Towards the Research and
Development in the field of Electronics, Computers and
Instrumentation. Namely,
1)
Ultra Smooth, Nanoresolution Czeckralski Crystal Puller used for
Crystal Growth.
Special care has been taken
while designing the crystal puller to achieve ultra smooth and
vibration free movement. The mechanical set-up of the puller has
been fabricated with high precision engineering using CNC machines.
It is a very compact and tabletop model of 619 mm height. Two
stepper motors of torque 7 kg/cm2 are integrated into the setup, one
for translation/pulling and another one for the rotation. Coupling
the translation motor shaft with Ball Screw mechanism through timing
pulley and timing belt performs the linear translation. The timing
belt prevents the transfer of mechanical vibration from the
translation motor to the linear translation assembly.
The
puller electronics system has been perfectly coupled with the
mechanical setup by designing microcontroller (Microchip dsPIC)
based stepper motor drive for translation and rotation motors.
The smooth movements of the stepper motors were achieved by
operating the motors in microstepping mode with software
configurable in the basic step (1.8o) divided by 1, 2, 4, 8, 10, 50,
100, 250, 500, 1000 and 2000 microsteps. In the divide by 2000 mode
(i.e., 400000 steps), a linear translation of 10 nm resolution has
been observed and the positional accuracy of 1µm has been achieved.
The software provides the user-friendly environment to have a good
control over the puller for the user while positioning, seeding,
growth control and lifting the crystal etc., during the crystal
growth process. This crystal puller designed for the Czeckralski
growth can also be used for high temperature vertical Bridgman
growth.
2)
Nanoresolution translation set for Bridgman Technique low
temperature organic crystal growth.
A microcontroller based gearless translation setup using stepper
motor, which operates on microstepping mode. In this, the
microstepping is achieved by dividing the basic step of 1.8o divided
by 2000, which gives rise to 400,000 steps per rotation. With this
ultra smooth, uniform speed and vibration free movement can be
realized. Linear translation is accomplished by directly
coupling the rotating shaft of the stepper motor to the growth
ampoule through a string and pulley; a resolution of 40 nm linear
translation is observed for one step.
3) A
Low Cost PC based Automation Setup for the Conventional Powder
X-ray Diffractometer used for materials characterization.
X-ray Diffraction analysis is
the major primary characterization for any single crystal. XRD is a
powerful method for the qualitative identification of crystalline
materials and their quantitative analysis. The new generation of
X-ray diffraction system now interfaces with an expensive
proprietary computer system. These systems are not economically
affordable to many laboratories. Still, most of the laboratories use
conventional, manual controlled X-ray powder diffractometer with XY
strip chart recorder. Since, the output spectrum is strip
chart (hard copy) form, no raw data will be available for further
analysis. An elegant automation design (PC add-on card) has been
attempted to collect, store and analyze the data from the
conventional diffractometers. The automation has been developed on
PC based environment and it is a simple, practical and economical
option for the automation of the acquisition and processing of
powder X-ray diffraction data from conventional X-ray diffraction
system at very low cost (less than 100 US$). Since the raw data are
stored electronically, they are readily available for further
analysis. The resolution is improved five times over the existing
system. Automatic start and stopping of scan-motor control ensures
the operational safety of the detector assembly. This automation
system enhances the performance of conventional X-ray powder
diffractometers, employing a novel technique and design. The
add-on card design is very simple; even can be wired on a
commercially available ISA prototype board. The user-friendly
graphical user interface runs under MS WINDOWS 98/2000/XP Platform.
4)
Microcontroller based Bi-directional Accelerated Seed Rotation
Controller for Growth of Crystals for Solution Growth Method.
