Page 49 - Annual Report_21-22

MATERIALS CHEMISTRY

FOCUS

The main research thrust of the department is on new materials development including synthesis,
processing, and characterization of advanced hybrid (inorganic-organic) materials, nanocomposites,
nanostructured materials, functionalization of new materials, tunable smart materials, tailoring band-
gap of materials, metal organic frameworks, antifouling anti-bacterial materials, superhydrophobic
materials, etc by soft chemical synthesis and solid state synthesis for applications in water treatment,
energy applications in fuel cells, supercapacitors, solar to hydrogen fuel, photoelectrochemical water
splitting, thermoelectric materials, magnetic refrigerant materials, sensors, chemo-biosensors for
detection of heavy metal contaminants in water, gas storage and CO2 sequestration applications.

CORE AREA EXPERTISE

• Industrial coatings by electrophoretic deposition (EPD), high-velocity oxy-fuel (HVOF),
cold spraying, dip-coating, spin coating, and sol-gel coating
• Thermal barrier coating, corrosion resistant coating, tribological coating (erosion wear and
abrasion resistant coating), antibacterial coating, biocompatible coating, functionally graded
coating, multifunctional and tunable smart materials coating, and self-healing coating.
• Molecular probes for sensing application
• Development of engineered photocatalyst for solar H2 generation/ solar fuels
• Multifunctional, tunable and smart materials for energy storage and conversion
• Hydrophobic and superhydrophobic materials for surface wettability
• Solid oxide fuel cells (SOFC), proton conducting fuel cells (PCFC)
• Self-cleaning gallium ferrite nanocrystals
• Thermoelectric materials & magnetic refrigerant materials
• Porous organic polymer (POP) based sorbents for gas storage application.

ANNUAL REPORT 2021-22 47