This project created a stand-alone unit capable of providing on-board sensing and processing for robotic vehicles. This unit was designed to be compact, lightweight, inexpensive, and adaptable. The goal of this project is to help advance robotics research in mapping and multi-agent coordination by making it easier to equip vehicles...
John Wesley Powell worked actively for public land system
reform while a director of geographical and geological surveys in
the West from 1869 to 1894. Although this has won him acclaim as a
conservationist, the basis of Powell's linkage of reform with
scientific work is poorly understood.
A study of...
Two examples of Pacific rim plate boundary deformation are presented. In the first
part of the thesis crustal models are derived for the northwestern part of the Vizcaino
block in California using marine seismic and gravity data collected by the Mendocino
Triple Junction Seismic Experiment. A northwest-southeast trending kink in...
As scaling of silicon (Si) based devices approaches fundamental limits, thin film metal-insulator-metal (MIM) tunnel diodes are attracting interest due to their potential for high speed operation. Because operation of these devices is based on tunneling, electrode / interfacial roughness is critical. Recently, it was shown that combining ultra-smooth bottom...
This thesis focuses on two aspects of transparent electronics, SnO₂ transparent thin-film transistors (TTFTs) and transparent circuits. Both depletion- and enhancement-mode SnO₂ TTFTs are realized. The maximum effective mobility for the depletion- and enhancement-mode devices are 2 cm²V⁻¹s⁻¹ and 0.8 cm²V⁻¹s⁻¹, respectively. A variety of techniques to decrease the carrier...
Resistive random access memory (RRAM) is a non-volatile memory technology based on resistive switching in a dielectric or semiconductor sandwiched between two different metals. Also known as memristors, these devices are potential candidates for a next-generation replacement for flash memory. In this thesis, bipolar resistive switching is reported for the...
Indium-gallium-zinc oxide (IGZO) and zinc-tin oxide (ZTO) are investigated for thin-film transistor (TFT) applications. Negative bias illumination stress (NBIS) is employed for electrical stability assessment. Unpassivated IGZO and ZTO TFTs suffer from severe NBIS instabilities. Zinc-tin-silicon oxide is found to be an effective passivation layer for IGZO and ZTO TFTs,...
Both travel times and amplitudes of large offset refracted and reflected arrivals
observed during GLIMPCE (Great Lakes International Multidisciplinary Program on
Crustal Evolution) along line A in Lake Superior have been modeled using two-dimensional
ray tracing techniques. Forward modeling was used to iteratively refine an
initial velocity model that was...
The rhenium-osmium isotopic system has the potential to track the maturation of arc crust at lower crustal levels because the ¹⁸⁷Os/¹⁸⁸Os in magmas is sensitive to the age and composition of crust with which they interact. We here present Re and Os isotopic data for a suite of samples from...
Nanostructured ZnO films were obtained via thermal oxidation of thin films formed with metallic Zn-nanoparticle dispersions. Commercial zinc nanoparticles used for this work were characterized by microscopic and thermal analysis methods to analyze the Zn-ZnO core shell structure, surface morphology and oxidation characteristics. These dispersions were spin-coated on SiO₂/Si substrates...