Theses and Dissertations from UMD

Permanent URI for this communityhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/2

New submissions to the thesis/dissertation collections are added automatically as they are received from the Graduate School. Currently, the Graduate School deposits all theses and dissertations from a given semester after the official graduation date. This means that there may be up to a 4 month delay in the appearance of a give thesis/dissertation in DRUM

More information is available at Theses and Dissertations at University of Maryland Libraries.

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    Leonard Bernstein's "MASS": An Introductory Guide for the Developing Conductor
    (2022) Goinz, Matthew; Maclary, Edward; Music; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    In June 1966, a year after “Chichester Psalms” premiered, Jaqueline Kennedy Onassis approached Leonard Bernstein with an invitation to write the piece that would open the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC. Bernstein was still int he midst of his music directorship of the New York Philharmonic and fielding guest conducting invitations from the top orchestras of the world. Tasked with honoring an immensely popular fallen President whose Catholic faith was central to his identity while simultaneously celebrating the immeasurable complexity of the United States of America, Bernstein surely felt the weight of this monumental commission. “MASS” would become the largest, most personal, and most controversial composition of Bernstein’s career. Both loved and loathed, “MASS” is an important work in Bernstein’s compositional oeuvre and, indeed, the modern choral-orchestral and theatrical canons. It is also a highly complex piece of music and theater that presents extraordinary organizational and financial challenges to those who would produce it. These obstacles, in turn, create a stumbling block to student conductors who might consider studying it. My hope is that this paper offers these student conductors a tangible, pragmatic place to start their journey with one of the great artistic achievements of the late 20th century.
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    Solution Processing of Long Carbon Nanotubes: from Fundamentals to Applications
    (2019) Wang, Peng; Wang, YuHuang; Chemistry; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    Single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) are one of the most intensively studied nanomaterials due to their extraordinary mechanical, electrical, and optical properties. Attaining aqueous solutions of individual SWCNTs is the critical first step for harnessing their outstanding properties and applying them in many applications and further processing, such as sorting, imaging, and sensing. However, the current ultrasonication-then-ultracentrifugation approach inevitably introduces defects to SWCNTs and cuts the nanotubes into smaller pieces, compromising the electrical and mechanical properties of this otherwise remarkable material. In this dissertation, we introduce an unexpectedly simple approach that completely eliminates the need for ultrasonication, and nondestructively disperses SWCNTs in aqueous solution, so that the synthetic lengths of SWCNTs can be preserved. The dispersion is achieved by using surfactants to wrap and stabilize the protonated SWCNTs by simple acid-base neutralization reactions. The result is that the protons on SWCNTs are replaced by surfactants, and thus, we name this method “superacid-surfactant exchange (S2E).” In chapters 2-4, we demonstrate the length of dissolved SWCNTs by S2E can be 4-10 times longer than the sonicated controls, thereby significantly improving the optical, electrical and electromechanical properties. We further find that by tuning the concentrations of SWCNTs in this S2E process, short nanotubes can be selectively extracted out, allowing separation of the long carbon nanotubes (>10 µm). In chapter 5, we show that long SWCNTs can behave like mechanical reinforcing structures that enhance the mechanical strength of graphene through π-π interactions without sacrificing much of the outstanding transparency of graphene. This fact has enabled the fabrication of the mechanically strong yet ultrathin graphene/SWCNTs hybrid structure (G+T) for operando probing of the electrical double layer at the electrode-electrolyte interface by X-ray photoelectron. Finally, as a ramification result from the S2E process, chapter 6 describes the scalable synthesis of organic-color-center tailored SWCNTs.