SAIP 2025
Plenary SPEaker
Speaker: PROFESSOR DIPANKAR DAS SARMA
Title: Halide perovskites and related materials: A new playground of material discovery
Abstract
The last fifteen years have seen the most spectacular rise of a class of materials initially known as the hybrid halide perovskites, with the field quickly evolving to encompass all-inorganic halide perovskites and double perovskites, low-dimensional hybrid halide materials, and quantum dots. With intense worldwide research activities over the last decade, photovoltaic, light-emissive, and detection properties of this class of materials have reached superlative performance levels within this exceptionally short period and have taken the world by surprise. I shall discuss some historical aspects of this field of study, followed by some of our recent results to exemplify the excitement in this field in terms of discovering new materials and material properties. If time permits, I shall touch upon another exciting field comprising chiral systems where some of the systems can even be made ferroelectric.
Biography
Professor Dipankar Das Sarma earned a 5-year Integrated MSc in Physics from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, in 1977 and a Ph.D. from the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) in 1982. During 1984-1986, he was a Visiting Scientist at Kernforschungsanlage Jülich, Germany.
Professor Sarma served as a faculty member at IISc during the period 1986-2021 and was the first J. N. Tata Chair there in 2017-2020. He concurrently served as a Distinguished Scientist (2011-2016) at the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research and as the MLS Chair Professor of Physics (2006-2008) at the Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science. He is now an Honorary Professor (2021-2026) and CSIR Bhatnagar Fellow (2021-2026) at IISc.
His research interests include strongly correlated electron systems, semiconductor nanocrystals, and energy materials, utilizing various experimental and theoretical techniques. He was instrumental in establishing two Indo-Italian synchrotron beamlines dedicated to diffraction experiments at Elettra in Trieste. Professor Sarma has published about 500 scientific papers and holds several patents. He is an elected Fellow of the Indian National Academy of Engineering, The World Academy of Sciences (TWAS), the American Physical Society, and all three science academies of India. He has received numerous national and international awards, including multiple honorary doctorates. He has also held many prestigious visiting and honorary academic positions globally and within India, including roles at institutions like the University of Tokyo, Uppsala University, University of Vienna, Ecole Polytechnique, TIFR, JNCASR, and SNBNCBS. Further details are available via his group webpage and Google Scholar profile (https://scholar.google.co.in/citations?hl=en&pli=1&user=2yLbffsAAAAJ).
