VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Solubilisation of carbon nanotubes with a non-conjugated polymer for device applications

Carbon nanotubes (CNT) solubilisation represents a major challenge for their use on a large scale in electronic devices, as CNT's tendency to aggregate prevents an easy and uniform deposition of CNT films. This thesis demonstrate a novel way to solubilise CNTs using the non-conjugated polymer ethylene-vinyl acetate (EVA). The characterisation of the optical and electrical properties of the resulting EVA-CNT nano-hybrids is analysed, and their performance as a holes extraction layer in photovoltaic devices discussed.
First, it is shown that EVA can solubilise single- and multi-walled carbon nanotubes, and by photoluminescence excitation mapping is demonstrated that the polymer creates a strong binding with the CNT inducing a mechanical stress. Raman spectroscopy studies show a non-selective wrapping process, with a tendency to wrap more metallic CNTs. By atomic force microscopy it is confirmed that the nanotubes are individually wrapped. This causes the screening of the aggregation forces in solution and enables the production of uniform and aggregate-free dispersions.
These dispersions allow the fabrication of uniform thin films by spray-coating, conducting and semi-transparent, with conductivities of up to 34 S/cm, two higher of magnitudes ever reached for this combination of materials. The films have been the subject of percolation studies, showing that the films with increasing density show an increase in conductivity which can be well fitted by the expected behaviour for a 2D percolation model.
Finally, to test the electronic properties of such produced CNT films in devices, they have been used as hole transporting layers in perovskite solar cells. It is shown that despite the insulating polymer wrapping the nanotubes, it is possible to use them in conjunction with undoped 2,2',7,7'-Tetrakis[N,N-di(4-methoxyphenyl)amino]-9,9'-spirobifluorene (spiro-OMeTAD) to efficiently extract charges from the perovskite layer, obtaining solar cells with a power conversion efficiency of 16.8% with EVA-SWCNTs. and 17.3% with EVA-MWCNTs. With further optimisation it is expected that they can replace CNT wrapped with conjugated polymers, offering favourable optical properties at lower cost.

Keywords: perovskite solar cells
conductive films
carbon nanotubes
CNT polymer wrapping
non-conjugated polymer
Advisor: Nicholas, R
Riede, M
Role of the chromatin remodeler ATRX in the regulation of gene expression

The ATR-X syndrome is an inherited, X-linked condition associated with alpha-thalassaemia and a variety of developmental abnormalities including profound intellectual disabilities. It results from mutations in a chromatin remodeling factor (called ATRX) which has been shown to perturb a wide range of nuclear activities including replication, transcription and DNA methylation. Although ATRX is known to play a role in the turnover of the histone variant H3.3, the precise role of ATRX in each of these nuclear activities and how ATRX mutations affect phenotype, are poorly understood. Previous studies have shown that ATRX is associated with repeated regions, including pericentric heterochromatin, telomeres, and rDNA repeats, some of which have the propensity to form G-quadruplexes. However, within euchromatin very little is known about ATRX target genes and how their expression is affected by this protein. The two major obstacles to answering these questions are first, the poor quality of ATRX chromatin immunoprecipitation sequencing (ChIP-seq) protocols; and second the lack of a well-defined, tractable cell model to investigate the role of ATRX on the expression of its targets in normal and affected individuals.
In this thesis I studied the role of ATRX in lymphoblastoid cell lines (LCL) as they are readily available from patients with ATR-X syndrome. First, I successfully optimised the protocol for ATRX ChIP-seq. This showed that ATRX is also found at regions of open chromatin including a subset of active promoters and enhancers. Second, using LCL from ATR-X patients and unaffected controls, I identified more than a hundred of candidate genes whose expression is affected by ATRX mutations. Intersecting these two datasets I concluded that more than fifty genes whose expression is altered by mutations in ATRX are probably primary targets of this protein including zinc finger transcription factors. I next assessed these findings using erythroid cells, which are of relevance since mutations in ATRX cause alpha-thalassaemia; a red cell phenotype caused by downregulation of alpha globin expression. Using differentiated human CD34+ cells, I confirmed the binding of ATRX at repeats within the alpha globin cluster but, reflecting the findings in LCL, I also identified ATRX enrichment at HBA1 and HBA2 genes and their associated enhancers suggesting that ATRX at these newly identified sites may normally contribute to the regulation of alpha globin expression.
In conclusion, these high quality ATRX-ChIP datasets allowed me to identify new ATRX targets in human samples. The new set of genes affected by ATRX mutations, within their associated chromatin environment, offers the opportunity to further understand the role of ATRX in heath and disease. The findings show for the first time that ATRX is significantly bound at active euchromatic regions with rapid nucleosome turnover, including active enhancers, in human cells.

