Chemists Help to Make Light of Words
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Registered by Australia P081- putlhcation No. VaG 2204 ISSN 0159-950 ~~~ Whafs New in Education, Research and-Community Service, Chemists help to make light of words ESEARCH ERS IN THE Chemistry In conventional copper telephone amounts of money and effort both in R Department have been granted nearly cables, information - usually the sound installation and maintenance. $!Ii million over three years to develop of a voice - is transmitted as a pattern of The two critical elements of the more efficient compounds from which to electrical impulses; in optical fibres light development of such a system are new manufacture devices to transform light performs the same role. types of glasses from which to manu signals into electrical energy. Because beams of light do not interfere facture optical fibres capable of carrying Such opto-electronic devices are critical with one another - beams of light shine an infra-red transmission, and opto-elec to the application of optical fibres, and through each other - thousands of them tronic devices capable of efficiently con ..::rl" l.'l:·velopment could provide the basis can be transmitted simultaneously in the verting between electronic signals and . v I' · i:1 sjlbstantial Australian export in one cable without loss of clarity. Only a infra-red signals at each end of an optical dustry, They are made from ultra-pure few transmissions can be carried by each fibre. organo-metallic compounds by a process copper wire. (Another research team in the Monash known as metal organic chemical vapor So the smaller diameter, lighter optical Chemistry Department headed by Dr deposition. fibres are a much more efficient carrier Doug MacFarlane already has made good The money for the Monash research medium for the telecommunication progress towards producing infra-red op amounts to about two-thirds of a Generic systems of the future. Telecom Australia, tical fibres from fluoride glasses - see Industry Research and Development in fact, already has given up buying cop Monash Review 1-88, page six.) (GIRD) grant awarded jointly to Monash, per altogether. According to Associate Professor the CSIRO Division of Materials Science An optical fibre cable is like a pipeline and Technology, Telecom Australia Dickson, Telecom already has produced of which the inner surface behaves as a some 90 trial prototype devices for testing Research Laboratoriesand CIG (Hytec). mirror trapping light inside. This inner Development of the opto-electronic as opto-electronic devices. The basic devices is part of a much larger project to surface is impervious to light of certain chemistry behind the process is relatively produce an optical fibre communications wavelengths or colors. simple. system which operates in the mid-infra In optical fibres fabricated from trad Volatile carbon-based (organic) metal red part of the spectrum. An infra-red itional silica glasses visible light is used for containing compounds are carried in pure based system would be ideally suited to transmission. It turns out that when visi hydrogen gas and exposed to a heated sur transmissions over long distances, such as ble light is transmitted over long face. Upon contact the organo-metallic those occurring in Australia. distances, the signal must be boosted by compounds break up, depositing a thin "This research represents a very big repeater stations about every 40 kilo layer of metal alloy on the hot surface. investment on the part of Telecom Aus metres, which would be inconvenient for The process then is repeated using dif alia, and it will make the system work cables laid between Adelaide and Perth ferent organo-metallic compounds to lay .'ne what may," says Professor Bruce across the Nullarbor, for instance . down a second coating on top of the first. West who, with Associate Professor Ron But if a system could be developed The finished device is a wafer of many Dickson and reader Dr Glen Deacon, will which made use of light transmitted in the alternating layers. be co-ordinating the Monash efforts to mid-infra-red, then the need for repeater Devices sensitive to the mid-infra-red investigate the chemical compounds from stations between Adelaide and Perth range have been made from alloys of cad which opto-electronic devices can be potentially could be cut to one or two or mium, tellurium and mercury built up produced. even zero, thus saving substantial from feedstock vapors of dimethyl cad mium, diethyl tellurium and mercury. Continued overleaf • Carbon planets 3 a: • The Ramayana 4,5 ~ ..J 51 6, 7 ~ • Teeth ~ iii iii • Tougher shears 8 it. • Associate Professor Ron Dickson (right) talks with Dr Ian Christiansz of Telecom Research Laboratories in front of Telecom's new metal organic chemical vapor deposition equipment. Dickson is pointing to the deposition chamber. Chemists help make light of words From