Solid oxide fuel cells are electrochemical energy conversion devices utilizing solid electrolytes transporting O2- that typically operate in the 800 - 1000 °C temperature range due to the large activation barrier for ionic ...

This thesis presents four investigations into mechanical aspects of soft thin structures, focusing on the effects of stochastic and thermal fluctuations and of material inhomogeneities. First, we study the self-organization ...

In microelectronics, the device size continues to shrink to improve the performance and functionality, which sets technical challenges for the integrated circuit (IC) fabrication. Novel materials and processing techniques ...

In this work I describe various approaches to electrochemical energy storage at the grid-scale. Chapter 1 provides an introduction to energy storage and an overview of the history and development of flow batteries. Chapter ...

Colloidal crystals of \(1.55 \mu m\) diameter silica particles were grown on {100} and flat templates by sedimentation and centrifugation. The particles interact as hard spheres. The vacancies and divacancies in these ...

Tin(II) sulfide (SnS) is an earth-abundant, inexpensive, and non-toxic absorber material for thin film solar cells. SnS films are deposited by atomic layer deposition (ALD) through the reaction of a tin precursor, ...

The present dissertation investigates the relationship between the structure and thermoelectric properties of ZnO based materials, with a focus on trivalent element doping on engineering the microstructure and altering the ...

Recently, ZnO has garnered widespread attention in the semiconductor community for its large set of useful properties, which include a wide bandgap and its resulting optical transparency, a large exciton binding energy, a ...

This thesis explores multiscale approaches to describe structural and chemical defects in metals. Particular emphasis is placed on investigating processes involving grain boundaries (GBs) in combination with impurity and ...

This thesis explores mechanical behavior of microelectronic devices and lithium-ion batteries. We first examine electromigration-induced void formation in solder bumps by constructing a theory that couples electromigration ...