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Acknowledgements  

I express my sincere and revered gratitude to my supervising guide

Dr. Sheenu Thomas for accepting me as research student and offering an opportunity to

work in the area of chalcogenide glasses. Gratefully I acknowledge her for the constant

support, availability and freedom of work extended to me throughout the period .Her

inspiring and friendly nature has been of great value for me.

I am very much thankful to Prof. V P N Nampoori for his constructive

suggestions and constant support he rendered in my work throughout the period. At

all stages of my work, his valuable suggestions and critical comments lead me

through the right way. I would like to thank Prof.P Radhakrishnan,

Prof C P Girijavallabhan, Prof Nandakumaran and Mr.Kailasnath for the timely

help and encouragement.

The utmost care and time set apart by Dr. Sheenu Thomas,

Prof. V P N Nampoori and Prof. P Radhakrishnan for the final formation of the

thesis is really commendable.

I am also grateful to Dr.Johney Issac, Dept. of Instrumentation, CUSAT,

who devoted his precious time whenever I need a help in instrumentation part of the

experiments. I am thankful to Dr.C.S Paulose, Biotechnology, CUSAT for allowing

me to record the Confocal microscope images of the samples. I extend my sincere

thanks to the non-teaching staff of ISP and CELOS for all the help and assistance.

The financial assistance from UGC through CELOS Project is greatly

acknowledged. At this moment, let me express my indebtedness towards all my

teachers who opened the door of knowledge to me.

I am very much indebted to Cimi and Vidya for proof reading this thesis

patiently and providing valuable feedback. I am grateful to Nithyaja for all the

support and affection she had given to me. The days spent with Sithara has left warm

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memories in my heart. She used to send me journal papers which are not available here

within seconds. Only because of those collections of journal papers I was able to get the

awareness of advances in the area of my research. With pleasure I acknowledge

Sreelekha for her inspiring words. I would like to express my heart- felt thanks to all the

friends of the photonics family, Dr. Lyjo, Dr. Geetha, Dr. Sheeba, Dr. Parvathy,

Dr. Litty, Dr. Manu, Dr. Rajesh , Dr. Saritha, Dr. Santhi, Thomas Chettan, Jayasree

teacher Murali ,Mathew, Sony, Linesh, Sudeesh, Misha, Rose Leena, Divya, Susmitha,

Rajeena, Sreeja.S, Bejoy, Jinesh, Retheesh, Reetha teacher, Annie teacher, Libeesh mash,

Bobbey Sir, Pradeep. I am thankful to Indu for accompanying me to lab whenever I

have to do experiments in night. I am fortunate to have loving and caring Cimi, Vidya,

Nimmy as my friends. They were with me in all my circumstance in my CUSAT life. I

also acknowledge my friends Jojo, Lajna, Asha, Abraham for their constant love and

support.

I am blessed with my loving family, the greatest gift that God had given

me on this earth. There are no words to express gratitude to my Acha and Amma

who have always guided me, believed in me and strived for my achievements. It is

only because of them, who I am now. I am deeply and forever indebted to Sree for

his encouragement and great source of strength that he gave me. His presence has

rendered a lot to make my dream come true. My sister, Kunju was there for me

always and I value it more in my life.

I would like to thank everybody who was important to the successful

realization of thesis, as well as expressing my apology that I could not mention

personally one by one.

Last, but most important of all, I thank God for the wisdom and

perseverance that he has been bestowed upon me throughout my life.

Tintu.R