Silicon photonics has rapidly become one of the most promising photonic integration platforms. Especially, microring resonator (MRR) plays a pivotal role in silicon photonics and has been widely used for electro-optic (E-O) modulators and wavelength filters due to its small footprint, low energy consumption, and high quality factor (Q-factor). Recently,...
Nature is an inspirational source of silica structures that possess unique optical properties. A few classes of organisms fabricate metal oxides with nanoscale features by a bottom-up self assembly process. In particular, diatoms are a prolific class of single-celled algae that possess silica shells or “frustules” with intricate submicron scale...
A scalable synthesis of the "flat" tridecameric inorganic cluster [Al₁₃(μ₃-OH)₆(μ-OH)₁₈(H₂O)₂₄]¹⁵⁺ has been realized by treating an aqueous aluminum nitrate solution with zinc-metal powder at room temperature. Single crystals and polycrystalline samples are readily obtained in yields exceeding 55% relative to the starting reagent Al(NO₃)₃. Products have been characterized by X-ray...
CuInGaSe₂ (CIGS), a promising thin film solar cell material, has gained lots of
attention in decades due to its high energy conversion efficiency and potential lower
manufacture cost over conventional Si solar cells. As a cheaper processing method
compared to vacuum-based techniques, solution-based deposition has been
successfully applied to fabricate...
This study was carried out to compare the effects of a quaternary
ammonium compound (QAC) upon strains of Pseudomonas aeruginosa
which were either sensitive or resistant to the germicide. The cationic
QAC used was alkyldimethylbenzylammonium chloride. The resistant
types were isolated from the sensitive population by selection
of mutants which...
An inorganic aqueous precursor for the deposition of ZrO2 thin films via spincoating
was developed. Hydrolysis and condensation chemistries of
ZrOCl₂·8H₂O were used as the principal reactions to guide the synthesis.
Refractive index, n, for a film annealed at 300 °C at 550 nm was measured to
be n=1.97 by...
In this dissertation, I present experimental observations of multiply charged atomic ions (MCAI) generated from interactions of atomic/molecular clusters with moderately intense nanosecond laser pulses. This process is also known as Coulomb explosion (CE) and it has been extensively studied in intense laser fields using ultrashort pulses. Several prevailing theories...
The symbiotic sea anemone Exaiptasia diaphana (Aiptasia) is a model organism used to better understand cnidarian-algal symbiosis and coral bleaching (dysbiosis). Many biological processes are hypothesized to be involved in coral dysbiosis, and the innate immunity is a key area of interest. Rab proteins are small proteins with GTPase domains,...
In this dissertation, we describe a spectroscopic study of metal clusters and metal-ligand complexes using pulsed field ionization zero kinetic energy (PFI-ZEKE) photoelectron spectroscopy and mass analyzed threshold ionization (MATI) spectroscopy. Vibrational resolved spectra of sodium dimer, Na•NH₃, Na•(NH₃)₂ are presented. These spectra provide a direct measurement of the ionization...
In this dissertation, I describe the experimental investigation of electron diffraction of neutral and ionic clusters doped into superfluid helium droplets. The project is aimed at contributing to the development of an overall approach called ‘serial single molecule electron diffraction imaging (ss-EDI), a potential approach to solve macromolecule structures bypassing...