For the low temperature
solution growth method, a Bi-Directional Accelerated Seed Rotation
Controller using Microcontroller based stepper motor control has
been developed to have a homogeneous supersaturation in the
solution. The design of the bi-directional seed rotation controller
is very simple and useful in certain forced convection
configurations to maintain a higher homogeneity of the
solution. Using this controller, the parameters that can be
controlled are; rpm of the motor, direction, acceleration time, hold
time, deceleration time and off-time. By different combinations of
these parameters, one can generate 16 different wave profiles. These
wave profiles act as forced convection currents, which allow one to
study the growth behavior of the crystals.
5) ARM
processor based Intelligent Auto-tuning PID temperature controller
with RS232C interface.
Crystal growth processes
increasingly require not only precise temperature control but also
fast response to heat disturbances and minimal overshoot and
undershoot when temperature set-point changes. Traditional PID
control techniques are inadequate; extra capabilities are necessary.
The drawback of the commercial PID controller is the excessive cost.
A typical PID controller will cost around over $800. Higher end
models with programmable algorithms and/or data recorders can cost
well in excess of $1,000. All of the parts necessary to build a full
function PID controller can be purchased for under $150. Hence,
efforts were made to design and develop a high performance dual
channel ARM microcontroller based digital PID temperature controller
more appropriate for crystal growth applications. The software of
the PID controller involves more mathematical calculations and some
high density program coding. For this work, the software design has
been implemented using 'C language and compiled with 'KEIL -
REAL VIEW ARM C' development tool for LPC21XX
family and flashed into the program memory of the
microcontroller. The software part has been divided into four sub
modules namely i) Operator Interface, ii) PID and Auto Tune,
iii) RAMP/Soak, iv) Communication Interface for Data
Logging/Control.
6)
Dual Channel Microcontroller Based PID Temperature Controller
suitable for Solution Growth of Crystals.
Analog Devices Microcontroller ADuC-841 provides a single chip
solution (inbuilt 12 bit ADC & DAC) for Data Acquisition and
control. Hence, a low cost RTD based Dual Channel Temperature
controller with RS232c interface has been developed for solution
growth of Crystal with a temperature range 20-100oC with a control
accuracy of +/- 0.1oC.
7)
Thermocouple based Temperature Data Logger for Automated Furnace
Profile Measurement.
Analog Devices Microcontroller
ADuC-845 consists of in-built 24-bit Sigma-Delta ADC with
Programmable Gain Amplifier. Hence thermocouples can be directly
interfaced. Temperature profile of the furnace plays very important
role in the melt growth of the crystal. This simple setup, the
thermocouple coupled with crystal pull head will allow acquiring the
temperature at any given point in the furnace and also enabling to
log the data in the USB flash drive/ hard disk connected in the USB
host controller through RS232C interface.
8) MODBUS
Communication Protocol implementation in Embedded Controllers for
SCADA software Interface.
Most of the SCADA
software packages support MODBUS protocol to communicate with the
PLC. In order to link our home-made controllers like temperature
controller, Motor controller with SCADA, MODBUS protocol (RTU -
Slave) has been implemented on the 8x51 embedded controller which
supports the MODBUS protocol function codes of
0x01,0x02,0x03,0x04,0x05,0x06, 0x07, 0x08, 0x15, 0x16 and 0x17 and
the slave address 1 to 247 can be configured through DIP Switches.
Protocol supports both RS232C and RS-485.
9) USB
Slave Device Interface for Data Acquisition System.
A general purpose, low cost
USB based data acquisition system with Cypress high-speed USB
Controller CY7C63013A was developed with I2C interface ADC/DAC,
digital I/O interface and it can be easily programmed/communicated
via PC through Visual Basic and Visual C/C++ with the help of device
driver developed using JUNGO WinDriver 9.0.
10) Embedded USB Host
Protocol and Printer Class Interface Implementation
for USB Flash Drive and USB Hard
Disk for Remote Data Logging.
