Tuesday, September 25, 2007

Well, I think its high time I blogged about the stuff I actually work on.

Currently I am working in the broad field of semiconductor optics. In a more specific way, I try to make really really thin films (~ 50 nm) of tungsten oxide and characterize them.

Why tungsten oxide? Cause it is a really interesting substance in the sense that it has a chromogenic nature. Chromogenic materials are ones which have the ability to change their color due to incident signals. Chromogenic materials may be further divided into different types depending on what sort of signal causes the change in color. They can be photochromic ( light signals), electrochromic (electrical signals), gasochromic ( gas signals).

The really cool thing about tungsten oxide is it is sensitive to all three types of signals.

So right now my job is to make really thin films of tungsten oxide on different host materials (substrates). In order to get these films made, laser pulses are made incident on a tungsten oxide target which then gets deposited on the substrate. By varying the different parameters we can have different sorts of films.

These films can then be used to devise sensors.

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