Page J But while the idea may be simple, its application certainly is not, for several reasons. And behind those reasons lies the stimulus for the Monash research, if Aus tralia is to utilise optical fibre technology to its fullest potential. First, there are the feedstock substances themselves. In order for the opto-elec tronic devices to work effectively, they cannot be contaminated by impurities. In fact, the allowable level of impurities is so low that the feedstocks must be 99.9999 per cent pure. To purify organo-metallic compounds to such an extent on an industrial scale demands great skill and expense, and high technology. At present in Australia it is not done. All our feedstocks must be imported. That presents two problems. The first is cost. Cadmium sold by Australia as raw • Professor Bruce ~st of Chemistry adjusts a vacuum line. metal for $3.80 a kilogram comes back as plicated organic groups were attached to "In the area around Monash, there is a dimethyl cadmium for between $30,000 the metals, they may detach more easily very high concentration of researchers and $100,000 a kilogram - that is, if it and be easier to handle. But we have ex and technology devoted to materials comes back at all. tremely limited data on how to prepare science. Within walking distance of here Therein lies the second problem. Aus them, let alone how they would behave." there are research groups in that field tralia is not the only nation interested in At Monash the grant money will pay working with eight important analytical infra-red based telecommunications. for two full-time research fellows to work techniques. Few other labs in the world Infra-red radiation is less subject to inter on the problem plus their materials and would have such easy access to two or ference than visible light. It therefore has the refitting of a laboratory to the high three of them," West said. great military application, and those level of safety and cleanliness necessary "Although there is a lot of overlap in countries which have developed expertise for their work. The materials, for in the work being done in many different and even feedstocks are loath to part with stance, need to be handled in an inert at countries and we are starting from them. mosphere, in the complete absence of behind, the hope is that we may come "Although Telecom has been able to oxygen and water . across better materials." purchase the instrument to produce these Any new compounds or production And that's not all. The spinoff's of devices, there is a large amount of methods need to be. fully tested, and it is development of this technology extend to developmental work necessary to get it here that the collaborative research group other electronic devices, lasers and sur fully operational. Each country involved put together for the GIRD grant really face coatings for other applications, such in this field accepts the need to be inde begins to come into its own. Both CSIRO as the prevention of corrosion. 0 pendent," West said . Materials Science and Technology and the But this situation also holds the pro Telecom Research Laboratories have very MONASH REVIEW is produced six liro yearly by lhe Inlormation Oltice, M~"',~. mise of a vast export market for a country sophisticated techniques to analyse University, Wellington Road, Clayton,Vicloria, with Australia's raw materials, if it could organo-metallic compounds and the 3168. Inquiries should be addressed to Tim develop new, more effective feedstocks or devices made from them. Thwaites, c/o the lntormation Oltice. more efficient ways of manufacturing the conventional feedstocks. And, according to Ron Dickson, the present feedstocks are far from ideal. For instance, all are highly poisonous and have to be handled with great care, par ticularly in commercial quantities of more than a few grams. More importantly, they are too ther mally stable. These compounds break up only at temperatures of between 400 and 500 degrees Celsius, hot enough to begin to affect the properties of the devices being produced. "We need to find a useful balance point between stability and instability," Dickson said. "It's an interesting problem because chemists have tended to be actively invol ved in constructing compounds, rather than breaking them down, and there are huge gaps in our knowledge. "Theoretical calculations done at the • Dr Glen Deacon of Chemistry (centre) with postgraduate student Dallas Wilkinson (left) and CSIRO suggest that if other, more com research fellow Dr Tran Tuong in front of a dry box of the kind to be used in the study. MONASH REVIEW 2 AUGUST 1988 Throw another planet on the barbie AMPERS WOULD have to put up with the reason the theories of Laplace were C soot showers on the cold, dark discarded originally, is just what it is that planets and moons of the outer solar causes the rings to shed and consolidate system, according to reader in Applied into planets.