Welcome to the Inorganic and Organometallic Photochemistry Lab
Left to right: Krishna, Vishak, Rahul, Tanu, Nitish, Narayan, Nirbhay
Ph.D. positions are available for CSIR-UGC-JRF/INSPIRE candidates. Postdoc candidates interested in applying ANRF-NPDF may contact Dr. Sinha (narayan@iitmandi.ac.in) for further details. Currently we have no internship/project positions.
Our research group is located at the School of Chemical Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Mandi. We will be working on cutting-edge research topics in the field of Inorganic and Organometallic Chemistry, and Photochemistry.
One of our core research topics is to develop abundant transition metal based photocatalyst and their application in photocatalysis. Most of the well-known transition metal based photocatalysts are made from rare and expensive 4d6 or 5d6 metals like Ru(II), Os(II), Ir(III). These are extensively used in various fields of photochemistry, for examples, photocatalysis, light-emitting diodes (LEDs), solar energy conversion, bioimaging, photodynamic therapy and so on, due to the presence of long-lived and highly emissive metal-to-ligand charge transfer (MLCT) excited states. Our focus is to replace these expensive luminophores with abundant and isoelectronic first-row transition metals like Cr(0), Mn(I), Fe(II) and Co(III).
Our major goal is to design innovative ligands based on N-heterocyclic carbenes (NHCs) and arylisocyanides. Then these ligands will be incorporated with first row transition metals, to prepare new organometallic complexes in the direction that these complexes will be photoactive as mentioned in the previous section. After successful preparation of these complexes, they will be characterized by various analytical methods including NMR spectroscopy, mass spectrometry, IR spectroscopy, and X-ray crystallography. Additional characterizations like UV-Vis and luminescence spectroscopy, transient absorption spectroscopy, cyclic voltammetry, spectro-electrochemistry will also be carried out. Thereafter, these complexes will be used in light induced energy and electron transfer catalysis, and other various applications of photochemistry.
For additional research topics of our group, please see the "Research" section.
Selected publications:
J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2025, DOI: 10.1021/jacs.4c16672.
Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2024, DOI: 10.1002/anie.202319047.
J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2024, DOI: 10.1021/jacs.4c00605.
J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2024, DOI: 10.1021/jacs.3c13925.
Nat. Chem. 2023, 15, 1730–1736.
Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2023, 62, e202303864.
J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2023, 145, 11402–11414.
J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2023, 145, 4903−4920.
J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2022, 144, 21948–21960.
J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2022, 144, 9859–9873.
Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2021, 60, 23722–23728.
Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2018, 57, 5161–5165.
Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2017, 56, 7393–7397.
Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2017, 56, 2785–2789.
Acc. Chem. Res. 2017, 50, 2167–2184.
Group News
July 2025: Tanu's recent work has been accepted in Inorg. Chem. Congratulations!
March 2025: First paper from the group just accepted in Chem. Eur. J. Congrats to all the authors.
January 2025: A co-author paper of Narayan has been accepted in JACS.
December 2024: Narayan gave an invited talk at the International Conference on Ultrafast Nonlinear Optics and Optical Spectroscopy (UNOOS), held at IISER Mohali from 10th - 12th December 2024.
October 2024: Vishak and Krishna Dev joined the group for their DP courses and master theses. Welcome to the group.
August 2024: Rahul joined the group for his Ph.D. thesis. Welcome to the group.
July 2024: Narayan, Nitish and Tanu participated at the 30th International Conference on Organometallic Chemistry 2024 (ICOMC 2024), held at Agra, India. Narayan delivered a talk, and Nitish and Tanu presented posters.
June 2024: Narayan (co-convenor) and other colleagues organised an International Conference on Fundamental and Advanced Research in Chemistry 2024 (FARC 2024) at IIT Mandi from 6th -8th June, 2024.
March 2024: Narayan's two papers are accepted in JACS and one paper is accepted in Angew. Chem. Int. Ed.
(Those are the first papers from IIT Mandi)
Jan 2024: Nirbhay joined the group for his Ph.D. thesis. Welcome to the group.
Dec 2024: Tanu has been selected for the INSPIRE PhD fellowship. Congratulations Tanu!
Aug 2023: Tanvi and Shivam joined the group for their DP courses and MSc theses. Welcome to the group.
Aug 2023: Tanu and Nitish joined the group for their PhD theses. Welcome to the group.
July 2023: Narayan joined SCS, IIT Mandi as an Assistant Professor of Inorganic and Organometallic Chemistry.