http://hdl.handle.net/2005/6 2013-04-29T20:34:33Z 2013-04-29T20:34:33Z Chandni, U http://hdl.handle.net/2005/1939 2013-02-25T10:23:36Z 2013-02-24T18:30:00Z

Title: One Dimensional Transport And Prospects Of Structural Transitions In Ultrathin Metallic Wires Authors: Chandni, U Abstract: This thesis reports transport in ultrathin single crystalline nanowires of gold (∼ 2nm). These nanowires were fabricated using an oriented attachment process whereby nanoparticles of appropriate dimensions join in a linear fashion to form long and stable wires. The main motivation was to study the role of electron-electron interactions on the transport mechanism in case of a metallic system, as one approaches dimensions closer to the Fermi wavelength. The study forms the first of its kind in a simple metallic system of this dimension. Indeed, several new features have been obtained in this regard: Chapter 4 reports a breakdown of Fermi liquid state in such a system opening up possibilities of exotic states constituted by a strongly correlated Tomonaga-Luttinger liquid. We report consistent scaling of current-voltage curves, characteristic of such a phase and even resonant tunneling in such structures. The study reports the first observation of a correlated electron liquid in a metal, which has been observed only in semiconductors and polymer wires till date. Chapter 5 discusses the possibility of tuning the transport mechanism in these wires via a controlled change in the growth process. We show that using appropriate growth mechanisms, we can have a localized ground state as well, where variable range hopping is the dominant transport mechanism. Possibility of structural transitions in ultrathin wires is a field that has garnered considerable interest due to simulations. We present a highly sensitive tool in the form of electrical noise and its higher order statistics that can act as a detector of structural transitions. This has been thoroughly studied in case of conventional shape memory systems in Chapter 6. Preliminary noise studies on the nanowires have been reported in Chapter 7.

2013-02-24T18:30:00Z Vyas, Khushi http://hdl.handle.net/2005/1963 2013-04-04T06:31:53Z 2013-04-03T18:30:00Z

Title: "Optical Diffraction By Micro Cylinder" - A Few Investigations Authors: Vyas, Khushi Abstract: Micro-cylinders with the diameters spanning the 1-20 μm range are growing in importance, for realizing devices with new functionalities. For custom functionalities, their device-designs impose, tolerance-related constraints on their critical dimension. To meet the challenges for the associated online micro-metrology, new methods for the micro-cylinder diameter measurement, are currently receiving considerable attention. „Optical diffraction under Fraunhofer Approximation‟ is one of the most viable experimental techniques for cylinder diameter measurement, in the laboratory as well as Industrial environment. In 1-20 μm diameter range, however, the cylinder-diffraction is not well understood. The reliability of the current models/formulations for this range is far from satisfactory in respect of speed, accuracy, resolution etc., and need a re-examination. The present thesis concerns with a few investigations on the „Optical Diffraction by Micro-Cylinder‟. It highlights both the theoretical and the experimental aspects of the investigations on micro-cylinders with diameters in the range of 1-50 μm. The results of the investigation are organized into two categories. The first of them details a pair of new analytical models obtained from the principles of „Geometrical Theory of Micro-Cylinder Diffraction‟ while the second category highlights another pair of new analytical models obtained from the principles of the „Customary Fraunhofer Theory of Micro-Cylinder Diffraction‟. The model from the „geometrical theory‟ is based on the hypothesis that the ‘ray-paths relevant to the location of ‘diffraction minima’, facilitate to construct, a geometrically-equivalent triangle’. The solution of such a triangle provides the new formulation for the micro-cylinder diffraction. The model from the „customary Fraunhofer theory‟, instead, relies on the on the fact that „the diffraction pattern for a micro-cylinder is essentially, a chirped-interference pattern modulated by a diffraction envelope’. The functional form of the formulation depends upon, the type of triangle constructed for geometrical theory and the type of illumination used in the customary Fraunhofer theory. The thesis highlights, four new formulations (two from each of the approaches) to describe the micro-cylinder diffraction. The principal conclusions of the investigations are as under. - All the new formulations for the micro-cylinder diffraction facilitate, enhanced diameter inversion accuracy, in the hitherto esoteric diameter range of 1-20 μm. For the reported experimental data on 3 μm diameter micro-cylinder, the models proposed in the present investigation improve the accuracy of diameter-estimation from 16.5% known from earlier models to less than 1%. - The investigation also brings out for the first time, the hitherto unnoticed difference between slit-diffraction and the micro-cylinder diffraction: When the micro-cylinder diameter approaches the wavelength of the illumination, the first order diffraction angle approaches nearly 200. It may be noted that for a slit of same width, the corresponding diffraction angle approaches 900. When the critical dimension of the cylinder and the slit decreases from λ to 5λ, the difference in the corresponding diffraction angles reduce from nearly 700 to nearly 1.50. - The investigation also highlights that in the micro-cylinder diffraction for the said range of interest, the absolute intensity at the zero-order interference- maximum provides a new signature for the distance of separation between the diffraction minima. The consequence of this new finding is a considerable simplification in the apparatus and algorithm for diameter inversion from a diffraction experiment. The function of an array detector can be replaced by a point detector at a fixed point for all the diameters in the range of interest. - The two formulations proposed from the geometrical theory are suited for diffraction- minima search based algorithm, while those from customary Fraunhofer theory are well suited for intensity minima search based method for diameter inversion.

