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Combining two materials in a nanoscale level can create a composite with new functionalities and improvements in their physical and chemical properties. Here we present a high-throughput approach to produce a nanocomposite consisting of metal nanoparticles and semiconductor oxide nanostructures. Volmer-Weber growth, though unfavorable for thin films, promotes nucleation of dense and isolated metal nanoparticles on crystalline oxide nanostructures, resulting in new material properties. We demonstrate such a growth of Au nanoparticles on SnO₂nanostructures and a remarkable sensitivity of the nanocomposite for detecting traces of analytes in surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy. Au nanoparticles with tunable size enable us to modify surface wettability and convert hydrophilic oxide surfaces into super-hydrophobic with contact angles over 150°. We also find that charge injection through electron beam exposure shows the same effect as photo-induced charge separation, providing an extra Raman enhancement up to an order of magnitude.

Large area highly crystalline MoS₂and WS₂thin films were successfully grown on different substrates using radio-frequency magnetron sputtering technique. Structural, morphological and thermoelectric transport properties of MoS_2,and WS₂thin films have been investigated systematically to fabricate high-efficient thermal energy harvesting devices. X-ray diffraction data revealed that crystallites of MoS₂and WS₂films are highly oriented in 002 plane with uniform grain size distribution confirmed through atomic force microscopy study. Surface roughness increases with substrate temperature and it plays a big role in electron and phonon scattering. Interestingly, MoS₂films also display low thermal conductivity at room temperature and strongly favors achievement of higher thermoelectric figure of merit value of up to 1.98. Raman spectroscopy data shows two distinct MoS₂vibrational modes at 380 cm⁻¹for E¹_2gand 410 cm⁻¹for A_1g. Thermoelectric transport studies further demonstrated that MoS₂films show p-type thermoelectric characteristics, while WS₂is an n-type material. We demonstrated high efficient pn-junction thermoelectric generator device for waste heat recovery and cooling applications.

The need for operational models describing the friction factorfin streams remains undisputed given its utility across a plethora of hydrological and hydraulic applications concerned with shallow inertial flows. For small-scale roughness elements uniformly covering the wetted parameter of a wide channel, the Darcy-Weisbachf = 8(u_*/U_b)²is widely used at very high Reynolds numbers, whereu_*is friction velocity related to the surface kinematic stress,U_b = Q/Ais bulk velocity,Qis flow rate, andAis cross-sectional area orthogonal to the flow direction. In natural streams, the presence of vegetation introduces additional complications to quantifyingf, the subject of the present work. Turbulent flow through vegetation are characterized by a number of coherent vortical structures: (i) von Karman vortex streets in the lower layers of vegetated canopies, (ii) Kelvin-Helmholtz as well as attached eddies near the vegetation top, and (iii) attached eddies well above the vegetated layer. These vortical structures govern the canonical mixing lengths for momentum transfer and their influence onfis to be derived. The main novelty is that the friction factor of vegetated flow can be expressed asf_v = 4C_d(U_v/U_b)²whereU_vis the spatially averaged velocity within the canopy volume, andC_dis a local drag coefficient per unit frontal area derived to include the aforemontioned layer-wise effects of vortical structures within and above the canopy along with key vegetation properties. The proposed expression is compared with a number of empirical relations derived for vegetation under emergent and submerged conditions as well as numerous data sets covering a wide range of canopy morphology, densities, and rigidity. It is envisaged that the proposed formulation be imminently employed in eco-hydraulics where the interaction between flow and vegetation is being sought.