 Raja Ramanna Centre for Advanced Technology (RRCAT)

(formerly Centre for Advanced Technology) is research

unit of Department of Atomic Energy, Government of
India.
 Dr. Homi J. Bhabha in 1954 set up the Atomic Energy
Establishment Trombay, AEET, which was later renamed
Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) in 1967.
 Inaugurated on February 19, 1984, RRCAT was built to
expand R&D programmes being carried out at BARC in
accelerators and lasers.
 ACCELERATORS : Construction Indus -1 and Indus-2.
o Indus -1: It is a 450MeV SRS, commissioned in April 1999.
o Indus -2: It is a 2.5GeV SRS which was installed in mid 2005 and
declared a national facility in December 2005.

 LASER : Centre has designed and developed a variety of laser

systems.
 DAE - CERN COLLABORATION: Including manpower some
high tech components of the worlds biggest particle
accelerators, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) were supplied
by RRCAT under a cooperation agreement signed with CERN,
Geneva in March 1996.
 Development of a system to study the
reaction of europium and samarium
atoms with carbon dioxide in excited
state of atoms. Excitation is proposed to
be carried out with the help of tuneable
laser radiation obtained from Copper
vapour laser (CVL) pumped dye laser.
 Copper Vapour Laser(CVL)
 Dye Laser
 Fourier transform infrared
spectroscope(FT-IR)
 Temperature measurement
• Thermocouple
• Infrared thermometer (IR-thermometer)
 Copper Vapour Laser (CVL) is inherently a pulsed laser system. It
gives output at 510.6nm(green) and 578.2nm(yellow).
 The lasing medium is copper vapour.
 Typical operating frequency of these lasers is 5 - 6 kHz. Operating
temperature of these lasers is 1500-1600 C. The wall plug
efficiency of CVL is about 1%.
 The molecules of some dyes have a large number of
spectral lines and each of them has a characteristic
spread of frequencies which is large compared to the
spread of gaseous atomic spectral lines.
 Tuneable laser operation over a nearly continuous
range of frequencies has been attained with the
molecules of such organic dyes.
 A widely used dye is rhodamine 6G(Rh6G),
chemically called [9-(2-ethoxycarbonylphenyl)-6-
(ethylamino)-2,7-dimethylxanthen-3-ylidene]-ethylazanium.
 The dye laser medium is typically a solution of dye in
alcohol.
 The Rh6G dye used was pumped by CVL.
 Why Infrared spectroscopy?
• It has been a workhorse technique for materials
analysis in the laboratory for many years.
 Why FT-IR?
• The use of interferometer.
• It is very fast compared to IR-spectroscopy.
 Source
 Interferometer
 Sample
 Detector
 Computer
 Speed
 Sensitivity
 Mechanical simplicity
 Internally calibrated
 Thermocouple
• Chormel-Alumel

 Infrared thermometer (IR-Thermometer)

 Samarium
• Atomic number : 62
• Atomic mass : 150.4
• Melting point : 1074 C
• Boiling point : 1794 C
 Europium
• Atomic number: 63
• Atomic mass: 151.96
• Melting point: 822 C
• Boiling point: 1529 C
 Europium and Samarium are particularly
chosen for respective isotopes such as
Eu-151 and Sm-152.
 Eu-151 is converted to Eu-152, which is
used in medical diagnosis.
 Sm-152 is converted to Sm-153, which is
used in cancer treatment.
 Design #1
• Transverse flow reactor
 Design #2
• Axial flow reactor
 Stand  Asbestos ring
 Feed through  Macor rod
 Bottom flange  Central quartz tube
 Glass flange  Heating wire
 Cross ports  Glass filled
 Aluminium ring teflon(PTFE)
 Quartz windows
 This
is formed at the centre of the photo
chemical reactor.

 Inthis zone the effusive beam of atom reacts

with the carbon dioxide jet coming out from
the glass capillary in a localized manner.
 Ln (ground state) + CO2  LnO + CO ;
• Ln= a lanthanide element (Eu or Sm)
 Vacuum testing
 Temperature testing
 Monitoring of carbon monoxide
 Samarium loading
 Itis seen that on exposing reaction zone
with laser. The CO peaks becomes
smaller.
 This may be due because of deposition of
oxide layer on the sample with time.
 The temperature of sample is easily
reached above 800 C
 Design simplicity
 Low cost
 High temperature needed.
 Deposition of oxide layer on sample.
 To poor calibration and stability of dye
laser.
 Difficult to conclude excitation of
samarium atoms by absorption method.
 Direct exposer to laser is avoided.
 Proper distance is maintained from laser.
 Handling of sample with bare hand is
avoided, samarium is radio active.
 Wear proper shoes.
 Tiny glass particles may be present in
glass workshop, which should be taken
care of.
 Entering to any workshop or lab without
any supervision may be harmful.
- Subodh Kumar
2007UCH108