Plasma Beams
They are endowed with high gas as well as species temperatures, high enthalpies, high densities of reactive species, electrical conductivities and amenability to electromagnetic fields. Consequently both thermal and non-thermal processing of new and designer materials can be carried out with operational ease.Over the last two decades, low temperature thermal and non-thermal plasmas have been finding applications in key materials processing and power generation sectors in strategic as well as manufacturing industries. Plasma assisted waste treatment, benificiation and decontamination, plasma surface modification, nano synthesis, fusion applications,
plasma metallurgy, reentry simulators are some areas where significant improvement in quality, specific yield and design of new products have been seen.

On the ecology management sector one sees tremendous application in municipal and bio-medical waste management,bulk water purification, sterilization, automobile exhaust beneficiations etc.

The use of low-pressure plasmas for materials processing has recently received a great amount of interest. The promising applications of these plasmas have been appearing in the fields of chemical processes and semiconductor manufacturing. Applications include surface deposition of all types of coatings such as : Hard /
Superhard Nanocomposites, Diamond and Diamond like Carbon (DLC) coatings, etching of semiconductors, promotion of organic reactions, etching of polymers to improve bonding of the other materials etc.

Electron Beams
In the second half of last century, High energy density electron beams (HEDDB) started playing a vital role in processing and fabrication of materials required for the then newly emergent technologies like nuclear, space and defense industries. Consequently, the technology of electron beams and their applications to nuclear materials processing has been one of DAE’s major achievements during the last three decades.Currently, all the electron beam empowered materials processing belong to two groups, namely, thermal and non thermal. The thermal processing activities like welding, melting and evaporation have been an essential integral part of the high technology industries like nuclear , space, defense and advanced manufacturing almost right from its inception. In recent years, the advent of industrial electron accelerators have opened up the field of non thermal radiation processing where electron beams in the energy range of 100 KeV to 10 MeV and average powers of 1 kW to 500 kW are finding important applications in areas like plastics modification, sterilization of medical products, exhaust gas purification, food preservation, irradiation of wires and cables, etc. 

Laser Beams
These are highly monochromatic coherent source of light energy that can be focused to a very small spot. It can also be controlled in time ranging from a few femto-second to continuous wave mode. These characteristics combined with very high power capability of lasers have made the laser a tool of unprecedented precision and power.High power lasers are being used world wide in many industries to process a large variety of materials in different ways. For examples, in diamond industry lasers are used to cut and drill holes in diamond, in automobile industry they are used to cut, weld and heat-treat different parts and components, in nuclear industry they are finding application in cutting (remote and under water) as well as welding of radioactive materials, concrete scabbing, removing paints from radioactive surface, cutting of concrete and other structural materials for decontamination/ decommissioning application. The two lasers which are most popular for these applications are the high power CO2 laser and the Nd:YAG solid state laser. The CO2 laser is the real workhorse in industry for material processing applications due to its high power capability, efficiency and versatility, and relatively lower cost. For applications requiring CW laser power in several kW range at present CO2 laser is the only choice.