Imagine that you can wrap your mobile phone around your wrist or rollout a screen from it so that you can watch full colour television, a movie, read a book or a newspaper. Imagine a portable rolled out television that can be sticked on the window like a wallpaper or a solar cell panel that you can carry in a foldable format during your next hiking on the Himalayas. Even more, you can have a tattoo applied on any part of your body that can continuously measure your blood pressure, heart rate, glucose level, perform ECG or deliver the drug as an when required.

Electronic waste comprising of predominantly consumer electronic goods is increasing at an alarming rate since the past decade. Treating this electronic waste to recover as many valuables as possible is one way to tackle this menace without changing any of the materials or manufacturing processes. An alternative however is to develop technologies that will utilise only environmentally friendly and sustainable materials for the next generation of consumer electronic devices.

The lithium-ion battery is a widely used energy storage technology because of its high volumetric and gravimetric energy density. These batteries are used in portable electronics, electric vehicles and even at power stations to provide uninterrupted power supply. These batteries have tiny memory effect, low self-discharge and can be retrieved from deep discharge. In addition, most of the used components are recyclable.A battery is composed of mainly three components: cathode, anode and electrolyte.

Lithium-ion batteries powers the operation of almost all electronic gadgets are known for their energy density. They are in constant need to power all electronic devices at various operating conditions. The most important limitation of these commercial lithium-ion batteries is their operating temperature range. They cannot be operated at extreme temperatures (not less than 10 o C and not higher than 60 o C).In such cases, constant research was on electrolyte formulations which can stay as a liquid at sub-zero temperatures.

Corrosion affects productivity, safety, reliability and hence global competitiveness of all industries. Importantly, they affect the environment and devour the finite natural resources that are available to mankind and so cause irrecoverable damage to a nation. As new technologies evolve, tolerance to corrosion becomes stringent, requiring advanced research in this area. The following expertise is developed to address this concern.

Corrosion is one of the primary issues of concern for the industrial sector. A rough estimate shows that there is a loss of about Rs50,000 crores per annum in India alone due to corrosion. Zinc and chromium used widely today to impede corrosion suffer from cost or environmental issues. Graphene, also known as a wonder material, can help overcome these problems due to its impermeable and inert characteristics.A large scale graphene production route has been devised which can produce defect-free few-layer graphene with a yield of 18% from the starting material graphite.

Powders, or granular materials more generally, are widely handled and processed in different industries (e.g., pharmaceutical, chemical, ceramic, steel, food and agriculture). The flow of granular materials is quite different from fluids and in the case of mixtures, the particles have a tendency to spontaneously separate out (segregate). We have been working on developing an understanding the rheology and mixing/segregation of granular materials using experiments, continuum models and particle level simulations.

Continuous flow process provides a potential alternative to batch synthesis because of its inherent advantages such as efficient heat exchange, high batch to batch reproducibility, fast mixing, high throughput, safety and the ability to do multi-step telescoping synthesis. Due to these advantages, these processes have been referred to as the most promising ‘Green Technology’.