Recently, battery-based hybridization of gasoline and diesel engines has become a rapidly expanding global market. A lot of research and development activities have been focused on both advanced batteries and fuel cells to achieve their efficient mass production capabilities and drive this technology into successful commercialization. A variety of joining processes are required for the assembly...

Pulsed laser ablation is a simple, but versatile, experimental method that finds use as a means of patterning a very diverse range of materials, and in wide areas of thin film deposition and multi-layer research. Superficially, at least, the technique is conceptually simple also, but this apparent simplicity hides a wealth of fascinating, and still incompletely understood, chemical physics. Thi...

Ceramic laser materials have come a long way since the first demonstration of lasing in 1964. Improvements in powder synthesis and ceramic sintering as well as novel ideas have led to notable achievements. These include the first Nd:yttrium aluminum garnet (YAG) ceramic laser in 1995, breaking the 1 KW mark in 2002 and then the remarkable demonstration of more than 100 KW output power from a YA...

A free-electron laser consists of an electron beam propagating through a periodic magnetic field. Today such lasers are used for research in materials science, chemical technology, biophysical science, medical applications, surface studies, and solid-state physics. Free-electron lasers with higher average power and shorter wavelengths are under development. Future applications range from indust...

One dimensional (1D) nanostructures of semiconducting oxides and elemental chalcogens culminate over the last decade in nanotechnology owing to their unique properties exploitable in several applications sectors. Whereas several synthetic strategies have been established for rational design of 1D materials using solution chemistry and high temperature evaporation methods, much less attention ha...

Application of picosecond and femtosecond laser pulses to the controlled ablation of materials represents a relatively unexplored yet important topic in laser processing. Such ultrashort pulses are of potential value in areas of thin-film deposition, micromachining, and surgical procedures. We report here some early results of systematic studies being done from the femtosecond to the nanosecond...