Sharif Digital Repository

We studied porous silicon as a resistive gas sensor at room temperature. Meso- and macro- porous silicon were formed by electrochemical etching of single crystal silicon wafers in different conditions. For Meso porous Si we used p+-type wafers as substrate and for macro porous Si formation n- and p-type wafers were used. The mechanism of methanol vapor sensing was studied by Scanning tunneling spectroscopy and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy. The results showed that methanol increases partial oxidation of surface and causes increase of defect density. These defects play important role to trap electrons and create “acceptor surface states”. These acceptor surface states in p+-type... 

Graphene is one of the most attractive subjects for scientists in the last decade. Its unique properties has been probed by many research groups and innumerable projects have been developed to investigate applications of graphene in electronics, mechanics, biophysics etc. Due to high surface to volume ratio and magnificent electron mobility in graphene, it is a suitable candidate for gas sensing. This has been proved by several theoretical and experimental researches for various gases such as CO, NH3 and NO2 etc. In present thesis, graphene has been prepared chemically and transferred to silicone substrates that are previously coated with a 300 nanometer silicone dioxide layer, by dip... 

The purpose of this project is to construct a gas sensor based on one-dimensional nanostructured electrodes of copper oxide. By creating of these nanostructures, can be reduced breakdown voltage of gases, including flammable, to a few hundred volts. The CuO nanowires were grown by thermal oxidation on copper substrate to form self-assembled. In this method, by heating the copper foil,Cu2O also was formed on substrate. Effects of surface tension of substrate and oxidation temperature on surface density and structure of the nanowires were studied. SEM images taken from the samples showed that the surface tensions increases the density of nanowires and increasing the oxidation temperature leads... 

In this research we focus on study and fabrication of titanium dioxide nanofibers and their application in preparation of dye sensitized solar cell’s photo anode in order to improve optical and electrical properties. Titanium dioxide nanofibers was prepared by electroespinning method. To investigate the effect of nanofiber diameter on optical and electrical properties of photo anode, three different diameter of titanium dioxide nanofibers with diameters of 100-200 nm, 200-300 nm and 500-600 nm was prepared by varying the type or amount of polymer in the electrospinning solution and fixing other conditions of electrospinning process. By use of these structures, paste of pure fibers in form of... 

Duringfalling a viscous liquid freely on a surface, the viscous thread bends due to a phenomenon called buckling. The gravity force in this process could be replaced by an electric force in electrospinning process. In the present thesis, we have designed a number of setups in order to investigate the buckling phenomenon in two categories of helical and non-helical buckling by using direct electrospinning process. By making the collector moving, the electrospun fibers show several shapes including coiling, meander, figure of 8 shape, etc. There are three effective forces acting in this process which are viscous force, electric force and inertia. Also there are three distinct regimes defined... 

In this research, room-temperature flexible humidity sensors using graphene oxide (GO) and partially reduced grapheme oxide (PRGO) are reported. Sensing layer was deposited onto Kapton substrate by spin coating method. Topography of the sensing layer was observed by Optical Microscopy, Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) and Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM). Partial reduction of the GO was confirmed by X-ray Diffraction (XRD) data. Humidity sensing properties of the samples that were annealed in different temperatures in the range of 125-200 were measured at room temperature. The sample which was reduced at 125 presented higher response about 106% and shorter recovery time of about 65 s.... 

Electrospinning is a method for producing of micro and nanometer polymeric fibers. Nowadays, electrospun fibers have been demanded a lot because of various applications of fibers in optical industries, tissue engineering, and chemical and biological sensors. Producing of more complicated shape of fibers by using two new methods called Electrical Bending and Mechanical Buckling are interested in this field. The aim of this thesis is to prepare such fibers and study the effective parameters on the shapes of them. Fibers are collected on the aluminum and Fluorine-doped tin oxide (FTO) glass. Then they were observed by optical microscope. In the Electrical Bending method, we used PEO: PAMPS and... 

The aim of this research is preparation of tungsten trioxide nanoparticles film for hydrogen sulfide gas sensing. These nanoparticles were made by simple and inexpensive sol-gel method. To improve gas sensing properties, various precursors of copper and copper oxides were added to the sol. This solution was coated on alumina substrate by spin coating method. After annealing, sensing properties of samples were studied by measuring the electrical resistance. Best precursor and its molar percentage of copper to tungsten were selected (WO3-Cu2O (1%)). All tests for this sample were done in temperatures below 100 °C and gas concentration lower than 10 ppm. Sensitivity of WO3-Cu2O (1%) to 1 ppm... 

In this research we focus on study and fabrication of one dimentianal TiO2 nanostructures and nanoheterostructures on TiO2 nanofibers in order to use them in Dye Sensitized Solar Cells (DSC). Nanofibers of titanium oxide have been fabricated using hydrothermal method. Then, hierarchical TiO2 nanostructures were grown on the nanofibers via another hydrothermal step. Increasing the effective surface of nanofibers, we achieved two secondary architectures from fibers:1-Nanoparticular fibers (TiO2 nanoparticles grown on nanofibers).2-Nanostars.After fabrication, the SEM and XRD characterizations were provided. Furthermore, the suitable pastes of these nanostructures were prepared for application... 

Studying the interactions between gas molecules and surface is one of the important issues in the field of sensing. In nanometer scales, it can play a key role in fabricating novel nanosensors. Tunneling spectroscopy, on the other hand, is a powerful method for studying the local electrical properties of surface. Our purpose in this project is to design and construct a local tunneling spectroscope, which is able to probe the effects of adsorption of gas molecules on local density of state (LDOS) in sub-nanometer scales. The designed and constructed local tunneling spectroscope system includes a small chamber, which is isolated from any vibrations by means of a set of dampers. In the main... 

