Research Projects

Materials with topological properties have attracted significant interest in recent times as they present an ideal platform for exploring the interplay between their non-trivial band structures, electronic correlations as well as magnetism. The main aim of this project would be to alter and modify the electronic correlations of Kagome metals, such as Mn3Sn with hexagonal structure, Co3Sn2S2 belonging to the shandite structure, amongst others, by means of chemical doping, alteration of growth conditions, and dimensional reduction. These systems can be thought of as an amalgamation of materials where both topologically nontrivial conduction bands as well as localized quantum magnetism are simultaneously present. The second aim would be comprehensive study of superconductivity in the existing class of topological insulators, Dirac semimetals, and 11 Fe based materials and subsequently study their pairing mechanism. This aim would be further extended to explore and investigate topological superconductivity in potential candidates from the family of Fe pnictide based systems. Following sample synthesis using solid state reaction and flux growth, chemical vapor transport/PLD techniques would be used for growing these materials in the thin film form, which will be particularly advantageous as properties can be tuned accordingly. Detailed characterization would be done to make sure that the grown materials are of high quality and single phase. This would help in the construction of a detailed phase diagram of these systems using advanced experimental techniques. Electrical transport measurements will be employed to look for signatures of macroscopic phase formation like CDW, SDW, and superconductivity. Magnetic measurements will help in clarifying the nature of magnetic ordering. This is particularly important as many of these non-trivial phases occur close to them, for example, the half metallic state the shandite Co3Sn2S2 is observed when the system enters the ferromagnetic phase. Magnetoresistance and Hall measurements would be helpful in understanding various non-trivial topological properties. Furthermore, detailed ARPES measurements would be extremely useful in mapping out the band dispersion and other intricacies associated with the energy dispersion diagram involving topologically non-trivial Weyl nodes and others. Furthermore, extensive density functional theory calculations and other advanced numerical techniques where spatial and temporal correlations of the charge carriers can be considered will be performed in collaboration to interpret the observed experimental results. In summary, this project would be to tune the electronic properties of Kagome metals and superconductors with unconventional order parameter so as to understand their physical properties, functionalize them, and, in the process, identify the precise parameter values required to improve the range of applicability of these materials in quantum device fabrication.