Kelvin Probe for Surface Engineering

Dr. Subrahmanyam has teaching and research experience spanning over 38 years in Indian Institute of Technology Madras, Chennai. Presently, he is a senior professor (retired). His main area of research is in thin films and surface engineering, basics of plasma, and bio-medical engineering. He has established a thin film laboratory equipped with electron beam evaporation, DC and RF magnetron sputtering, pulsed laser deposition (PLD), and sol-gel techniques. His main area is on metal oxide thin films (ITO, ZnO, WO3, VO2) spanning the industrial applications of Transparent Conducting oxides (TCO) and electrochromics (WO3) for smart windows. He is the author (along with Dr Suresh) of the first book on Kelvin Probe: The Kelvin Probe for Surface Engineering: Fundamentals and Design (ISBN 9781420080773) published by Ane Books, India, and CRC Press, USA (in 2010).Dr. Suresh Kumar has been working on the design and development of innovative surface measurement techniques over the past twenty years, with special interest on Kelvin Probe and its applications to semiconductor research. His research interests include design, fabrication and characterization of semiconductor devices, study of surfaces and interfaces, thin films, nano-materials, low-dimensional artificial structures, and renewable energy. He is also an expert in semiconductor characterization techniques like contact potential difference (CPD) measurements, surface photo-voltage spectroscopy, photoemission yield spectroscopy, and impedance spectroscopy. He has authored several research papers and delivered invited talks. In the year 2007, Dr. Suresh Kumar has been awarded Professor A.L. Laskar Prize (for the best Ph.D. thesis) for his thesis “Design and Fabrication of Kelvin Probe and Surface Passivation Studies of GaAs.” Dr. Suresh Kumar is presently the president of KG Design Services Pvt. Ltd., India.

• Introduction to Surfaces and Interfaces.- The Thermodynamics of Surfaces and Definition of Work Function and Measurement.- Design of the Kelvin Probe and the Methods of Measurement of Contact Potential Difference (CPD).- Photoemission Yield Spectroscopy(PEYS).- Surface Photovoltage Spetroscopy (SPV) of Semiconductor Surfaces.