Electrostatic Mechanism of Emission Enhancement in Hybrid Metal-semiconductor Light-emitting Heterostructures Page: III

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thanks to my wife, Gosia, for her support in this endeavor. Thanks to my advisor
and mentor in all things experimental, Dr. Arup Neogi, and to Dr. Arkadii Krokhin, who
has served as a mentor for my theoretical and modeling work. Thanks to Dr. Sergio
Pereira for providing the samples that made this work possible, and for the many
informative discussions we had while trying to understand this effect. Thanks to fellow
student Jie Lin, whose expertise in experiments far exceeds my own, and whose help
was invaluable in retrieving high-quality experimental data for this work.
A special thanks also goes to the Doctors Gryczynski, Karol and Ignacy, at the
UNT Health Sciences center for graciously allowing us to use their facilities for FLIM,
AFM and time-resolved measurements on several occasions. Also to Ryan Rich there
for his help in acquiring the FLIM images I made use of in Chapter 5.
Further thanks go to Dr. Motoichi Ohtsu at the University of Tokyo for hosting me
for two months and allowing me to make use of their world-class NSOM equipment.
Also to Dr. Tadashi Kawazoe, from whom I learned more in two months regarding the
NSOM than I managed to learn in two years of playing with the instrument.
A final, personal thanks to Dr. Wayne Zimmerman, Dr. Mark Hamner and (now)
Dr. Lindsay Renfro, who, while not involved in this work, helped me discover the love of
research that led me down this path.

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