| Description |
Nanomaterials have influenced various fields and improved our quality of living through multiple smart devices. However, much more development is still needed in the field of medicine for early diagnosis of disease and treatments; the performance of computational devices for increased data flow; and the need for clean, efficient and high capacity energy storage. To achieve these tasks, designing and engineering of nanometer-scale materials with desired electrical, optical and thermal properties are required. This dissertation presented herein focused on the studies of various nanostructured materials such as nanoparticles, thin films oxides, and two-dimensional (2D) materials for advanced devices in the fields of biosensing, environmental, electronic, spintronic, and power-generation applications. The dissertation is organized as follows. Chapter 1 introduces the background and motivation for research on various nanomaterials and the applications discussed. Spintronic devices hold promise to overcome the limitations of traditional electronics. Yet so far there is limited spintronic research in novel 2D materials. In Chapter 2 the spin transport properties of trilayer MoS2 films were studied as the spin transport channel using all-electrical spin injection and nonlocal spin detection of spin-polarized carriers. In Chapter 3, we discuss the spin thermal power generated from thin films made of metal alloy. Chapters 4, 5, and 6 discussed the recent advances of 2D materials for developing fast, low-cost, and smart electronic devices. In Chapter 4, we studied how 2D tungsten disulfide (WS2) thin films can be grown by pulsed laser deposition (PLD). Chapter 5 introduces a p-type 2D semiconductor, tin monoxide (SnO). 2D SnO with various numbers of layers were deposited using PLD technique. Field effect transistors (FETs) using few-layer SnO channels were fabricated. We found that field effect mobility varies as the number of 2D SnO layer. Chapter 6 presents the results of the ambipolar conduction properties of SnO. Chapter 7 focuses on the utilization of nanostructured materials in biomedical application - glucose sensors. By incorporating various nanostructured metal oxides, we demonstrated an enhanced sensitivity towards glucose from both enzymatic and nonenzymatic glucose sensors. |