Due to the
technological advancement, where in some places the computer can't
be used and at the same time continuous data logging for few hours
to few days is required, USB based flash drive or hard disk may be
an ideal choice. But these devices are USB slave device. In order to
access/control, we require a USB Master controller like one
available in the PC. The Cypress CY4640 USB host mass storage
reference design includes the USB host software stack, a mass
storage class driver, a file system and associated supporting
software modules, as well as a sample application layer and hardware
that enable customers to evaluate a design at various stages of
development. This design use CYPRESS EZ-Host (CY7C67300) suitably
tuned to meet the custom requirement for data logging using USB
flash Drive and Hard Disk interface and an operator interface has
been provided with LCD and Keypad and can be controlled through
RS232C interface also. ASCII printer class driver (stack) also
incorporated, which will enable the user for printing.
11) USB - TMC (Test and
Measurement Control) Protocol with High Speed USB interface
for Multifunctional Data Acquisition System.
Interfacing the
instruments/equipments under PC control is widely used technique for
data logging or automated measurement. For this, either Serial
interface (RS232C) or Parallel interface (IEEE 488.2) has been very
popular. While RS232C is simple, but have few drawbacks of low
speed, short distance and moreover, only one device can be
controlled at a time (peer-to-peer communication) where as in
General Purpose Instrumentation Bus (GPIB) IEEE 488.2, 15 devices
can be controlled simultaneously at the same, speed also fairly good
with 1Mbytes / 8 Mbytes (high speed GPIB) transfer rate that depends
on the cable length. Main drawback is the cost of the special
interface cables as well as a GPIB controller (ISA/PCI) add-on card
is required. Due to the boosting technology, mainly the USB
(Universal Serial Bus), the migration of instrument automation
through GPIB has been moved towards the USB. For instrument
control, a new class (0XFE) "TEST AND MEASUREMENT CONTROL (TMC)" has
been introduced. Now most of the Virtual Instrument (VI) software's
like Agilent VEEPRO, DASYLAB, Ni LABVIEW supports USB TMC protocol.
This make more comfortable for the device developers to save time in
spending valuable time in writing device drivers on the PC
side. A multifunctional data acquisition system has been
developed with Xilinx FPGA (high Speed ADC (2 MSa/Sec) and High
Speed DAC (1 MSa/Sec) with SPI interface, two 32 bit timers, 16
digital inputs/outputs through the FPGA). The design uses Cypress
high-speed USB controller (CY7C68013A) with USB-TMC protocol
implementation.
Patent
Title :
A PROCESS TO CHARACTERIZE
BIOCHEMICAL REACTIONS USING SENSOR INSTRUMENTATION BASED ON
CAPACITANCE AND
CONDUCTANCE CHANGE
OFFICIAL JOURNAL OF
THE PATENT OFFICE,
INDIA, ISSUE
NO.44/2010
DATE:29/10/2010
(3064/CHE/2010) &
(18.10.2010)
Patent
NO: 282117 & Date of Grant:30/03/2017
This
innovation is being applied to estimation
of various milk components like lactose and fat and
adulterants like urea so
that milk quality can be judged at the collection centres
and processing units. An indigenously made
auto-range capacitance meter capable of measuring capacitance in
the range of
micro-farads to tens of pico-farads (Design and Fabricated by
Dr.M
Jayaprakasan for reagent-less measurement of enzymatic
reactions initially
used for analyzing the blood samples for the patients to detect
the presence of
various types of bacteria (patented the invention in 2010
through Anna
University, Chennai) now able to Estimate Milk
Quality.
Name of the Inventor:
1) J. KUMAR
2) K. SANKARAN
3) T.DHINESHKUMAR 4) M. JAYAPRAKASAN
This device
also bagged
best innovation award in 2015 from UGC
Details
of the Patent can be viewed in this
link:
http://ites.atichennai.org.in/mediawiki116/index.php/Dr_JP%27s_Simple_Design_bags_Best_Innovation_Award_2015
Details
of the Patent can be viewed in this
link:
http://ites.atichennai.org.in/mediawiki116/index.php/Dr_JP%27s_Simple_Design_bags_Best_Innovation_Award_2015
