Materials Characterization at Low Temperature

History:

Physics of materials involve understanding the ground state of the materials. Therefore, one has to measure properties of the materials at low temperatures (~ 10K). To facilitate measurement of electronic transport, thermal and elastic properties of materials, this laboratory was established in 1999 with funding from individual projects sponsored by DST-SERB and CSIR.

Research areas:

Presently the work is focused on studying

martensitic and other first-order transitions in manganese-containing alloys and compounds,

negative thermal expansion materials

thermoelectric half Heuslers

topological insulators, etc.

Resources and facilities:

Closed cycle refrigerator (10 K – 500 K) with nano voltmeter, constant current source, micro voltmeter with scanner card and strain bridge for measurement of transport properties like resistivity, thermopower, and thermal expansion.

Pulse tube refrigerator (4 K – 300 K) with lock-in amplifier for ac susceptibility

Differential scanning calorimeter (100 K – 850 K) for thermal properties,

Dynamical Mechanical Analyzer (100K – 800K) for study of viscoelastic properties of materials

Achievements:

Since inception the laboratory has contributed towards seven PhD thesis and several Master’s level dissertations. It has also produced ~70 publications in SCOPUS indexed journals including one of the first measurements on thermoelectric power of Ni2MnGa type shape memory alloys [see Phys. Rev. B. 70, 132408 (2004)]

Contact persons: Prof. Kaustubh Priolkar