I would first like to thank my parents for their support and encouragement throughout my life. I would also like to thank my husband for encouraging me to attend graduate school, even though we spent most of our engagement in separate cities. To my brother, thank you for helping me with my homework during all the years I was in school. I could not have done all the work in this thesis without the help of the other members of our research group. Feng, thank you for helping me test all the

more »

... and teaching me about the experimental setups. Jihoon, thank you for helping me understand the thermal model and troubleshooting all my Matlab problems. Ke and Xianghai, thank you for the many discussions about the physics involved in this work. I would like to thank The University of Texas at Austin Graduate School and Cockrell School of Engineering for their financial support. Finally, I would like to thank my supervisor, Dr. Wang. I would not have been able to come back to UT to get my Masters with your help. Thank you for guiding and encouraging me through these past two years.