Areas of Research – Sol Gel Optics

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Research Guide:  Dr  N V Unnikrishnan & Dr P R Biju

Research Areas:

• Sol-Gel optics
• Laser spectroscopy:
• Nano Materials
• Nonlinear optics

The research work is centered on the structural and spectroscopic characterization of glassy materials made by conventional as well as sol-gel methods. The studies are mainly directed towards the exploration of the potential of rare earth / dye doped glassy matrices in realizing efficient optical amplification. Optical amplification is demonstrated through optical gain spectroscopy in certain glasses. The group, led by Dr. N V Unnikrishnan has also developed facilities for fabricating uniform and good quality sol gel thin films. A novel ultra-low hydrolysis synthetic root employing molecular foot printing technique was used to prepare high quality Sol-Gel thin films. This has been utilised in preparing anti reflection coatings for solar cells and fiber optic pH sensors. The group has recently achieved success in incorporating nano-particles in the sol-gel matrices with the rare earth ions for achieving fluorescence enhancement. Studies on energy transfer between like and unlike ions in glasses and thin films have been undertaken. Lase spectroscopic techniques have been used to investigate the non linear properties of quantum dots, Sol-Gel materials, semiconductor nano-composites etc. The group has active research collaboration with University of Leeds (U K),Politecnico di Milano (Italy), Sultan Quaboos University (Muscat)  etc.

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