Carbonate minerals are integral to life on earth, as reservoirs for CO2 in the earth’s natural carbon cycle and as the skeletal elements of abundant organisms like corals and plankton. Because of its relevance, availability, and low toxicity, calcium carbonate is also an important model system for phase transformations in...
High performance structural materials are needed for Naval applications which require an excellent combination of yield strength, low-temperature impact toughness, ductility, ballistic-resistance, and weldability. This research investigates precipitation-strengthened HSLA-115 steels and ballistic-resistant 10 wt. % Ni steels, which have emerged as promising alternatives to the widely used HSLA-100 steels for...
The morphological evolution due to coarsening is analyzed for two distinctive types of microstructure. First, the feasibility of characterizing spatial correlations of interfacial curvature in topologically complex structures is demonstrated with the analysis of bicontinuous two-phase mixtures produced using phase field modeling. For structures produced with both conserved and nonconserved...
This thesis demonstrates the use of dual-beam focused ion beam - scanning electron microscopy (FIB-SEM) for making complete three-dimensional reconstructions of SOFC electrodes in order to better understand the links between processing and performance with respect to microstructure. Sufficient compositional contrast, with nano-scale resolution, between Ni and LSM with respect...
This dissertation examines growth of platinum nanoparticles from vapor deposition on SrTiO3 using a characterization approach that combines imaging techniques and X-ray methods. The primary suite of characterization probes includes atomic force microscopy (AFM), grazing-incidence small-angle X-ray scattering (GISAXS), X-ray fluorescence (XRF), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and X-ray absorption spectroscopy...
ZnO is a member of the unique class of materials known as transparent conducting oxides (TCOs). TCOs are currently used for many applications including flat panel displays, solar cells, and energy efficient windows. Of particular interest is the possibility of developing materials that have high electron mobilities, such that conductivities...
Wood-derived ceramics and composites have been of interest in recent years due to their unique microstructures, which lead to tailorable properties. The porosity and pore size distribution of each wood type is different, which yields variations in properties in the resultant materials. The thermal properties of silicon carbide ceramics and...
Subsolidus phase relationships within the ZnO-In<sub>2</sub>O<sub>3</sub>-SnO<sub>2</sub> system at 1275 <sup>o</sup>C were established by conventional solid state reaction methods. No new compounds or structures were observed within the ternary diagram. Equilibrium in the ZnO-corner, between the homologous compounds and the spinel phase, was found difficult to achieve. This problem was overcome...
Characterizing the interaction of light and matter has become increasingly important in recent decades, as devices scale down, data transfer speeds up, and the use of photon-based technology (photonics and optoelectronics) becomes widespread. Copper chloride (CuCl) thin films and zinc oxide (ZnO) inverse opal photonic crystals are the two material...
A multicomponent bimodal poly(vinyl acetate) (PVAc) polymer composite has been scientifically designed to increase biaxial plastic flow stabilization for the achievement of large biaxial deformations. For this, a systems-based approach was used for the computational materials design of a high performance bubblegum whose mean in-vivo bubble diameter exceeds that of...