Research Projects

The modelling and simulation of nanoscale electronic devices predicts various intrinsic properties of nanomaterials, so that they could be used in futuristic applications with efficiency and speed. Over the last six years, researchers have shown great interest on the use of antimonene for applications in diverse fields including electronic device applications. Antimonene- a single layer of antimony atoms reported firstly theoretically in the year 2015 has gained popularity among the 2D mono-elemental materials family due to its remarkable physical, electrical, optoelectronic properties and robustness under ambient conditions. However, antimonene monolayer is an indirect band-gap semiconductor, which significantly restricts its applications in optoelectronics. Thus, in this proposal, an attempt is made to engineer the indirect bandgap in antimonene to direct bandgap by employing three different techniques including thermal treatment, doping and by applying electric field. The band gap engineered material will be used as a scattering material in a modeled photodetector and its performance will be analyzed and compared with the state of art photodetectors based on other 2D materials. The bandgap engineering will increase the efficiency and sensitivity of the photodetector. The objectives can be achieved by using commercially available software's such as Atomistic Toll Kit / Nanodcal / VASP which uses density function theory (DFT) to solve quantum problems for materials and to model and simulate nanostructures. The work under this project is novel and very important for development of futuristic nanoscale photodetectors based on 2D materials with ultimate efficiency and has not been reported till now either at National and International level.