2013-04-03T18:30:00Z Bhatt, Chintan M http://hdl.handle.net/2005/1968 2013-04-15T05:32:16Z 2013-04-14T18:30:00Z

Title: Electrical Impedance Spectroscopic Studies On Bread Staling : Sensors And Instrumentation Authors: Bhatt, Chintan M Abstract: Quality control is essential in food industry and efficient quality assurance is becoming increasingly important. The assessment of food quality still centers on its sensory properties (appearance, aroma and texture). Bread is one of the most consumed food item all over the world. Bakery product manufacturers expect that the bread should retain all of its attributes during storage and consumers expect their bread to be ‘fresh’. Unfortunately, it remains truly ‘fresh’ for only a few hours after it leaves the oven because the ingredients of the bread undergo series of physical and chemical changes that eventually lead to deterioration, referred as “staling”, of bread quality. Bread staling is classified in two categories: crust (outer portion of bread) staling and crumb (center portion of bread) staling. Crust staling is associated to the moisture migration from crumb to crust during storage. This moisture migration leads to a phenomenon called glass transition at crust. This phenomenon changes the mechanical and dielectric properties of bread crust. Crumb staling is mainly associated to the physicochemical changes in starch. During storage, amorphous starch regains its crystallinity, which increases the firmnesss and dryness of bread crumb. Thus, the knowledge of moisture content, starch recrystallization and the glass transition helps in understanding the bread staling mechanism. There are some volatiles produced from the bread during storage, which forms the characteristic flavor or aroma of the bread. The loss of this characteristic flavor during storage also gives the information about the loss of freshness and staling. Thus, there is a need for detection and monitoring the loss of these volatiles to determine the characteristic flavor during storage. Hence, the present investigations are focused on these issues and developed a measurement facility to monitor the above physicochemical changes in bread during storage. As a part of experimental investigations, two separate test facilities have been developed. A multichannel ring electrodes with suitable instrumentation based on impedance spectroscopy technique is developed for simultaneous measurement of electrical properties of bread at crust and crumb during storage in the frequency range from 50 Hz to 100 kHz. The detailed investigations have been conducted on wheat bread. The variation in capacitance showed that the glass transition phenomenon, at room temperature, in bread crust occurs after 96 h of storage with 18% of moisture in it. The resistance changes at bread crumb showed the starch recrystallization during staling. The electrical property results are justified with the results obtained from the conventional differential scanning calorimmetery (DSC) studies. The impedance measurement at crust and crumb estimates the moisture content at the respective zones of bread. Thus the test facility is used for the simultaneous measurement of moisture content, starch recrystallization and glass transition at crumb and crust respectively without destructing the bread loaf. A few experiments are conducted on maida bread and the obtained results are compared with the wheat bread results. Another test facility has been developed for the detection of volatiles produced from the wheat bread during storage. The gas chromatography and mass spectroscopy (GC-MS) experimentations are conducted to identify the volatiles produced from the bread during storage. The major volatiles produced from wheat bread are found to be 1-Heptanol, 1-Pentanol, 1-Octanol, Furan and Hydroperoxyde. A conducting polymer based gas sensor is designed and developed to sense these volatiles and the changes in its electrical property is monitored with a suitable instrumentation based on impedance spectroscopy technique in the frequency range from 10 Hz to 2MHz. Experimental investigations are carried out in an in-house air tight closed test chamber. The bread sample and the designed sensor are kept inside the test chamber and closed tightly so that only bread volatile can interact with the sensor. The sensor response is monitored by measuring the changes in its capacitance upon exposure to organic volatiles produced from bread during storage. It is observed that the capacitance of the sensor changes with the quantitative changes of the above volatiles. Thus, the test facility is found quite suitable for the detection and monitoring the bread volatiles produced during storage, which finally affects the aroma property. Thus, the developed experimental test facilities with suitable sensors and instrumentation based on impedance spectroscopy technique are found quite suitable to monitor the changes in physicochemical properties and aroma of bread during storage. The correlation between the measured electrical properties and the changes in the textural and flavor properties of bread during storage has been established. The results obtained with the developed test facilities are in good agreement with the results obtained from the standard traditional techniques like DSC and GC-MS.

