Ramachandra Rao: Electrical and magneto transport studies in doped systems

Our group focusses on the physics and applications of thin films and nanostructures. In this talk, I will give a brief introduction to low-dimensional systems followed by an outline about our research activities highlighting some of the recent results on the growth of self-assembled nanostructures for light emission. I will talk about how depth profiling experiments can help in determining the presence of dopants in metal-oxide thin films. I will highlight our results on degenerately doped ZnO as a spin transport layer in NM/ZnO/FMI heterostructures. Followed by this, I will focus on diamond, which is a very fascinating material that offers half a dozen different applications. The hardness of diamond can be used to enhance the life of machine cutting tools, which the aerospace industry is in need of when dealing with matching of MMCs. It’s high thermal conductivity can be used in thermal spreaders. It’s unique transparency to cut-off high energy radiation makes it an effective radiation resistant coating material. And more importantly, diamond, despite being one of the most resistive materials, is driven to a superconducting state by boron doping and this has been a breakthrough in this decade. Some of our recent exciting results on superconductivity in boron doped diamond will be presented.