Advisor: Gibbons, R
Higgs, D
Uses of near-infrared light for real time image guided surgery

Fluorescence is a technology where a fluorophore is excited by light at a specific wavelength and light is emitted at a longer wavelength and can be detected. This has been applied for imaging in surgery because in the near infra-red spectrum, light can penetrate through overlying tissue and provide information to the surgeon about underlying structures. Two important applications of fluorescence include identification of critical anatomical structures to prevent injury and guide dissection, and identification of tumours to aid diagnostics. During colorectal surgery, it is essential for surgeons to be aware of the location of the structures in the urinary tract. The ureter is an essential landmark of the correct dissection plane as well as its injury being a devastating complication. To date, fluorescence identification of the ureter has only been described in technical papers. This thesis explores ureteric fluorescence further with a large cohort of patients using methylene blue and a first in man study assessing IRDye 800BK (Chapter 3). Urethral identification with NIR light is also explored from proof of principle to in vivo assessment using methylene blue, ICG and a NIR light emitting device (Chapter 4). During oesophagectomy, the thoracic duct can be injured complicating the post-operative course with chylothorax. Fluorescence of the duct for prevention and identification of intraoperative injuries is, for the first time, described (Chapter 5). Finally, WFA as a target for sugars in the mucus is explored to highlight cancer and dysplasia during colonoscopy and TEMS. Autofluorescence in the colon provides difficulties in fluorescent imaging and is explored as well as the struggles with utilising mucus as a target with WFA. However, an additional potential marker, GPA33, could provide a future for in vivo colonic imaging.

Advisor: Mortensen, N
Bodmer, W
Cunningham, C
Transportal literatures: Empire, partition, and exile in colonial and postcolonial travel writing on Cyprus

The purpose of this thesis is to interrogate the stylist forms and literary devices employed in the travel writing of Cyprus with particular attention to how they relate to the political history of the island from the time of British imperial rule, to the rise of nationalist movements, and the ethnolinguistic partition of 1974. Doing so, this thesis uses the concept of transportal literatures to interrogate how these works manoeuvre through these political paradigms in the writings of Cyprus. From its earliest representations in English, the island has been depicted as a limen between cultural spaces, including Asia and Europe and East and West. It is through this literary motif that travel writers frame Cyprus as a portal through which they can explore their own ethnic, national, or gendered identities. The setting exists as a gateway between different ideas of culture and, consequently, as a gateway through which mobile travel writers understand their post/colonial identifications – including British and Cypriot writers alike. It is important to trace the intertextual links between these authors whose works explicitly respond to one another. These texts are chosen to complicate our understanding of the postcolonial discipline: Cyprus, home to two British military bases, and under partial Turkish ‘occupation’, sits in an ambivalent juncture between colonisation and independence. Writers reacting to this – lingering British imperialism, the double hegemonies of Greece and Turkey, the partition dividing islanders – reveal a need to transport notions of nations, cultures, and identities beyond expected binary lines.

