Authors

R Srinivasan was a Professor in the Department of Physics, IIT Madras, from 1962 to 1990. His research work was mainly in the domains of lattice dynamics, nonlinear elastic properties of crystals, low temperature physics and superconductivity. He was Director of IUC-DAEF, now renamed as UGC-DAE CSR, at Indore, India, from 1990 to 1995. Later he was a Visiting Professor at Raman Research Institute, Bengaluru, from 1996 to 2007. He is a Fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences, the Indian Cryogenics Council and the Instrumentation Society of India. He was awarded the MRSI Medal and the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Indian Cryo-genics Council. From 2001 onwards he has designed experiments at the BSc, MSc and post MSc levels. These experiments are described in a book titled Manual on Experiments in Physics published by the Indian Academy of Sciences, Bangalore. Using these experiments, he has conducted, along with the three co-authors, more than 100 Refresher courses of 2-week duration for teachers and students all over India. More than 2000 teachers have benefited from these courses.



T G Ramesh received the PhD degree in physics from the University of Mysore in the year 1974. He spent over forty years at the Materials Science Division, National Aerospace Laboratories, Bangalore, working in the broad areas of High-Pressure Physics and electronic instrumentation. He served as a visiting scientist at the International Centre for Theoretical Sciences, Bangalore, during the years 2016–2019. He is a recipient of Alexander Von Humboldt Fellowship (1978), MRSI medal (2000), IETE Corporate award for thermo-physical instrumentation (2006) and NRDC Meritorious Invention Award for Drishti Transmissometer.



G Umesh received the PhD degree from IIT Delhi in the year 1979. He served as a faculty member at the Physics Department, IIT Delhi, till 1991. He then moved to the Physics Department, Karnataka Regional Engineering College, Surathkal (now known as the National Institute of Technology Karnataka, Surathkal) and retired from there in 2017. His research work has been in the areas of Plasma Physics, Nonlinear optical materials, Photonic devices and MEMS devices. Since 2018 he has been closely associated with Prof. R Srinivasan in conducting the refresher courses on experimental physics under the sponsorship of the three Science Academies of India. He was a Visiting Professor at Korea Advanced Institute of Science & Technology (KAIST), South Korea, under the Brain Pool Fellowship during 2002–2004. He also visited Herriot Watt University, UK, as a Visiting Scientist in 2007 under the Royal Society of Edinburgh fellowship.



C S Sundar was a scientist with the Materials Science Group at the Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research for over four decades, from where he retired as the Director of the research group. His principal research contributions have been in the area of Defects and Phase Transitions in Novel Materials, notably superconducting materials, using a variety of experimental techniques, in particular positron annihilation spectroscopy and IR spectroscopy. He has been a J C Bose National Fellow and a senior Professor, Homi Bhabha National Institute, India. He is a Fellow of the three main Science Academies of India, and a Fellow of Asia Pacific Academy of Materials. He is a recipient of the MRSI-medal (1994), the MRSI-ICSC superconductivity and materials research prize (2007), and Tamil Nadu Science & Technology Award Physical sciences (2008). Dr Sundar has been on the editorial board of PRAMANA for over a decade, Associate Editor, Bulletin of Materials Science, and has been on the Editorial Board of Solid State Communications.

Summary:
There have been new developments in experimental techniques for preparing and characterizing materials and for measuring their properties. These techniques are not being taught to students at the master's or even doctoral levels because there is no single book which deals with all these techniques at a basic level. The present book is an attempt to overcome this problem.

The book is divided into five sections: (1) Techniques for preparing materials in the bulk, nanoscale and thin film forms; (2) Techniques for characterizing materials like X ray and neutron powder diffraction, ESCA, Ellipsometry for thin films, Ultrasonic techniques, Electron microscopy, Surface probe techniques and Positron annihilation for defect studies; (3) Techniques for measurements, at research level, of the elastic, thermal, electrical, dielectric and magnetic properties; (4) Spectroscopic techniques such as NMR-EPR spectroscopy, IR, Visible-UV spectroscopy and Mossbauer spectroscopy and (5) Phase transitions. In each of the above topics the basic principles are clearly laid out, the experimental set-ups are described, and typical examples are cited to illustrate the physics revealed by these techniques.

The book can be used for a two-semester course on experimental techniques in physics and materials science at the master's and pre-doctoral degree levels for students.