Dr. K. Srinivas Rao from School of Physics, University of Hyderabad (UoH) has been given the “Best Thesis Award”. He received the award for his thesis titled “Development of UV-Vis-THz laser based Pulsed Photoacoustic Pyrolysis Technique for the Study of Thermal Decomposition, Stability Mechanisms of High Energy Materials” given by The Indian Laser Association at DAE-BRNS sponsored National Laser Symposium-25 held at KIIT University, Bhubaneswar recently.
The main contributions in his thesis work are:
· The physical and chemical properties such as thermal stability, decomposition and efficiency as a rocket fuels of several new energetic materials are studied using indigenously designed pulsed photoacoustic pyrolysis technique coupled with thermo gravimetric-differential thermal analysis (TG- DTA) analysis.
· Investigated the role of position of principal functional groups on thermal stability of energetic materials.
· For the first time, proposed graphite is a sensor for identification of TNT and other energetic materials using picoseconds 532 nm and 1064 nm wavelengths.
· Generation of THz radiation from non-linear optical crystals like DAST, ZnGeP2 and measured the power of THz radiation using pyroelectric detector.
· For the first time, recorded the time resolved photoacoustic spectra of gas molecules like N2O, nitromethane and methanol using terahertz radiation.
Dr. Rao was awarded the Ph.D. degree on November 11, 2016 under the supervision of Dr. Anil Kumar Chaudhary, Associate Faculty in ACRHEM at School of Physics. His thesis was rated out-standing by both the external examiners. Dr. Rao has published 12 papers in all leading International Journals of high impact factor and equal number of papers in the national and International symposiums and conferences. He has also carried out some path-breaking research in the field of high energy molecules. His group has also introduced some new terminology in the field of Photoacoustic spectroscopy. Many of the High Energy Molecules (HEMs) used in the experiments have been synthesized by the Scholars and Associate faculties of ACRHEM, School of Chemistry. The present R & D work is carried out in ACRHEM Phase-II, funded by D.R.D.O., Ministry of Defence, Government of India.
Dr. K. Srinivas Rao can be reached on email: ksrao.hcu@gmail.com