Description: The modification of the band edge or emission energy of semiconductor quantum well light emitters due to image charge induced phenomenon is an emerging field of study. This effect observed in quantum well light emitters is critical for all metal-optics based light emitters including plasmonics, or nanometallic electrode based light emitters. This dissertation presents, for the first time, a systematic study of the image charge effect on semiconductor–metal systems. the necessity of introducing the image charge interactions is demonstrated by experiments and mathematical methods for semiconductor-metal image charge interactions are introduced and developed.

Description: The first part of this paper describes the Meissner effect in superconductors which serves as the most definitive evidence for superconductivity. It is shown that the microwave perturbation technique may be used to demonstrate this effect. By measuring the changes of resonant frequency and inverse quality factor Q of a microwave cavity with a small volume of sample loading, the Meissner effect can be shown by using the Slater perturbation equation. The experimental system is described with details and the basic principle of each component discussed. The second part of this work describes the technique employed to do the actual measurements. The experiments were conducted on samples of Gallium Arsenide (GaAs) and lead zirconate titanate (PZT) to look for the possible high temperature superconductivity properties. Results of these experiments are presented and discussed. Conclusion and suggestions to future exploration are made.

Description: The developments of nuclear medicine lead to an increasing demand for the production of radioisotopes with suitable nuclear and chemical properties. Furthermore, from the literature it is evident that the production of radioisotopes using charged-particle accelerators instead of nuclear reactors is gaining increasing popularity. The main advantages of producing medical isotopes with accelerators are carrier free radionuclides of short lived isotopes, improved handling, reduction of the radioactive waste, and lower cost of isotope fabrication. Proton-rich isotopes are the result of nuclear interactions between enriched stable isotopes and energetic protons. An interesting observation is that during the production of proton-rich isotopes, fast and intermediately fast neutrons from nuclear reactions such as (p,xn) are also produced as a by-product in the nuclear reactions. This observation suggests that it is perhaps possible to use these neutrons to activate secondary targets for the production of neutron-rich isotopes. The study of secondary radioisotope production with fast neutrons from (p,xn) reactions using a particle accelerator is the main goal of the research in this thesis.

Description: This dissertation addresses the delicate problem of aging in complex systems characterized by non-Poissonian statistics. With reference to a generic two-states system interacting with a bath it is shown that to properly describe the evolution of such a system within the formalism of the continuous time random walk (CTRW), it has to be taken into account that, if the system is prepared at time t=0 and the observation of the system starts at a later time ta>0, the distribution of the first sojourn times in each of the two states depends on ta, the age of the system. It is shown that this aging property in the fractional derivative formalism forces to introduce a fractional index depending on time. It is shown also that, when a stationary condition exists, the Onsager regression principle is fulfilled only if the system is aged and consequently if an infinitely aged distribution for the first sojourn times is adopted in the CTRW formalism used to describe the system itself. This dissertation, as final result, shows how to extend to the non-Poisson case the Kubo Anderson (KA) lineshape theory, so as to turn it into a theoretical tool adequate to describe the time evolution of ...

Description: The characterization, properties and applications of the novel nanostructured microgel (nanoparticle network and microgel crystal) composed of poly-N-isopropylacrylanmide-co-allylamine (PNIPAM-co-allylamine) and PNIPAM-co-acrylic acid(AA) have been investigated. For the novel nanostructured hydrogels with the two levels of structure: the primary network inside each individual particle and the secondary network of the crosslinked nanoparticles, the new shear modulus, drug release law from hydrogel with heterogeneous structure have been studied. The successful method for calculating the volume fraction related the phase transition of colloid have been obtained. The kinetics of crystallization in an aqueous dispersion of PNIPAM particles has been explored using UV-visible transmission spectroscopy. This dissertation also includes the initial research on the melting behavior of colloidal crystals composed of PNIPAM microgels. Many new findings in this study area have never been reported before. The theoretical model for the columnar crystal growth from the top to bottom of PNIPAM microgel has been built, which explains the growth mechanism of the novel columnar hydrogel colloidal crystals. Since the unique structure of the novel nanostructured hydrogels, their properties are different with the conventional hydrogels and the hard-sphere-like system. The studies and results in this dissertation have the important significant for theoretical study and valuable application ...