Modern programs for improving reliability of existing nanocomponents and nanosystems, and for assuring continued high reliability for the next generation of these systems, require stochastic modeling and statistical methods for predicting and assessing various aspects of the reliability. Recent work, by using on/off type models that capture interactions between atoms of a nanocomponent, arrived at an integrated probabilistic model, which was used to assess reliabilities for two nanocomponent structure functions. Also, by using the notion of copula, a model that captures interactions between atoms was developed and used to assess the reliability function of a nanocomponent having the series structure. A goal of this proposal is to extend and refine both models by accounting for the more complex dependencies among atoms and assess nanocomponents reliability/reliability function with different structure functions based on those models. The proposed modeling framework will advance understanding of nanocomponents failure in different environments and will lead to novel approaches to assessing nanocomponents reliability/reliability function. Another direction of proposed research aims to assess nanosystems reliability/reliability function. Motivated by palladium nanowire nanonetwork-based hydrogen sensors, the original aim was to assess the reliability of a nanonetwork. Here, the nanonetwork plays a role of a nanosystem which is composed of ultra palladiuim nanowires where each nanowire is a nanocomponent of the nanonetwork/nanosystem. The nanonetwork topology was assumed to be a square lattice and the reliability, which differs from the traditional definition, is defined as the probability that a nanosystem percolates for a certain number of cycles of hydrogen exposure without failure. The investigator proposes to extend and refine previous work by accounting for interactions that might exist between nanocomponents as well as considering different topologies for a nanosystem. These advances will not only provide methods to assess reliability for specific nanosystem/nanonetwork topologies, but also will bring about new perspectives to nanosystem's reliability evaluation.
Nanoproducts have great potential in many industrial applications that involve electronics, sensors, solar cells, super-strong materials, coatings, drug delivery and medicine. In today's market, the number of consumer products with nano-sized components and systems is growing exponentially. Similar to nanotechnology's success in consumer products and other sectors, nanoproducts have the potential also to improve the environment by direct applications to detect, prevent and remove pollutants as well as indirectly by using nanotechnology to design cleaner industrial processes and create environmentally responsible products. Due to the fact that nanoproducts account for a high proportion of costs, knowing the reliability of such products is necessary to guarantee the advancement of nanotechnology. This project represents a multi-disciplinary effort that develops stochastic models and statistical tools for assessing nanoproducts reliability. This, in turn, will lead to a better understanding of design optimization against reliability which is always crucial in technology and will be even more so in complex nanotechnologies.
