Laser flash photolysis studies were carried out on two types of silver nanoparticles prepared byγ-radiolysis of Ag⁺ solutions in the presence of polyphosphate as the stabiliser. Type I silver nanoparticles displayed a surface plasmon band at 390 nm. Type II silver nanoparticles showed a 390 nm surface plasmon band with a shoulder at 550 nm. On photoexcitation in the surface plasmon band region, using 35 picosecond laser pulses at 355 nm and 532 nm, the type II solutions showed transient bleaching and absorption signals in the 450–900 nm region, which did not decay appreciably up to 5 nanoseconds. These transient changes were found to get annealed in the intervalt where 5 ns<t< 100 ns. Extended photolysis of the nanoparticle solutions with repetitive laser pulses resulted in a decrease in the values of the average particle size which were measured by employing the dynamic light scattering technique.

Acridone (acceptor) and naphthylamine (donor) based Donor-Acceptor-Donor (D-A-D) compound (1) was synthesised, characterised and its thermally-activated delayed fluorescence (TADF) properties were studied in detail. Compound 1 is fluorescent and emits in the green region (550 nm). The energy gapbetween the ground and the lowest excited singlet (S1) state is estimated to be 2.55 eV. The energy gap between the CT singlet and triplet states (ΔE_ST) was found to be ~0.3 eV. Small ΔE_S1-T1 is one of the important criteria for TADF to take place in a molecule and thus detailed photophysics has been studied.Transient lifetime measurements showed an increase in the fluorescence lifetime (s) on purging with N₂, as compared with that in air-saturated solution, indicating the involvement of the triplet state in emission. Emission at 550 nm was also observed with a delay of 100 ls which corresponded to the delayed fluorescencein 1. The lifetime of TADF was found to be 176 ls. Applications of TADF materials in organic lightemitting devices (OLEDs) has gotten attention as TADF materials utilise the triplet excitons which helps in increasing internal quantum efficiency of device. Air-saturated based on 1 were fabricated and their intensity was found to be nearly as high as 17,000 Cd/m² at 25 mA/cm² which was comparable to many of the known TADF emitters.

Terahertz (THz) absorption behaviour of HSA protein in aqueous buffer solutions has been investigated in the 0.1–2 THz frequency range using a highly intense THz source based on coherent transition radiation (CTR) generated using a femtosecond electron accelerator of 42 MeV energy (for 0.3–2 THz) and aklystron (at 0.1 THz). Like in the cases of other proteins reported earlier, THz absorbance of the protein solutions follow nonlinear behaviour with increasing concentration of HSA protein monitored through the entire frequency range. THz absorbance of the solution initially increases to follow an apparently linearbehaviour up to the concentration of ~6 9 10^-4 mol dm^-3 but decreases gradually with further increase in HSA concentration. The linear behaviour in low concentration regime could be explained considering the increase in concentration of the monomer HSA molecules in solution with a well-defined hydration layer of thickness of about 22 A^° around it. However, the study of dynamic light scattering measurements suggest the presence of increasing number of protein aggregates in solution with increasing concentration of protein. THz absorbance of each of these samples could be calculated to show that absorbance decreases with increasing number of aggregates in solution and also the relative concentrations of the monomer and aggregated particles existing in solutions could be estimated. This work, for the first time, explains the nonlinear change in THz absorbance of protein solutions with increasing protein concentration considering the protein aggregation effect at very high concentration.