Power characteristics of dielectric optical piet hein waveguides

A fairly rigorous analytical treatment of the power characteristics of dielectric optical waveguides with Piet Hein core-cross sectional geometry is presented in this paper. This kind of wareguide structure would be advantageous owing to the absence of corners, which are found in rectangular guides, resulting in undesirable loss (hit to the scattering of light. In order to simplify this theoretical approach. em approximation of vanishing refractive index difference between the guiding and the non-guiding sections is implemented. The variation eJ logarithmic power is shown for different dimensions of the core, corresponding to different azimuthal modal indices. It is found that the nutlet with higher index values carry less logaritlunic power in the lower tail of the propagation 's constant range, and this feature affects the higher tail. A better kind of uniformity of the power distribution is observed near the higher tail of the range of propagation Constants

Automation of Chemical Spray Pyrolysis Unit and Fabrication of Sprayed CuInS2/In2S3 Solar Cell

Aim of the present work was to automate CSP process, to deposit and characterize CuInS2/In2S3 layers using this system and to fabricate devices using these films.An automated spray system for the deposition of compound semiconductor thin films was designed and developed so as to eliminate the manual labour involved in spraying and facilitate standardization of the method. The system was designed such that parameters like spray rate, movement of spray head, duration of spray, temperature of substrate, pressure of carrier gas and height of the spray head from the substrate could be varied. Using this system, binary, ternary as well as quaternary films could be successfully deposited.The second part of the work deal with deposition and characterization of CuInS2 and In2S3 layers respectively.In the case of CuInS2 absorbers, the effects of different preparation conditions and post deposition treatments on the optoelectronic, morphological and structural properties were investigated. It was observed that preparation conditions and post deposition treatments played crucial role in controlling the properties of the films. The studies in this direction were useful in understanding how the variation in spray parameters tailored the properties of the absorber layer. These results were subsequently made use of in device fabrication process.Effects of copper incorporation in In2S3 films were investigated to find how the diffusion of Cu from CuInS2 to In2S3 will affect the properties at the junction. It was noticed that there was a regular variation in the opto-electronic properties with increase in copper concentration.Devices were fabricated on ITO coated glass using CuInS2 as absorber and In2S3 as buffer layer with silver as the top electrode. Stable devices could be deposited over an area of 0.25 cm2, even though the efficiency obtained was not high. Using manual spray system, we could achieve devices of area 0.01 cm2 only. Thus automation helped in obtaining repeatable results over larger areas than those obtained while using the manual unit. Silver diffusion on the cells before coating the electrodes resulted in better collection of carriers.From this work it was seen CuInS2/In2S3 junction deposited through automated spray process has potential to achieve high efficiencies.

Characterization and Catalytic Activity of Polymer Supported Ruthenium Schiff Base Complexes Towards Catechol Oxidation

Ruthenium(III) complexes of the Schiff bases formed by the condensation of polymer bound aldehyde and the amines, such as 1,2-phenylenediamine (PS-opd), 2-aminophenol (PS-ap), and 2-aminobenzimidazole (PS-ab) have been prepared. The magnetic moment, EPR and electronic spectra suggest an octahedral structure for the complexes. The complexes of PS-opd, PS-ap, and PS-ab have been assigned the formula [PS-opdRuCl3(H2O)], [PS-apRuCl2(H2O)2], [PS-ab- RuCl3(H2O)2], respectively. These complexes catalyze oxidation of catechol using H2O2 selectively to o-benzoquinone. The catalytic activity of the complexes is in the order [PS-ab- RuCl3(H2O)2] . [PS-opdRuCl3(H2O)] [PS-apRuCl2(H2O)2]. Mechanism of the catalytic oxidation of catechol by ruthenium( III) complex is suggested to take place through the formation of a ruthenium(II) complex and its subsequent oxidation by H2O2 to the ruthenium(III) complex.

CuInS2 thin films using chemical methods for the fabrication of CuInS2/CdS solar cells

Dept.of Physics, Cochin University of Science and Technology

Fabrication of thin films and nano columnar structures of Fe-Ni amorphous alloys and modification of its surface properties by thermal annealing and swift heavy ion irradiation for tailoring the magnetic properties

Department of Physics, Cochin University of Science and Technology

Weld line behaviour of polymer blends with special reference to PP/HDPE, PP/PS and HDPE/LDPE blends

Department of Polymer Science and Rubber Technology, Cochin University of Science and Technology

Synthesis,Characterisation and Uses of Polymer-bound Antioxidants

Department of Polymer Science and Rubber Technology,Cochin University of Science and Technology

Investigations of Nonlinear Optical Properties of certain organic photonic materials using Z-Scan and DFWM techniques

Nonlinear optical processes in organic compounds have attracted considerable interest in the field of science and technology because of their compelling technological promises in fields of optical communication,computing,switching and signal processing.As a result of the synthesis of novel organic compounds with varying degree of nonlinear optical strength, many practical devices based on these are getting realised giving new theoretical insights into the nonolinear optical behaviour of materials.Organic compounds like phthalocyanines and porphyrins have evoked great deal of interest in the field of photonic technology.The present thesis describes the results obtained from the investigations carried out on the nonlinear optical properties of certain organo-metallic compounds using Z-Scan and DFWM techniques.

Fabrication of Electrochemical Sensors for the Determination of Pharmaceuticals

Voltammetric sensors are an important class of electrochemical sensors in which the analytical information is obtained from the measurement of current obtained as a result of electrochemical oxidation/reduction.This current is proportional to the concentration of the analyte.Chemically modified electrodes(CMEs) have great significance as important analytical tools for the electrochemical determination of pharmaceuticals.The modification of electrode results in efficient determination of electro-active biomolecules at very lower potential without its major interferences.The operation mechanism of CMEs depends on the properties of the modifier materials that are used to promote selectivity towards the target analytes.Modified electrodes can be prepared by deposition of various compounds such as organic compounds ,conducting polymers,metal oxides,etc. on the various electrode surfaces.The thesis presents the development ,electrochemical characterization and analytical application studies of eight voltammetric sensors developed for six drugs viz.,Ambroxol,Sulfamethoxazole,PAM Chloride, Lamivudine,Metronidazole and Nimesulide.The modification techniques adopted as part of the present work include Multiwalled Carbon Nanotube(MWCNT) based modification.Electropolymerisation and Gold Nanoparticle (AuNP) based modifications.

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.

Size-dependent enhancement of nonlinear optical properties in nanocolloids of ZnO

We have investigated the third-order nonlinearity in ZnO nanocolloids with particle sizes in the range 6-18 nm by the z-scan technique. The third-order optical susceptibility χ(3) increases with increasing particle size (R) within the range of our investigations. In the weak confinement regime, an R2 dependence of χ(3) is obtained for ZnO nanocolloids. The optical limiting response is also studied against particle size.