Cold Plasma in Nano-matter Synthesis: Basic Principles and Practices

This book describes the basic principles and techniques of cold plasma to synthesize nanomaterials, emphasizing the fundamentals.

Nanotechnology has matured enough to make inroads into the industry. “Quantum size effects” is the basis of the exotic properties of nanomaterials. The shapes and the size distribution dictate the properties of the nano-matter. The demands of the synthesis technique are to produce nano-matter with uniform size, repeatable shapes, uniform size distribution, stability of the nanostructures (reaching thermodynamic equilibrium), reproducibility of the particle sizes, and reliability of the process. These demands can be met when the synthesis technique has precise control over the process parameters. Cold plasma techniques possess all the requirements of the needs of nanomaterial synthesis. The cold plasma, an evolving field, has been established to be the most powerful tool not only for micro-electronics (both in the deposition and etching) but in many areas like health care, medicine, agriculture, food processing, etc.

The book’s primary emphasis is to explain the basic principles and concepts of cold plasma in nanomaterial synthesis. The target audience is undergraduate and graduate students learning nanomaterial synthesis and plasma technology. It is hoped that this book also is a good source of reference for practicing scientists and engineers involved in synthesizing nanomaterials and nanostructures in the industry.

Dr. Subrahmanyam has teaching and research experience spanning over 38 years in Indian Institute of Technology Madras, Chennai. Presently, he is Senior Professor (retired). His main area of research is in thin films and surface engineering, basics of plasma, and bio-medical engineering. He has established a thin-film laboratory equipped with electron beam evaporation, DC and RF magnetron sputtering, pulsed laser deposition (PLD), and sol-gel techniques. His main area is on metal oxide thin films (ITO, ZnO, WO3, VO2) spanning the industrial applications of transparent conducting oxides (TCO) and electrochromics (WO3) for smart windows. He has designed and developed a non-contact and non-destructive surface analytical tool: Kelvin Probe; presently, this machine is being commercialized. He is Author (along with Dr. Suresh) of the first book on Kelvin Probe: The Kelvin Probe for Surface Engineering: Fundamentals and Design (ISBN 9781420080773) published by Ane Books, India, and CRC Press, USA (in 2010).