Keywords: Cyprus
Postcolonialism
Advisor: Reynolds, M
Law and citizenship in the Roman Greek East: the provinces of Macedonia and Achaia (c. 146 BCE – 212 CE)

This thesis is a contribution to the legal history of the Roman provinces of Macedonia and Achaia, from the end of the Macedonian wars to the general enfranchisement of the free population of the Roman Empire in 212 CE.
Chapter One explores the extent of Roman authority in the jurisdictional sphere on the one hand, and the fate of local jurisdictions and judicial institutions on the other. It argues that, while Roman authorities swiftly took charge of interstate jurisdiction, local legal frameworks continued to operate on a civic or community level and retained a considerable degree of judicial autonomy over intra-civic affairs.
Chapter Two argues that local civic affiliations remained key to attributing legal identity throughout the period in question and are therefore crucial for our understanding of provincial legal development. Furthermore, it explores the main legal implications of the juridical heterogeneity of local communities which remains characteristic of the entire period and argues that Roman citizenship extension did not deprive its beneficiaries of their local legal identities, neither before nor after the Antonine Constitution.
Chapter Three concerns the making, the observation, and the application of laws and legal principles in mainland Greece. Based on investigation into Roman and local legislative activities on the one hand, and locally attested legal practices on the other, the chapter argues that most Greek communities, even non-privileged ones, were acknowledged by Rome as legal authorities in their own right, with regional particularities in substantive law still observed and articulated in the High Empire. Finally, the evidence for separation of jurisdictions and applicability of law is explored, exposing cases which display transmission of legal concepts beyond their expected spheres of application.

Keywords: law
Roman
Greece
citizenship
Legal history
Macedonia
Achaia
Advisor: Kantor, G
TEM of neutron, proton and self-ion irradiation damage in FeCr alloys

In the absence of a high-flux fusion-neutron irradiation source, the microstructural and mechanical changes expected within materials exposed to a nuclear-fusion environment must be replicated by fission-neutron and other surrogate-particle irradiations. This study uses transmission electron microscopy (TEM) to compare the microstructural defects produced in FeCr alloys during exposure to neutrons, protons, and self-ions.
Alloys of Fe6Cr and Fe9Cr were irradiated using fission-neutrons, 2.0MeV Fe+ ions and 1.2MeV protons at similar temperatures (~300C) and similar doses (~2.0dpa). The neutron-irradiated alloys contained a population of interstitial dislocation loops with b=<111> (>70%) and b=<100>. The visible dislocation loops were on average ~5nm in size, and the density varied from 2±1 x1014cm-3 in the matrix to 1.2±0.3 x1017cm-3 close to helical dislocation lines. Dislocations loops were mostly clustered around sub-grain boundaries and helical-dislocations. Helical-dislocations formed from initially straight screw dislocations experiencing radial-climb in response to a vacancy-biased defect flux. Small chromium clusters were identified in the neutron-irradiated Fe6Cr, and chromium α’-phase precipitates were identified in the Fe9Cr.
Self-ion irradiation produced mostly homogeneously distributed dislocation loops (6-7nm on average), but with a greater fraction of <100> loops (~40%) than was seen in the neutron-irradiated alloys. The self-ion irradiated Fe6Cr and Fe9Cr contained only vacancy-type loops, unlike the neutron or proton irradiated sample which contained only interstitial loops. Chromium remained in solution in both ion-irradiated samples.
Proton-irradiated Fe9Cr contained dislocation loops close to helical-dislocation segments, similar to the neutron-irradiated sample. Chromium α’-phases were also identified. The proton-irradiated Fe6Cr contained much larger loops (~13nm on average) than the neutron or ion-irradiated alloys, and chromium was shown to have segregated on and around these loops. Both proton-irradiated alloys contained large voids (>4nm and up to 12nm) at a density greater than 1016cm-3. In the neutron and ion-irradiated alloys, voids were mostly <2nm.

