HfO2 is one of the most promising materials for possible replacement of SiO2 due to its higher dielectric constant and feasible larger oxide thickness corresponding to the same level of capacitance as achieved for a thinner SiO2 dielectric layer. HfO2 has also been treated as a useful material in flash memory applications owing to its large charge storage capacitance.
We are interested in laser (nanosecond, picosecond and femtosecond) irradiation/ablation induced synthesis of nanostructures and nanoparticles of various novel materials. We study the optical, structural and nonlinear optical properties of the synthesized nanoparticles/nanostructures. We have studied the fabrication of Si, Ge nanoaparticles by laser ablation in liquids.
We use high energy as well as low energy ion (few 100 MeV and few keV) irradiation induced modification of multiwalled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) with metal nanoparticles/nanorods, Ge/Si nanoparticles embedded in dielectric matrix, transparent oxide thin films (ZnO, SnO2, TiO2, V2O5 etc). The optical and structural properties of the materials are modified by playing with the different parameters like fluence, energyloss of ions in solids etc.
We are interested in fabrication of metal nanoparticles /nanostructures for SERS studies by different methods such as thin film depostion by thermal/DC Sputtering methods, chemical synthesis, and by laser ablation in liquids.