Materials Science Centre

The research of the group covers the broad theme of inorganic functional nanomaterials. The aim is to ‘make’ the materials through wet-chemical synthesis, ‘see’ them at atomic-scale through aberration-corrected scanning transmission electron microscopy (AC-STEM), ‘explore’ their structural and electronic properties through density functional theory (DFT) simulations, and ‘apply’ them in suitable applications.

This combinatorial approach is quite powerful for solving materials problems. The fun lies in the fact that sometimes computation leads to guided experiments, and sometimes it helps to understand experimental data. The experimental approach involves synthesis and interrogation of materials of interest at atomic-scale. This can be achieved through wet-chemistry and AC-STEM. And the computations involve atomistic DFT simulations. Given a judicious choice of systems, AC-STEM and DFT are often truly complementary and are quite useful to establish structure-property relationship in functional nanomaterials. Such correlative understanding is key to engineer materials for desired applications.

In terms of materials, currently functional oxides, chalcogen (Te & Se) and metal (Au and Pt) nanowires are of interest. We intend to establish structure-property relationship in these functional nanomaterials to apply them in a various applications, ranging from nanoscale electronic devices to macroscale regular devices, catalysis, energy conversion and storage.