Our laboratory activities are mainly related to the following research areas

Angle-Resolved Photoemission Spectroscopy :

One of our primary research area is to study the electronic structure of strongly correlated systems by angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES). We study (i) Metal-Insulator Transition (MIT) in transition metal oxides (ii) Mechanism of superconductivity in high-Tc superconductors (iii) Electronic structure of manganites showing CMR (iv) Superconductivity in Heavy Fermions (v) Low-dimensional systems showing charge-density waves (CDW),  (vi) Electronic structure of the novel nano materials, super-ultra-thin films and/or one-dimensional chains etc.. We regularly use synchrotron based experimental technique to study the electronic structure of solids namely XPS, XAS, Spectromicroscopy, both hard and soft photoemission spectroscopy at low temperatures.

Material Science & Design :

		New and novel materials are synthesized by different synthesis conditions. We have different kind of furnaces for sample synthesis namely muffle furnaces, tube furnaces with inert gas-purging facility, High-temperature tube furnace with gas-purging facility (various gases like Ar, N2, H2, O2 can be used), Very high-temperature Ar arc furnace, quartz sealing facility for sulphide, selenide samples due to their low sublimation temperature. Various sample characterizations like XRD at room and low temperature, AFM, SEM, Magnetization measurements by SQUID, Resistivity measurements are carried out by existing facilities.

Nano-Materials : Synthesis, Optical, Magnetic Properties :

We synthesize various II-VI group nanoparticles which can emit light when excited by a suitable source. Since the band gap of nanoparticles depends on its size, a medium consisting of nanoparticles of various sizes can generate white light. This technique would be a possible way to replace today’s fluorescent lights. We dope the nanoparticles with transition metal to study magnetic properties of dilute magnetic semiconductors (DMS). Various synthesis technique for nanoparticles are available in SSPL and characterizations are carried out with UV-Vis, FTIR, ICP-MS, SEM, XRD, XRF, SQUID instruments.

Theoretical Calculations :

		Our various experimental results are interpreted with various electronic structure calculations carried out at SSPL. For strongly correlated systems we use Full-potential LAPW and ab-initio pseudopotential method for band structure and Fermi surface calculations.  Such calculations are carried out  with the workstation and high-performance cluster available in institute.