Research overview:

Materials for Energy relevant applications:

The typical sources such as coal and petroleum products for the production of the world’s energy have been largely depleted. This has triggered researchers for identifying and developing alternative, renewable energy sources. Among all, H2 is identified as one of the potential energies and can be produced through a photocatalytic water splitting mechanism which is an environmentally friendly process also. 

In order to realize this, we are employing both Electrochemical and Photoelectrochemical techniques on different classes of materials such as metal oxide heterostructures and intermetallic compounds. 

Materials for next-generation quantum technologies:

Energy and information technology are playing a vital role in our modern-day to day life. A Significant fraction of energy is lost during the transportation of electrical energy from power girds to each and every part of the globe. Dissipation of electrical signals in electronic devices is the major problem that is limiting the number of transistors on a semiconductor chip. The major reasons for this energy dissipation include different types of scatterings within the material. The main technological difficulty that the scientific community facing is to reduce the dissipation of energy in power lines and electronic devices. This is where the researchers focussing on the new class of materials so-called “Quantum Materials” in which all the physical properties are uniquely defined by quantum mechanical effects of constituent electrons and remain manifest even at extreme conditions.

More recently, scientists identified a new class of quantum matter with exotic physical properties which are originating from the topology of the ground state wave function of the constituent electrons and are designated as Topological Quantum Materials (TQM). These materials exhibit helical conducting surface/edge states in an insulating bulk bandgap. These surface/edge states are protected by time-reversal/inversion symmetry and are insensitive to non-magnetic impurities and deformations. This peculiar phenomenon reduces the scattering of electrons, which in turn enhances dissipation less electrical transport. This triggers the researchers to design electronic devices with topological quantum materials which in turn opens an exciting era of applying quantum transport in improving the functionality of electronic devices. 

We are currently focusing on Heusler compounds as candidates to study different topological phases such as Topological insulators, Topological superconductors and Weyl and Dirac semimetals in these materials.