In this thesis, substrate surface segregation during thin film deposition and also during heat treatment has been investigated. For this purpose, surface segregation of copper substrate has been studied in some thin layer systems and the results revealed that surface segregation is possible in more unexpected situations. Complete studies of Ni/Cu system were investigated in UHV condition and direct measurement of surface energy as the main controlling parameter of surface segregation was done using contact angle measurements. The results indicated that in V2O5/Cu system, surface segregation of the Cu occurred up to oxide thickness of 200 nm. The Cu surface segregation in the electrodeposited... 

We have studied making and characterization of gasochromic thin films that are used as gas sensors. Gasochromic films consist of an electronchromic layer and a catalyst layer. Addition of palladium to the surface , increased the sensitivity and decreased the working temperature. The used electrochromic layer was tungsten oxide. WO3 films were fabricated by (PLD) method. The substrates were slide glasses. Structure, morphology and composite of tungsten oxide and optical property of films depend on condition of deposition. The pressure of oxygen gas in chamber and temperature of substrate are two factors that can affect in deposition. We can make layers with different morphology by variation... 

The present work emphasizes on hydrogen resistance- sensing properties of WO3 films prepared by Sol-gel routs. The sol-gel is a simple and low cost rout which makes film with high homogeneity and low processing temperature .To improve Hydrogen sensing we modified WO3 films with Pd catalysts by Sol-gel and Electroless methods. AFM , EDX, SEM , XPS , XRD , were applied to analyze structure, morphology and Chemical composition of the fabricated thin films. We measured resistance sensing behavior of prepared films in exposure to different concentration of Hydrogen. All the films were tested under the same conditions. We measured resistance sensing in exposure to concentration below 10000 ppm... 

The interesting properties of metallic and semiconductor nanowires provide many applications in electronic and optoelectronic devices. In this project, we have synthesized Cu and CdSe nanowires using electrodeposition method. To adjust deposition bath conditions and characterize the structure of deposit first we prepared CdSe thin film on ITO substrates. The used solution was contained 0.1 M CdSO4+ 0.1 mM SeO2 in the acidic situation with pH=2.5. The best reduction potential was determined about -0.5 V. The XPS and XRD analyses showed that the ratio of cadmium to selenium in the films was 1:1 and the film’s structure is amorphous. Optical band gap of the cadmium selenide films was obtained... 

In this research we focus on synthesis and analysis of metal and metal oxide nanoparticles and their photocatalytic activity. At the beginning a high current DC power supply and a reactor for the electrical arc discharge process designed and implemented. Several nanoparticles such as tungsten oxide, zinc oxide, silver and gold have synthesized by this method in deionized water, deionized water including surfactants and stabilizers and analyzed. Several characterization techniques such as X-ray diffraction (XRD), dynamic light scattering (DLS) X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), BET, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and UV-Vis spectroscopy have... 

Development of renewable energy production from sun and wind and the development of hybrid electric vehicles seem to be integral components in modern societies in order to overcome the environmental pollution and reduce the use of fossil fuel sources. In such devices energy storage plays an important role and supercapacitor is one the important energy storage devices. Structure of supercapacitor electrodes has considerable effect on supercapacitor performance. Graphene as a 2D carbon structure can improve electrochemical properties of electrodes. Here three different hybrid structure of graphene have been realized. The high capacitance and cyclic stability of graphene nanosheets decorated... 

In the present thesis the fabrication of various tungsten oxide nanostructures (films and colloidal nanoparticles) with coverage of catalyst on their surfaces has been investigated which show gasochromic properties. Tungsten oxide films and nanoparticles were synthesized by pulsed laser abalation technique in vacuum and liquid environment, respectively. To activate the synthesized films and nanoparticles against hydrogen gas, the catalyst nanoparticles (Pd or Pt) were deposited onto their surface through hydrogen reduction of metal salt and electroless methods, respectively. The products were characterized by XPS, UV-Vis., AFM and DLS techniques. The prepared samples show significant color... 

In the first part of this research, for the first time, we introduced a flexible high performance graphene-based supercapacitor using silver fiber fabric as the current collector. The silver fiber fabric offers remarkable advantages such as light weight, mechanical flexibility and ease of integration with electronic textiles, which well-suited for wearable energy storage devices. A new hybrid material of graphene-silver fiber fabric (rGO/SFF) was prepared through a facile electrophoretic deposition of graphene and being used as a binder-free flexible supercapacitor electrode. In order to obtain the optimum condition, the effect of deposition time was investigated and a duration time of 10... 

Metal oxide semiconductors are promising materials for photovoltaic systems, because they are chemically stable, almost non-toxic and abundant. These materials are cheap and have low cost fabrication process. Cu2O is the most popular metal oxide semiconductor to absorb light in Photovoltaic (PV) applications, and photocathode in the photoelectrochemical systems.In this project, thermal oxide and electrodeposition methods, both interesting and cheap, were applied for preparing Cu2O films. As inexpensive materials results in low-minority carrier diffusion length, we report on surface engineering of bulk Cu2O photocathode thorough employing nanorods of copper oxide with the average lengths of... 

In this thesis, physical properties and gas sensing application of three-dimensional graphene-based structures are studied. The three-dimensional structures of reduced graphene oxide and relative hybrids were synthesized through reducing graphene oxide aqueous solution. The arrangement of two-dimensional graphene layers in three-dimensional architectures has some advantages such as high surface area, hence increasing available adsorption sites. These properties result in changing electrical parameters of the structure, such as electrical impedance and phase angle in the presence of different mediums and alteration of temperature and pressure. Various characterization techniques like atomic...