Keywords: neutron damage
diffraction contrast
iron chromium
irradiation damage
self-ions
defect analysis
radiation damage
FeCr
TEM
Advisor: Roberts, S
Lozano-Perez, S
‘De jeleada, de vekjeada’: transnationalism, history, and the schooling of Low German Mennonites of Canada and Mexico

This study is a multi-sited historical ethnography about the schooling of Low German Mennonites (LGM) in Canada and Mexico, two nations with sizeable LGM populations and that have significant transnational connections. Using fieldwork conducted in sSouthern Manitoba and nNorthern Mexico—interviews, participant observation in schools, and archival analysis, —I explore the variety of schooling options pursued by this ethno-religious minority group. Framed as a history of the present, I draw on the past to illuminate the present state of Mennonite schooling in both Mexico and Canada. As transnational citizens, whose loyalty lies with the diaspora of fellow Low German speaking Mennonites, this community has repeatedly resisted state incursions into their schools, choosing migration over assimilation—conflict with the government over schools served as the impetus for their migration to Canada from Russia in the 1870s and out of Canada in the 1920s, with nearly 8,000 Mennonites leaving for Latin America.  For Low German Mennonites, schooling has historically served as the primary locus through which their language, faith, and worldview—known cumulatively as the Oole Ordnung—have been preserved.  However, schooling is simultaneously the site through which linguistic, theological, and technological reforms have been initiated into the community, introduced largely through transnational influences—, creating a situation where schools serve concurrently to sustain and threaten the Oole Ordnung.  Framed as a dialectic, I explore this tension throughout the thesis, arguing that each variant of LGM schooling represents a unique synthesis of these competing factors, from the rudimentary one-room schools with six years of school to sophisticated university preparatory programs.  In each iteration of LGM schooling, the Oole Ordnung is contested and reimagined, and yet is perceived by the community as immutable.  I argue that schools, because of their central place in the community, are key social institutions through which to examine the religious, cultural, and linguistic discourses extant within the community.  This thesis expands the field of Mennonite Studies, highlighting the position of the schools as a site worthy of further study, and makes a unique contribution to debates surrounding minority and transnational education.

Keywords: education
Mennonites
schooling
Canada
Mexico
transnationalism
history of education
Advisor: Gearon, L
Mills, D
Stambach, A
The political theology of Bruno Latour

Although references to religion permeate the work of Bruno Latour from beginning to end, these have generally been dismissed in the critical literature as being superficial and extraneous. And yet, Latour makes strong claims that an understanding of religion is integral to his philosophical system. In this study, I offer the first full critical engagement with Latour’s writing on religion and thus with Latour as a potential contributor to the discipline of theology.
I argue that a critical engagement of this sort contributes to the development of a political theology. First, it provides a conceptual framework by which modes of political thought and behaviour that are prevalent within modernity can be critiqued theologically. Latour shows how modernity is continually deploying an epistemological appeal to transcendence and thus that it has the form of a covert religion or religiosity. This has the effect of de-politicizing the contemporary public realm. Second, it provides the means for a positive re-imagining or re-conceptualization of religion as that which stays within the realm of immanence, counteracting the de-politicizing effect of modernity and providing the basis for new forms of human connectivity, responsibility and agency at the present time.
As a point of application, I propose that interaction with Latour’s writing will enable the discipline of theology to engage with questions surrounding the impact of the contemporary environmental crisis. Latour shows how existing modes of human political negotiation are proving inadequate to the task of addressing this challenge precisely because they are expressions of the de-politicizing ideology of modernity. What is needed is an affective, moral and spiritual transformation. I demonstrate how Latour’s political theology can make a vital contribution on this front, enabling the discipline of theology to be at the forefront of important debates about the future of global human society.

Keywords: Carl Schmitt
Eric Voegelin
Charles Peguy
Political theology
Bruno Latour
Advisor: Ward, G
Symmetry-breaking degrees of freedom in molecular perovskites