2013-04-14T18:30:00Z Verma, Abhinav http://hdl.handle.net/2005/1909 2013-01-31T10:08:01Z 2013-01-30T18:30:00Z

Title: Irreducible Representations Of The Symmetric Group And The General Linear Group Authors: Verma, Abhinav Abstract: Representation theory is the study of abstract algebraic structures by representing their elements as linear transformations or matrices. It provides a bridge between the abstract symbolic mathematics and its explicit applications in nearly every branch of mathematics. Combinatorial representation theory aims to use combinatorial objects to model representations, thus answering questions in this field combinatorially. Combinatorial objects are used to help describe, count and generate representations. This has led to a rich symbiotic relationship where combinatorics has helped answer algebraic questions and algebraic techniques have helped answer combinatorial questions. In this thesis we discuss the representation theory of the symmetric group and the general linear group. The theory of these two families of groups is often considered the corner stone of combinatorial representation theory. Results and techniques arising from the study of these groups have been successfully generalized to a very wide class of groups. An overview of some of the generalizations can be found in [BR99]. There are also many avenues for further generalizations which are currently being explored. The constructions of the Specht and Schur modules that we discuss here use the concept of Young tableaux. Young tableaux are combinatorial objects that were introduced by the Reverend Alfred Young, a mathematician at Cambridge University, in 1901. In 1903, Georg Frobenius applied them to the study of the symmetric group. Since then, they have been found to play an important role in the study of symmetric functions, representation theory of the symmetric and complex general linear groups and Schubert calculus of Grassmannians. Applications of Young tableaux to other branches of mathematics are still being discovered. When drawing and labelling Young tableaux there are a few conflicting conventions in the literature, throughout this thesis we shall be following the English notation. In chapter 1 we shall make a few definitions and state some results which will be used in this thesis. In chapter 2 we discuss the representations of the symmetric group. In this chapter we define the Specht modules and prove that they describe all the irreducible representations of Sn. We conclude with a discussion about the ring of Sn representations which is used to prove some identities of Specht modules. In chapter 3 we discuss the representations of the general linear group. In this chapter we define the Schur modules and prove that they describe all the irreducible rational representations of GLmC. We also show that the set of tableaux forms an indexing set for a basis of the Schur modules. In chapter 4 we describe a relation between the Specht and Schur modules. This is a corollary to the more general Schur-Weyl duality, an overview of which can be found in [BR99]. The appendix contains the code and screen-shots of two computer programs that were written as part of this thesis. The programs have been written in C++ and the data structures have been implemented using the Standard Template Library. The first program gives us information about the representations of Sn for a given n. For a user defined n it will list all the Specht modules corresponding to that n, their dimensions and the standard tableaux corresponding to their basis elements. The second program gives information about a certain representation of GLmC. For a user defined m and λ it gives the dimension and the semistandard tableaux corresponding to the basis elements of the Schur module Eλ .

2013-01-30T18:30:00Z