Institute for Plasma Research

Institute for Plasma Research (IPR) is an autonomous physics research institute located in India. The institute is involved in research in various aspects of plasma science including basic plasma physics, research on magnetically confined hot plasmas and plasma technologies for industrial applications. It is a biggest and leading plasma physics organization in India. Institute is mainly funded by Department of Atomic Energy. IPR is playing major scientific and technical role in Indian partnership in the international fusion energy initiative ITER. Dr. Predhiman Kaw is current director of IPR.

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History

In 1982, the Government of India initiated the Plasma Physics Programme (PPP) for research on magnetically confined high temperature plasmas. The PPP evolved into the autonomous Institute for Plasma Research under the Department of Science and Technology in 1986. With the commissioning of ADITYA in 1989, full-fledged tokamak experiments started at IPR. A decision was taken in 1995 to build the second generation superconducting steady state tokamak SST-1 capable of 1000 second operation. Due to this, the institute grew rapidly and came under the Department of Atomic Energy. The industrial plasma activities were reorganised under the facilitation Center for Industrial Plasma Technologies ([FCIPT]) and moved to a separate campus in Gandhinagar in 1997.

Location

Institute for Plasma Research is located on the banks of the Sabarmati river in Bhat village of Gandhinagar district. It is approximately midway between the cities of Ahmedabad and Gandhinagar. It is 5 km from the Ahmedabad airport, and 14 km from the Ahmedabad railway station.

Facilitation Centre for Industrial Plasma Technologies (FCIPT)

The Facilitation Centre for Industrial Plasma Technologies is a division of Institute for Plasma Research working in the field of Industrial Plasma Technologies. This centre was setup in the year 1997 to promote, foster, develop, demonstrate and transfer Industrially relevant plasma based technologies to the Industries, thus enabling technology commercialization. This centre (FCIPT) acts as an interface between the Institute and the Industries. While working with the Industries on the industrial projects, FCIPT has maintained and improved its R&D strengths and at the same time has shown competence to work in an Industrial manner. It has various Industries (National and International) to its client base such as Johnson & Johnson, ASP Ethicon Inc. USA, UVSYSTEC GmbH Germany, Thermax India Ltd., Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd., IPCL, Larsen & Toubro Ltd., NHPC Ltd., GE India Technology Centre Bangalore, BHEL, Triton Valves Ltd. Mysore, etc. and various other organizations such as BARC, DRDO, ISRO, IIT Kharagpur, National Aerospace Laboratories and other CSIR labs etc. Amongst the infrastructure FCIPT has a full fledged material characterization laboratory with instruments such as Auger Electron Spectroscopy / X-Ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy, X-Ray Diffractometer, Scanning Electron Microscope with EDAX, Optical Metallurgical microscope with phase analyser, full fledge Metallography Laboratory, Vicker's Hardness tester, ASTM B117 corrosion testing setup etc. Other infrastructure include electronics and instrumentation lab, process demonstration systems etc.

FCIPT has developed various technologies related to waste remediation and recovery of energy from waste, surface hardening and heat treatment technologies such as Plasma Nitriding and Plasma Nitrcarburizing, Plasma assisted metallization technologies using magnetron sputter deposition, Plasma Enhanced CVD for various functional coatings on substrates, Plasma Smelting & melting, Plasma Diagnostics and various space related plasma technologies etc.

Industries can directly contact FCIPT for their contract research needs, development of specialized plasma processing equipment and power sources, Technology Development, Application Development, Material Characterization services etc.