis for the design and analysis of nanostructures for applications in separations, nanofluidics, and fuel cell technology.Ph.D.Committee Chair: Nair, Sankar; Committee Member: Koros, William; Committee Member: Ludovice, Peter; Committee Member: Meredith, Carson; Committee Member: Thio, Yonathan; Committee Member: Zhou, Mi

An Implementation of the Parallel K-core Decomposition Algorithm in GraphBLAS

The k-core of an undirected graph is the largest subgraph in which every vertex has a degree of at least some number k. Computing the k-core, also known as the k-core decomposition algorithm, has significant applications in network analysis, visualization, bioinformatics, and community detection. There exists a sequential procedure, developed by Batagelj and Zaversnik in 2003, that accurately performs k-core decomposition. This implementation has been consistently referenced as the gold standard, due to its O(n + m) runtime. However, due to its large working set and lack of parallelism, its performance suffers on modern big-data graph problems where sheer size tends to overwhelm runtime due to cache misses. A 2014 algorithm designed by Dasari, Desh and Zubair M implements a parallel version of k-core decomposition (ParK) with significant speedup on multithreaded architectures. This paper aims to describe the development and implementation of ParK using the SuiteSparse:GraphBLAS API in C, a robust framework that defines a set of matrix and vector operations based on an algebra of semirings to perform computations on graphs. We show that while the GraphBLAS algorithm underperforms versus the sequential implementation in a full decomposition, a modified version of the algorithm that only computes a partial decomposition given some value k is significantly faster

Engagement of the private pharmaceutical sector for TB control: rhetoric or reality?

Summary of country-level studies or interventions involving retail drug outlets. (PDF 501 kb

Comparative Degradation of LDPE, HDPE and HMHDPE under Different Soil Conditions

The Present work includes, degradation of polyethylene under different environmental conditions to know the effect of physical, chemical and biological factors prevailing in those conditions on degradation of polyethylene. Plastic films viz., Low density polyethylene (LDPE), High density polyethylene (HDPE) and High molecular weight high density polyethylene (HMHDPE) each were incubated in three different conditions viz., black soil, sandy soil and red soil for a period of 3 months. The changes in the properties of plastic films after incubation was studied by change in the weight of the plastic film and mechanical parameters like tensile strength, breaking load and percentage of elongation. Among all the plastic films HDPE was found to be highly susceptible with 33% weight loss and 40% reduction in percentage of elongation compared to LDPE with 26% weight loss and 34 % reduction in percentage of elongation in black soil. Whereas HMHDPE found to be highly resistant in all the soils with no significant weight loss and percentage of elongation (15%). None of the plastic films had shown degradation in sandy soil even after incubation for 3 months. FTIR spectroscopy results showed that HDPE film incubated in black soil had undergone extensive degradation when compared with un incubated HDPE film