Optical and Carrier Transport Properties of Cosputtered Zn–In–Sn–O Films and Their Applications to TFTs

The optical and carrier transport properties of amorphous transparent zinc indium tin oxide (ZITO)(a-ZITO) thin films and the characteristics of the thin-film transistors TFTs were examined as a function of chemical composition. The as-deposited films were very conductive and showed clear free carrier absorption FCA . The analysis of the FCA gave the effective mass value of 0.53 me and a momentum relaxation time of 3.9 fs for an a-ZITO film with Zn:In:Sn = 0.35:0.35:0.3. TFTs with the as-deposited channels did not show current modulation due to the high carrier density in the channels. Thermal annealing at 300°C decreased the carrier density and TFTs fabricated with the annealed channels operated with positive threshold voltages VT when Zn contents were 25 atom % or larger. VT shifted to larger negative values, and subthreshold voltage swing increased with decreasing the Zn content, while large on–off current ratios 107–108 were kept for all the Zn contents. The field effect mobilities ranged from 12.4 to 3.4 cm2 V−1 s−1 for the TFTs with Zn contents varying from 5 to 48 atom %. The role of Zn content is also discussed in relation to the carrier transport properties and amorphous structures.

Material Characterisation and Electro-Optical Studies of a Ferroelectric Liquid Crystal

Department of Electronics, Cochin University of Science and Technology

Fabrication and characterisation of polymer optical fibers for smart sensing and optical amplification

The thesis presented the fabrication and characterisation of polymer optical fibers in their applications as optical amplifier and smart sensors.Optical polymers such as PMMA are found to be a very good host material due to their ability to incorporate very high concentration of optical gain media like fluorescent dyes and rare earth compounds. High power and high gain optical amplification in organic dye-doped polymer optical fibers is possible due to extremely large emission cross sections of oyes. Dye doped (Rhodamine 6G) optical fibers were fabricated by using indigenously developed polymer optical fiber drawing tower. Loss characterization of drawn dye doped fibers was carried out using side illumination technique. The advantage of the above technique is that it is a nondestructive method and can also be used for studying the uniformity in fiber diameter and doping. Sensitivity of the undoped polymer fibers to temperature and microbending were also studied in its application in smart sensors.Optical amplification studies using the dye doped polymer optical fibers were carried out and found that an amplification of l8dB could be achieved using a very short fiber of length lOcm. Studies were carried out in fibers with different dye concentrations and diameter and it was observed that gain stability was achieved at relatively high dye concentrations irrespective of the fiber diameter.Due to their large diameter, large numerical aperture, flexibility and geometrical versatility of polymer optical fibers it has a wide range of applications in the field of optical sensing. Just as in the case of conventional silica based fiber optic sensors, sensing techniques like evanescent wave, grating and other intensity modulation schemes can also be efficiently utilized in the case of POF based sensors. Since polymer optical fibers have very low Young's modulus when compared to glass fibers, it can be utilized for sensing mechanical stress and strain efficiently in comparison with its counterpart. Fiber optic sensors have proved themselves as efficient and reliable devices to sense various parameters like aging, crack formation, weathering in civil structures. A similar type of study was carried out to find the setting characteristics of cement paste used for constructing civil structures. It was found that the measurements made by using fiber optic sensors are far more superior than that carried out by conventional methods. More over,POF based sensors were found to have more sensitivity as well.

Chaotic Dynamics of Semiconductor Laser with Current Modulation and optoelectronic feedback

Chaotic dynamics of directly modulated semiconductor lasers have been studied extensively over the last two decades because of their application in secure optical communication. However, chaos is generally suppressed in such systems when the nonlinear gain reduction factor is above 0.01 which is very much smaller than the reported values in semiconductors like InGaAsP. In this paper we show that by giving an optoelectronic feedback with appropriate delay one can increase the range of the values of the gain reduction factor for which chaos can be observed. Numerical studies show that negative feedback is more efficient in producing chaotic dynamics.

Simultaneous determination of nonlinear optical and thermo-optic parameters of liquid samples

The authors apply the theory of photothermal lens formation and also that of pure optical nonlinearity to account for the phase modulation in a beam as it traverses a nonlinear medium. It is used to simultaneously determine the nonlinear optical refraction and the thermo-optic coefficient. They demonstrate this technique using some metal phthalocyanines dissolved in dimethyl sulfoxide, irradiated by a Q-switched Nd:YAG laser with 10 Hz repetition rate and a pulse width of 8 ns. The mechanism for reverse saturable absorption in these materials is also discussed.

Laser-induced Bessel beams can realize fast all-optical switching in gold nanosol prepared by pulsed laser ablation

We demonstrate the possibility of realizing, all-optical switching in gold nanosol. Two overlapping laser beams are used for this purpose, due to which a low-power beam passing collinear to a high-power beam will undergo cross phase modulation and thereby distort the spatial profile. This is taken to advantage for performing logic operations. We have also measured the threshold pump power to obtain a NOT gate and the minimum response time of the device. Contrary to the general notion that the response time of thermal effects used in this application is of the order of milliseconds, we prove that short pump pulses can result in fast switching. Different combinations of beam splitters and combiners will lead to the formation of other logic functions too.

Studies on pulp propogation in single mode optical fibres

Studies on pulse propagation in single mode optical fibers have attracted interest from a wide area of science and technology as they have laid down the foundation for an in-depth understanding of the underlying physical principles, especially in the field of optical telecommunications. The foremost among them is discovery of the optical soliton which is considered to be one of the most significant events of the twentieth century owing to its fantastic ability to propagate undistorted over long distances and to remain unaflected after collision with each other. To exploit the important propertia of optical solitons, innovative mathematical models which take into account proper physical properties of the single mode optical fibers demand special attention. This thesis contains a theoretical analysis of the studies on soliton pulse propagation in single mode optical fibers.