The objective of this thesis is to provide an initial demonstration of two-terminal and three-terminal electronic devices employing amorphous multi-component metallic film
(AMMF) electrodes. Such a demonstration is successfully achieved in the fabrication of metal-insulator-metal (MIM) diode and hot electron transistor (HETs) structures employing ZrCuAlNi AMMF electrodes. The ultra-smooth surface...
Various applications like wireless UWB communication, fast data acquisition systems and digital storage oscilloscopes needs ADCs with instantaneous input signal bandwidth from 0.1-40 GigaHertz range with 6-10 bits of resolution -- a challenging task and an impressive goal to achieve. Flash ADCs have been conventionally employed to achieve these goals...
Work on individually constructed devices has demonstrated that nanowires (NWs) offer great promise for applications such as sensing and optoelectronics. Despite this work, reliable large scale alignment and integration of these individual nanostructures into a lithographically defined process remains a challenge.
Dielectrophoresis (DEP) is a promising alignment method in which...
Magnetically programmable surface acoustic wave (MP SAW) devices were designed, fabricated and characterized in this thesis using integrated giant magnetoresistive (GMR) bits with interdigital reflectors. This provides a proof of concept of a novel storage element on radio frequency identification tags. Interdigital transducers (IDTs) on a piezoelectric substrate are used...
This thesis presents two new approaches for the broadband, time-domain modeling of lossy transmission lines. Each approach is based on an alternative derivation of delay extraction in order to separate the line's linear phase from its
attenuation and dispersion. Augmentation networks represent the derived attenuation networks as rational function approximations....
This research explores the viability and effectiveness of using an inertial navigation system (INS) to control a beamforming array of microstrip patch antennas with the aim of reducing users' exposure to electromagnetic radiation. The system reduces radiated power directed toward a cellular phone user to below 10% of the total...
Amorphous oxide semiconductor (AOS) thin-film transistors (TFTs) constitute the central theme of this thesis. Within this theme, three primary areas of focus are pursued.
The first focus is the realization of a transparent three-stage ring oscillator with buffered output and an output frequency in the megahertz range. This leads to...
Medical imaging technologies play a vital role in early diagnosis of disease by providing internal images of the human body to medical professionals. Computed Tomography (CT) is currently the most commonly used medical imaging technology because it is easy to use, detectors and scanners are constantly improving, and more importantly,...
Engineering students spend a significant amount of their undergraduate careers focused on technical theory and practice. This intensive student prepares them for their technical challenges in the future. This training is so intense that often the more 'soft skills' such as communication, leadership, design, and troubleshooting are left out or...
This thesis describes the transport properties observed in thermally treated graphite oxide (GO), which holds promise as an economical route to obtaining graphene. Graphene is a material consisting of a single atomic plane of carbon atoms and was first isolated as recently as 2004. Several isolation techniques have been investigated,...