It is well known that the traditional paradigm of the materials science tetrahedron depicts the inter-dependent relationship among the structure, properties, processing, and performance of a material. The demand for high performance structural materials for real world applications has undoubtedly driven scientific efforts for the past few decades due to stringent regulations on efficiency and emissions.

Increasing degree of miniatursation of structures and devices has thrown open new observations in a material's response to different loading environments that are starkly different from that of the bulk. Thin films, nanostructures, MEMS and several other systems belong to this category. The 'smaller is stronger' and 'inverse Hall-Petch effect' are typical size effects that occur when the external surface or internal interface shrinks in size. Brittle materials become more damage tolerant while ductile materials tend to become increasingly brittle at small dimensions.

India is infamously called the ‘diabetes capital of the world’. With over 40 million diabetics in the country, we have a distinction of having the highest number of diabetics for any country. This has huge implications on the country’s healthcare, forcing doctors, scientists and citizens to work together to manage and remediate this condition. Now, researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IIT Bombay) have some sweet news for diabetics. They have developed a polymer based bioartificial pancreas that can be implanted inside the body, thus helping in managing diabetes. 

Study shows how crystallisation can be used to shape materials

Breakthrough in chemical analysis of Intrinsically Conducting Polymers (ICPs) enables easier identification of polymers suitable for different prospective applications. Researchers at IIT Bombay have come up with a novel and much simpler method to quantify their charge storage characteristics.

Researchers develop a highly effective solution for recovering green sand in small and medium foundries.

Researchers from IIT Bombay fabricate highly efficient transistors using graphene nanoribbons

Prof. Vikram Vishal, Assistant Professor at the Department of Earth Sciences at the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, was recently awarded the prestigious NASI Young Scientist Award - 2018 for his work on unconventional hydrocarbons. He is one of the 20 researchers across the country, to be awarded the annual prize for exceptional research in the field of Electronics, Engineering, Chemical Sciences, Physical Sciences and Plant Sciences. 

Prof Amit Agrawal, Professor at the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IIT Bombay), has been awarded the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize by the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR). This award recognises his outstanding contributions to the area of Fluid Mechanics including experimental, theoretical and numerical work in Microfluidic Devices. 

Prof. Chandra M. R. Volla, an Associate Professor in the Department of Chemistry, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, has won the NASI Young Scientist Award 2018 for his research in the field of chemical sciences. His work deals with catalysis, the process of accelerating a chemical reaction by the use of an agent referred to as a catalyst. He shares the award with three other recipients. 

Study shows how crystallisation can be used to shape materials

Researchers from IIT Bombay have designed a protein-based carrier for delivering drugs into cancer cells.

We have all felt it—the uncomfortable feeling in our nether regions that has us heading to the nearest washroom to empty our bladder. While many of us can hold it until we reach a toilet, those with urinary incontinence, or the inability to prevent the leakage of urine from the bladder, face a severe social and hygiene issue. This condition can be caused by a variety of factors, such as urinary tract infections, kidney stones or neurological disorders.

Silicon-based electronic circuits are continuously getting smaller. The Taiwanese manufacturer
TSMC currently makes chips with the smallest feature of the circuit measuring just 7
nanometers, with millions of such components packed on a single chip. The process of
manufacturing such ultra-dense circuits is complex. Despite world-class control, there are tiny
fluctuations in the nanoscale dimensions. Thus, each transistor is slightly different from another
across chips and even on the same chip. A circuit designer must account for such variations to

The research in our laboratory is focused on designing and developing novel, inexpensive and stable phosphorus based compounds to study their organometallic chemistry and explore their catalytic and medicinal applications. Our group is also focusing on designing multifunctional phosphorus based ligands for making homoleptic soft-soft metal-organic frameworks for catalytic, material and photophysical applications.

Design and development of muti-functional, hierarchically structured, and highly ordered materials is the key to the advancement in the field of materials nanochemistry, and bionanotechnology. These fields are likely to play an important role in driving markets, and economies in the developing countries by fulfilling their high demand towards the improvement in health, and energy sector. Specifically, the formation of biodegradable materials with novel properties, multiple functions, improved efficiency, and higher sensitivity can cater to the demand of health and diagnostics industry.

■   Metal nanoparticles of gold (Au), ruthenium (Ru), rhodium (Rh) and palladium (Pd) supported by a carbon nanotube (CNT): supramolecular assembly are highly efficient heterogeneous catalysts for various organic reactions
■   Oxidation of alcohols, phenols, silanes, hydroxylamines and olefins, reductive amination and N-formylation of aldehydes,  reduction of N-oxides and nitroaromatics as well as coupling reactions have been successfully carried out with the above M      CNT catalyst

We have been involved in understanding the mechanism of transport in crowded and active medium. For this, we build statistical mechanical models and solve it either analytically or on a computer, when complicacy of the problem does not allow exact analytical solutions. Availability of single molecule data also makes it possible to compare our results with experiments. A realistic example would be biological cell where presence of cell organelles makes it highly crowded.

Touch screens have become the ubiquitous interface for controlling contemporary electronic devices and incorporated into almost all the new technologies starting from smart phones, computers, flat panel televisions to personal gadgets and household appliances. One of the key components of touch screen is a transparent conducting electrode (TCE) which is optically transparent and electronically conductive. TCEs are also the backbone of optoelectronic devices eg. organic light emitting devices (OLEDs), photovoltaics (PVs), liquid crystal devices (LCDs) electro chromical devices (ECDs) etc.

Our research focuses on chemical reactivity and catalysis. When two molecules react to form product(s), there are different likely pathways that one can think of. Energies of various intermediates and transition states connecting such intermediates involved in the reaction has an enormous effect on the pathway a reaction would proceed through. We employ ab initio and density functional theory computational methods to identify the nature of intermediates and transition states involved in catalytic reactions.