Title of Document: FAILURE MECHANICS OF FUNCTIONAL NANOSTRUCTURES IN ADVANCED TECHNOLOGIES Zheng Jia, Doctor of Philosophy, 2014 Directed By: Associate Professor Teng Li, Department of Mechanical Engineering The past decade has seen a surge of interest in developing novel functional nanostructures to enable advanced technologies, such as flexible electronics and high performance lithium-ion bat...

BACKGROUND Aluminum is considered to be a relatively safe metal for humans. However, there are some reports that aluminum can be toxic to humans and animals. In order to estimate the toxicity of aluminum with respect to humans, we measured the aluminum concentration in urine of aluminum-handling and non-handling workers and investigated the relationships between their urinary aluminum concentra...

The Aluminum Hypothesis, the idea that aluminum exposure is involved in the etiology of Alzheimer disease, dates back to a 1965 demonstration that aluminum causes neurofibrillary tangles in the brains of rabbits. Initially the focus of intensive research, the Aluminum Hypothesis has gradually been abandoned by most researchers. Yet, despite this current indifference, the Aluminum Hypothesis con...

The surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) effect is considered important for fast detection of characteristic ‘‘fingerprint’’ signatures of analytes. In the SERS effect, a substantial Raman enhancement arises on localized spots (‘‘hot spots’’) in metallic nanostructures owing to strong local electromagnetic fields associated with the surface plasmon resonances of metal nanostructures. SERS o...

the current study reports some interesting growth of novel in2o3 nanostructures using ambient-controlled chemical vapor deposition technique in the presence of a strongly reducing hydrazine ambient. the experiments are systematically carried out by keeping either of the carrier gas flow rate or the source temperature constant, and varying the other. for each of the depositions, the growth is st...

Aluminum has been implicated in several neurodegenerative conditions including Alzheimer's disease. Because the mammalian olfactory system has an unusual capacity for the uptake and transneuronal spread of inhaled substances such as aluminum, whole cell recording techniques were used to examine the actions of aluminum on basic membrane properties and amino acid receptors on rat olfactory bulb m...

various morphologies of silica nanoparticles were synthesized by a microwave-assisted pechini method. silica nanostructures were synthesized via a fast reaction between tetra ethyl ortho silicate and ammonia at presence citric acid and other effective agents in pechini procedure. then for preparation of polymer-matrix nanocomposites, sio2 nanoparticles were added to poly carbonate (pc) and poly...

We report the synthesis of compositionally asymmetric, core-Janus shell plasmonic nanostructures comprised of Au and Ag. Kinetic control was employed to achieve asymmetric shell growth on Au nanoparticles acting as cores. Subsequent differential surface functionalization of these nanostructures enabled programmed shell growth resulting in core-Janus shell nanostructures. UV/vis extinction spect...

We introduce a new type of hybrid material: a nanostructured elastomer covered by a hard photoactive metal-oxide thin film resembling the exoskeleton of insects. It has extreme water repellency and fast self-recovery after damage. A new fabrication method for replicating high aspect ratio, hierarchical re-entrant aluminum structures into polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) is presented. The method is b...