The synthesis of magnetic nanoparticles has long been an area of active research. Magnetic nanoparticles can be used in a wide variety of applications such as magnetic inks, magnetic memory devices, drug delivery, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) contrast agents, and pathogen detection in foods. In applications such as MRI, particle uniformity is particularly crucial, as is the magnetic response of the particles. Uniform magnetic particles with good magnetic properties are therefore required. One particularly effective technique for synthesizing nanoparticles involves biomineralization, which is a naturally occurring process that can produce highly complex nanostructures. Also, the technique involves mild conditions (ambient temperature and close to neutral pH) that make this approach suitable for a wide variety of materials. The term 'bioinspired' is important because biomineralization research is inspired by the naturally occurring process, which occurs in certain microorganisms called 'magnetotactic bacteria'. Magnetotactic bacteria use biomineralization proteins to produce magnetite crystals having very good uniformity in size and morphology. The bacteria use these magnetic particles to navigate according to external magnetic fields. Because these bacteria synthesize high quality crystals, research has focused on imitating aspects of this biomineralization in vitro. In particular, a biomineralization iron-binding protein found in a certain species of …

The Standard Model (SM) is one of the most tested and verified physical theories of all time, present experimental observations are consistent with SM expectations. On the other hand SM can not explain many physical observations: the cosmological observations possibly infer the presence of dark matter which is clearly beyond the SM expectations; the SM Higgs model, while explaining the generation of fermion masses, can not explain the hierarchy problem and a non natural fine tuning of SM is needed to cancel out quadratic divergences in the Higgs boson mass. New physics (NP) beyond SM should hence be investigated: rising the energy above NP processes thresholds, and detecting new particles or new effects not predicted by the standard model directly, is one of the possible approaches; another approach is to make precision measurements of well known processes or looking for rare processes which involve higher order contribution from NP processes, this approach need higher luminosities with respect to the previous approach but lower beam energies. Search for Lepton Flavor Violation (LFV) in charged lepton decays is promising: neutrino physics provides indeed a clear and unambiguous evidence of LFV in the neutral lepton sector via mixing processes, which have been observed …

The majority of this research has been in developing a model to describe the magnetostrictive properties of Terfenol-D, Tb{sub 1{minus}x}Dy{sub x}Fe{sub y} (x = 0.7-0.75 and y = 1.8--2.0), a rare earth-iron alloy which displays much promise for use in device applications. In the first chapter an introduction is given to the phenomena of magnetization and magnetostriction. The magnetic processes responsible for the observed magnetic properties of materials are explained. An overview is presented of the magnetic properties of rare earths, and more specifically the magnetic properties of Terfenol-D. In the second chapter, experimental results are presented on three composition of Tb{sub 1{minus}x}Dy{sub x}Fe{sub y} with x = 0.7, y= 1.9, 1.95, and x= 0.73, y= 1.95. The data were taken for various levels of prestress to show the effects of composition and microstructure on the magnetic and magnetostrictive properties of Terfenol-D. In the third chapter, a theoretical model is developed based on the rotation of magnetic domains. The model is used to explain the magnetic and magnetostrictive properties of Terfenol-D, including the observed negative strictions and large change in strain. The fourth chapter goes on to examine the magnetic properties of Terfenol-D along different crystallographic orientations. In the fifth …