Fingerprinting the Properties of WS₂ Nanostructures using Advanced Transmission Electron Microscopy Techniques: From Growth to Characterization

Two-dimensional (2D) layered materials have attracted the interest of the scientific community following the discovery of graphene and its extraordinary properties. Of particular interest is a class of materials called transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs). The materials within this class were discovered to show similarly...

Structured light assisted coherent fourier scatterometry for physical parameter retrieval of nanostructures

In the semiconductor industry, the minimumelement size has stepped into nanometer level. To keep the functionality of fabricated nanostructures, there is a huge demand of a technique that can provide non-destructive inspection and allow for in-line or in-situ monitoring during the manufacturing process. Optical scatterometry, which uses the far...

Andreev bound states in potentially topological setups

The interaction of light with WS2 nanostructures

In this thesis we describe three results of the interaction between WS2 and light: photoluminescence, the formation of exciton-polaritons and Raman scattering. The chirality of the photoluminescence interaction between WS2 and light opens the way for applictions in nanophotonics and specifically valleytronics, the field of interacting with and...

An Edgy Journey with Transition Metal Dichalcogenides: From Flakes to Nanopillars

The family of transitionmetal dichalcogenides offer a unique platformfor electronic and optical tunability due to the sensitivity to their dimensional configuration, edge terminations, and varying crystal phases. In this thesis we focus on structures based on the transition metal dichalcogenides MoS2 and WS2. We study how different crystal...

Imaging DNA nanostructures with advanced TEM techniques

The low contrast of biomolecules in TEM has been a great obstacle for their structure determination and hence to the understanding of their structure-function relation. Historically, single DNA strands remained one the most difficult classes of biomolecular specimens to image, due to low electron scattering strength of its constituent elements....

Lithium and Sodium Insertion in Nanostructured Titanates: Experiments and simulations

Nanostructured materials are featured by providing a variety of favourable electrical properties, as the reduced ion and electron transport paths enable significant enhancement on (de)intercalation rates and hence high power. For TiO2 anatase, nano-sizing results in a curved open cell voltage profile with a much shorter plateau region in...

Towards the Industrial Application of Spark Ablation for Nanostructured Functional Materials

Nanostructuring of functional materials is an essential part in the design of energy related devices – but the industrial tools we have to make these materials are lacking. This dissertation explores the green, flexible, and scalable spark discharge process for the fabrication of complex nanostructured materials, and the application of said...

Cathodoluminescence Microscopy of Nanostructures on Transparent Substrates

Cathodoluminescence (CL), the excitation of light by an electron beam, has gained attention as an analysis tool for investigating the optical response of a structure, at a resolution that approaches that in electron microscopy, in the nanometer range. However, the application possibilities are limited because the use of transparent substrates,...

Advanced Thin Layer Deposition of Materials for Li-ion Batteries via Electrospray

The remarkable physicist Richard P. Feynman once said, more than fifty years ago: ”the principles of physics, as far as I can see, do not speak against the possibility of maneuvering things atom by atom. It is not an attempt to violate any laws; it is something, in principle, that can be done; but in practice, it has not been done because we are...

Fluorinated building blocks for next-generation polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells

The purpose of this thesis is to design, create and study basic building blocks for the construction of self-assembled nanostructured electrodes and membranes for PEMFC. The research described deals with the synthesis of polymerizable fluorosurfactant (1) and its non-polymerizable analogue (2) and the study of their self-assembly properties....

Electrospray-assisted synthesis methods of nanostructured materials for Li-ion batteries

This PhD thesis focuses on the synthesis of nanostructured materials via an aerosol-assisted route based on electrospraying of liquid precursors. Electrospraying is a powerful technique for the production of nearly-monodispersed, highly-charged droplets. The possibility of tailoring the droplet size, as well as coupling the process to different...

Three-dimensional Nanostructures Fabricated by Ion-Beam-Induced Deposition

The direct writing technology known as ion-beam-induced deposition (IBID) has been attracting attention mainly because of its high degree of flexibility of locally prototyping three-dimensional (3D) nanostructures. These high-resolution nanostructures have various research applications. However, no systematic study of the capability of IBID to...

Synthesis and characterisation of tin and antimony nano-compounds for lithium battery applications

The growing interest during the past decades for mobile devices, like laptops, cellular phones, MP3 players, etc., is impressive. moreover, the concerns about climate changes have increased the worldwide interest for electrical and hybrid vehicles and intermittent sustainable energies, like solar and wind energy. These development have...

Aerosol assisted synthesis of nanostructured silica

Zeolites are microporous aluminosilicates that have broad applications especially in industrial processes like fluidized catalytic cracking (FCC) owing to their unique properties with respect to both activity and selectivity. However, the micropores of zeolites may in some cases limit their catalytic performance due to restricted molecular...