Organic semiconductors have evolved rapidly over the last decades and currently are considered as the next-generation technology for many applications, such as organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) in flat-panel displays (FPDs) and solid state lighting (SSL), and organic solar cells (OSCs) in clean renewable energy. This dissertation focuses mainly on OLEDs. Although the commercialization of the OLED technology in FPDs is growing and appears to be just around the corner for SSL, there are still several key issues that need to be addressed: (1) the cost of OLEDs is very high, largely due to the costly current manufacturing process; (2) the efficiency of OLEDs needs to be improved. This is vital to the success of OLEDs in the FPD and SSL industries; (3) the lifetime of OLEDs, especially blue OLEDs, is the biggest technical challenge. All these issues raise the demand for new organic materials, new device structures, and continued lower-cost fabrication methods. In an attempt to address these issues, we used solution-processing methods to fabricate highly efficient small molecule OLEDs (SMOLEDs); this approach is costeffective in comparison to the more common thermal vacuum evaporation. We also successfully made efficient indium tin oxide (ITO)-free SMOLEDs to further improve the efficiency of …

High-spatial and high-mass resolution laser desorption ionization (LDI) mass spectrometric (MS) imaging technology was developed for the attainment of MS images of higher quality containing more information on the relevant cellular and molecular biology in unprecedented depth. The distribution of plant metabolites is asymmetric throughout the cells and tissues, and therefore the increase in the spatial resolution was pursued to reveal the localization of plant metabolites at the cellular level by MS imaging. For achieving high-spatial resolution, the laser beam size was reduced by utilizing an optical fiber with small core diameter (25 μm) in a vacuum matrix-assisted laser desorption ionization-linear ion trap (vMALDI-LTQ) mass spectrometer. Matrix application was greatly improved using oscillating capillary nebulizer. As a result, single cell level spatial resolution of ~ 12 μm was achieved. MS imaging at this high spatial resolution was directly applied to a whole Arabidopsis flower and the substructures of an anther and single pollen grains at the stigma and anther were successfully visualized. MS imaging of high spatial resolution was also demonstrated to the secondary roots of Arabidopsis thaliana and a high degree of localization of detected metabolites was successfully unveiled. This was the first MS imaging on the root for …

This dissertation provides a general introduction to Inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) and laser ablation (LA) sampling, with an examination of analytical challenges in the employment of this technique. It discusses the origin of metal oxide ions (MO+) in LA-ICP-MS, as well as the effect of introducing helium and nitrogen to the aerosol gas flow on the formation of these polyatomic interferences. It extends the study of polyatomic ions in LA-ICP-MS to metal argide (MAr+) species, an additional source of possible significant interferences in the spectrum. It describes the application of fs-LA-ICP-MS to the determination of uranium isotope ratios in particulate samples.

Photoemission intensities from the molecular orbitals of c(2x2)CO/Pt(111) over a wide photon energy range were measured and analyzed by the same methods developed for structural studies using core levels. The 4{sigma} orbital center of gravity is found to be concentrated between the C and O atoms, while that of the 5{sigma} orbital lies between the C atom and the Pt surface. The C 1s photoelectron diffraction was used to determine the adsorption geometry. The earlier ambiguity that multiple scattering is needed to correctly model a {chi} curve while single scattering is sufficient for understanding major peaks in the ARPEFS-FTS is clarified by studying the clean Ni(111) surface. In the normal emission case, several different combinations of scattering events have similar path length differences (PLDs), and can either cancel each other or enhance the corresponding FT peak. In the off-normal case the degeneracy is greatly reduced due to the lower degree of symmetry. In normal emission AR PEFS, up to third order multiple scattering is needed to describe fully both the {chi} curve and its FT spectrum. To improve the spectral resolution in the ARPEFS-FT analysis, several new spectral analysis methods are introduced. With both autocorrelation autoregression (ACAR) and autocorrelation eigenvector …

This dissertation describes recent developments in solid state nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), for the most part involving the use of dynamic-angle spinning (DAS) NMR to study quadrupolar nuclei. Chapter 1 introduces some of the basic concepts and theory that will be referred to in later chapters, such as the density operator, product operators, rotations, coherence transfer pathways, phase cycling, and the various nuclear spin interactions, including the quadrupolar interaction. Chapter 2 describes the theory behind motional averaging experiments, including DAS, which is a technique where a sample is spun sequentially about two axis oriented at different angles with respect to the external magnetic field such that the chemical shift and quadrupolar anisotropy are averaged to zero. Work done on various rubidium-87 salts is presented as a demonstration of DAS. Chapter 3 explains how to remove sidebands from DAS and magic-angle spinning (MAS) experiments, which result from the time-dependence of the Hamiltonian under sample spinning conditions, using rotor-synchronized {pi}-pulses. Data from these experiments, known as DAH-180 and MAH-180, respectively, are presented for both rubidium and lead salts. In addition, the applicability of this technique to double rotation (DOR) experiments is discussed. Chapter 4 concerns the addition of cross-polarization to DAS (CPDAS). …