Thermal and Electrical Properties of Nanocomposites, Including Material Properties

The research described in this thesis is part of a state-funded IOP-EMVT project in cooperation with industrial companies, aiming at the design, assessment and implementation of new, environmental friendly (e.g. oil and SF6 - free) solid dielectric materials. A large disadvantage of solid polymer dielectrics is their relatively low thermal...

Charge Carriers and Excited States in Supramolecular Materials

The field of organic electronics has been thriving for the last decades due to growing commercial interest. One of the advantages of using organic materials as semiconductors is the possibility to tune their optoelectronic properties by modifying the chemical structure and organization of the building blocks. In this thesis, the properties of...

Structure and dynamics of hydrogen in nanocomposite solid acids for fuel cell applications

The transition to sustainable energy sources is inevitable. A possible future scenario could be the hydrogen economy, where the fuel cell plays an important role in the conversion of hydrogen back to electricity. The technology behind the fuel cell however, still has significant room for improvement. A next step would be the realization of so...

Photoconductivity of Quantum Dot Films Towards Third-Generation Solar Cells

Colloidal semiconductor nanoparticles, also called quantum dots, have unique opto-electronic properties that make them promising candidates for many applications such as solar cells, light–emitting diodes, lasers, or biological imaging. One of the most interesting features is that the bandgap energy can be tuned by changing the particle size....

Photoconductance of conjugated materials for organic electronics

The photogeneration and mobility of charge carriers in organic thin films, including bulk heterojunctions (BHJs), have been studied with the time resolved microwave photo-conductance technique (TRMC). The TRMC technique allows the electrodeless measurement of the photoconductance with nanosecond time resolution. The research focuses on the way...

Scaling-Up Eutectic Freeze Crystallization

A novel crystallization technology, Eutectic Freeze Crystallization (EFC) has been investigated and further developed in this thesis work. EFC operates around the eutectic temperature and composition of aqueous solutions and can be used for recovery of (valuable) dissolved salts (and/or or acids) and water from a wide variety of aqueous process...

Discotic liquid crystals: From dynamics to conductivity

The dynamics and conductivity of the discotic liquid-crystal, hexakis(n-hexylox) triphenylene (HAT6), and charge-transfer complex that it forms with 2,4,7trinitro-9-fluorenone (TNF) are studied using quasielastic neutron-scattering (QENS) and Pulse-Radiolysis Time resolved Conductivity. These two techniques measure the molecular dynamics and...

Carbon nanotube-based superconducting and ferromagnetic hybrid systems

Carbon Nanotubes are molecules with exceptional physical properties that are most useful for applications in the growing field of nanotechnology. In addition, because of its special electrical properties, they are extremely useful for experiments on the fundamental properties of one-dimensional electronic systems. This thesis describes a series...

Polypyrrole electrochemistry: Environmentally friendly corrosion protection of steel: (im)possibilities

Chromate compounds have been widely used to improve the corrosion protection of galvanised steel and aluminium objects in the past decades. The hexavalent chromium in chromate enhances the adherence of coatings to galvanised steel and aluminium. Additionally, if the passive layers on these materials should become damaged, hexavalent chromium...

Photoinduced charge separation in dye-sensitized films of smooth and nanocrystalline TiO2

Single-Electron and Molecular Devices

The exponential downscaling of (sub-) microelectronic devices known as Mooreâs law will continue in all likelihood for the next two decades. Transistors with lengths below 10 nm have already been successfully demonstrated. However, once the length of transistors will have been reduced to only a couple of nanometers, present-day CMOS technology...

Conductivity detection for application in capillary electrophoresis microchips

Charge transport in pi- and sigma-conjugated polymers

Charge carrier dynamics in pulse-irradiated columnar aggregates of mesomorphic porphyrins and phthalocyannines

Photophysical properties of opto-electric molecules studied by time-resolved microwave conductivity