Research activities

The constant demand for higher-performing electronic devices with reduced scale, keeps the ‘nano/microelectronic materials’ a hot research topic. The dimensional scaling limit of CMOS technology has led to exploring several alternate electronic materials. Beyond CMOS technology, Resistive switching (RS) materials are one of the emerging electronic materials which stand out for their superior performance in memory and computational applications. At present, FNIG focuses on investigation of RS phenomenon in CMOS compatible metal oxides for developing energy efficient memory and logic devices.

Semiconducting metal oxide (SMO) based chemiresistive sensors have recently attracted significant attention for a wide variety of applications, including food processing, environmental monitoring, agriculture industry, and medical diagnosis. At FNIG we focus on development of energy efficient, low cost SMO thin film based chemresistive gas sensors.

Beyond graphene, recently discovered two dimensional Transition metal dichalcogenides (2D TMDCs) are widely explored due to their direct bandgap (1-2eV) and interesting exotic physics. The presence of large surface-to-area ratio makes them highly susceptible to the substrate they are placed on as it can radically alter their properties via doping, screening etc. At present, FNIG focuses on investigating the interlayer interaction between 2D materials and substrates and tailor their (opto)electronic properties by substrate engineering.

There has been a major push for electric vehicles (EV) to combat the air pollution. EV’s in combination with smart grid and vehicle-to-grid (V2G) approach is set to bring about a major change in automotive industry. The energy density of the state-of-the-art Lithium-ion battery (LIB) is bottleneck for its adoption in EV’s.  FNIG’s focus is to develop new cathode system for alternative battery system: Li-S. FNIG is also involved in developing novel cathode materials for emerging Na-ion batteries.