Webpage of   Dr Burhanuddin Kamaluddin

 

  Associate Professor

  Physics Department

  University of Malaya

  50603 Kuala Lumpur

  Tel No: 03-7967 4092

  Fax No: 03-7967 4146

  email: burhan@um.edu.my

 

 

Fields of interest

     My interest is in the applications of transparent thin films as heat reflection coating on glass. This will help to reduce heat intake into buildings during daytime through windows in tropical climate regions. The reduced heat intake will save on electricity costs on air conditioning.

   The microcontroller is a very effective method in implementing simple control systems sometimes needed in physics experiments. These are programmable devices and thus be adapted to various problems. At present we are concentrating on PIC devices from Microchip. One of the primary reasons for selecting PIC devices is the availability of development systems at very reasonable costs. This is quite a factor in developing projects using microcontrollers.

 

Current research

At present I'm working on Zinc Oxide thins films for use as heat reflecting coating on glass substrates. This material is also actively researched by other workers for various applications. In Physics department, we deposit these films using r.f. magnetron sputtering technique. This technique results in thin films of  reproducible characteristics. We perform optical and electrical characterizations on the resulting films.

A brief description of the r.f. sputtering technique can be found here.

Some data on the material Zinc Oxide

ZnO Reference data

Molecular mass 81.389
Specific gravity at room temp. 5.642 g/cm3
Point group 6mm (Wurtzite)
Lattice constants at room temp.

a=3.250, c=5.205
Mohs hardness 4
Melting point 2250 K
Linear thermal expansion coefficient at room temp.
a-axis direction 4.75
c-axis direction 2.92
electron mass 0.28
hole mass 1.8
Bandgap energy at room temp. 3.37 eV
Exciton binding energy 60 meV
Specific heat 0.125 cal/gm
Thermal conductivity 0.006 cal/cm/K
Thermoelectric Constant at 573K 1200 mV/K

 

 

Last Updated               

4th October 2004