The main research areas of the Materials Science Group have been chosen by taking into account researchers' interests and expertise, ease and cost of equipment procurement and relevance of a research area to the nation's industrialization goal and to the current worldwide scientific endeavour in materials research. Thus the research subjects range from studies on the technologically established ferrites to those on high Tc superconductor as promising future industrial materials. Strong support from the government through the IRPA mechanism has encouraged the group to initiate work on other advanced ceramic materials and magnetic alloys and on magnetic and semiconducting thin films, having so far dealt with only bulk materials' preparation and characterization. The main focus is on microstructural' studies, the effect of moisture and doping of the materials with magnetic and nonmagnetic elements and the rate of grain boundaries and grain size in determining materials' properties. The work involves the measurements of the permitivity and conductivity of aqueous solutions of biological products and also of some polymers over a frequency range of the DC-microwave region.
All instrument are on line to computers.
The main projects currently active are concerned with the investigation of dielectric properties of hevea rubber latex, activated carbon and oil palm fruits. Both theoretical and experimental works involved with the study of the effects of density, chemical composition, temperature and state of water on the dielectronic properties of the materials. The information of these properties is obviously needed for sensor design, quality control, industrial high-power microwave heating and drying and process control. The properties of thin films can differ markedly from those of the corresponding bulk materials due to the effect of surface interactions. This study deals with preparation of magnetic and semiconducting thin films and their characterization involving the optical and electrical properties to reveal the effect of surface parameters.