Abstract:

Over the past six to seven decades the strategies to design materials that exhibit pre-designed or serendipitous physical or chemical properties have undergone a remarkable evolution. All branches of science and technology, from chemistry, physics to engineering and instrumentation have played a role in this evolution. We developed complex molecules designed towards enhanced catalytic properties, clever chemical protocols of combining materials at the atomic scale that exhibit superconductivity or giant magnetoresistance, as well as physical methods of superlattices and heterostructures with compound semiconductors for electronic and photonic applications. In this talk I shall discuss an emerging material designing strategy that combines materials at an intermediate scale. It involves a bottom-up assembly in lego-like structures at the nanoscale, where the functional properties become emergent in that they are observed only in the assembly and not in the individual components. I shall provide specific examples with 2D materials and metallic nanostructures. 

Bio:

Arindam Ghosh is the JRD Tata Chair Professor of Physics at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore, India. He did PhD at the same institution, postdoctoral research at the University of Cambridge, UK, and had also been a Visiting Research Fellow at the T J Watson Research Centre of IBM, Yorktown Heights. His research involves both fundamental and applied aspects of 2D materials focusing on electrical transport and noise, light-matter interaction, and thermal management. He has graduated nearly 25 PhD students, published over 150 research papers, and serves on the editorial or advisory board of many international journals, conferences, and other professional bodies. He has been instrumental in the formulation of the quantum material and devices vertical of the National Quantum Mission in India. He is a member of all three National Science Academies in India, and received numerous prizes, including the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar prize (2013) and the Infosys Prize for Physical Sciences (2020), for his development of atomically thin two-dimensional semiconductors to build a new generation of functional electronic, thermoelectric, and optoelectronic devices.