Perovskite oxides are functionally and structurally very diverse materials largely due to their abundance of symmetry-lowering degrees of freedom. A related and more nascent area of research is molecular perovskites: systems where at least one of the constituent ions is a polyatomic species. As a result of the topological congruence, molecular perovskites can often be understood in terms of the concepts developed for their inorganic congeners; yet the presence of polyatomic components imparts a higher level of ﬂexibility. This Thesis addresses the structural chemistry of molecular perovskites with regards to the effects of introducing molecular moieties. A special emphasis is placed on the existence and ramiﬁcations of “unconventional degrees of freedom”—deformations unrealisable in conventional perovskites.
Three main themes are developed. First, the presence of polyatomic linking anions means that the BX6 octahedra are no longer corner sharing. Consequently, translational rigid unit phonon modes emerge, where columns or planes of octahedra displace relative to each other. These vibrations are referred to as “columnar shifts” and often constitute soft modes. Hence, they are prone to condensation upon cool- ing and can drive displacive phase transitions—like tilts in conventional perovskites. Second, as molecular linkers enhance the separation of the neighbouring metal units, the energy scale for B-site correlation is reduced. This is apparent in the coop- erative Jahn-Teller distortions in Cu-based systems, e.g. [C(NH2)3]Cu(HCOO)3, CuPt(CN)6 and Cu3[Co(CN)6]2. Dilution of the Cu2+ cations by Mn2+ generates orbitally disordered states at seemingly lower dilution levels than in solid solutions of inorganic perovskites. Third, it is demonstrated how the unconventional degrees of freedom expand the library of symmetry-breaking distortions. A key result is that molecular perovskites exhibit a comparatively high propensity for the adoption of acentric space groups via hybrid improper mechanisms; an impossible occurrence in conventional perovskites in the absence of layered order.

Keywords: perovskites
coordination polymers
symmetry
Advisor: Goodwin, A
Tuning the properties of ceramic solid electrolytes for lithium batteries

The potential of all-solid-state batteries with lithium metal anodes to be safer, more energy dense and better performing energy storage devices than current lithium ion batteries has led to a major drive in developing solid electrolytes that combine high ionic conductivity with suitable interfacial and mechanical properties. This work analyses the electrochemical and mechanical properties of two ceramic solid electrolytes, Li1.4Al0.4Ge1.6(PO4)3 (LAGP) and Li6.5La3Zr1.5Ta0.5O12 (LLZTO), and their interfacial behaviour with a lithium metal anode. A novel synthetic route to a 3D hybrid solid electrolyte with tuneable properties and a new approach to diagnose cell failure in all-solid-state batteries are presented.
A hybrid electrolyte with 3D bicontinuous ordered ceramic and polymer microchannels was successfully synthesised using 3D printing. While the ceramic solid electrolyte channels enable high ionic conduction pathways, the presence of non-conductive polymer channels provides the hybrid with structural stability and resilience to fracture. Full control of the hybrid’s parameters such as the choice of ceramic electrolyte, polymer, microarchitecture and ceramic-to-polymer ratio was demonstrated. The LAGP-epoxy hybrid electrolyte with a gyroid microarchitecture achieved the highest ionic conductivity of 1.6 x 10-4 S·cm-1, which is only lowered by the volume of non-conductive polymer present and the channel tortuosity. The favourable combination of the epoxy polymer’s fracture strength and the ‘easy-to-fill’ gyroid channels, improved the hybrid’s electrochemical and mechanical performance compared to a LAGP pellet. The variation of the ceramic electrolyte and the microarchitecture influence the hybrid’s electrochemical properties, while the polymer volume fraction provides a suitable 3D backbone to increase the hybrid’s mechanical stability and cycle life. Despite the sintering challenges of LLZTO, a possible synthetic route to generate LLZTO-epoxy hybrid electrolytes was also demonstrated.
Additionally, inhibiting lithium dendrite growth in LLZTO and other solid electrolytes is another vital challenge. Hence, this work also presents a new method to diagnose dendrite growth by combining galvanostatic cycling with ex-situ magnetic resonance imaging. This approach allowed the identification of lithium dendrites in short-circuit cells and monitoring of their location in 3D space at different stages of cycling.

Keywords: LLZTO
3D Printing
composite solid electrolyte
ceramic electrolyte
mechanical properties
ceramic-polymer electrolyte
hybrid electrolyte
solid electrolyte
lithium battery
LAGP
interfacial properties
all-solid-state battery
Advisor: Bruce, P