Stephenson Institute hosts India Fellowship Programme recipient
Dr Amit Chakraborty from the National Institute of Technology, Durgapur, India has been awarded a University of Liverpool India Fellowship award to fund a collaborative research visit to the laboratory of Dr Vin Dhanak in the Stephenson Institute for Renewable Energy.
Energy harvesting and storage are among the most important challenges the world is facing today. In order to address these upcoming challenges, Dr. Chakraborty and Dr. Dhanak have joined forces to develop new materials with properties suitable for applications in battery and energy storage.
The Indian research group have the expertise to produce composites of nanoparticles of transition metal (manganese, copper, nickel etc.) oxides and graphene nanosheets, using simple wet chemical routes. These composites are expected to benefit from the extremely good catalytic properties of the transition metal oxides as well as the large surface area and good electrical conductivity of the graphene nanosheets, properties that are suitable for energy storage application.
Investigation of some of the properties of these composite samples is being carried out durring Dr Chakraborty's visit to Liverpool using the state-of-the-art facilities such as XPS, AFM, galvanostat/potentiostat in Dr Dhanak's laboratory.
The preliminary results are very encouraging and it is hoped that the visit will foster a long lasting collaboration between the two research groups.
Dr Vin Dhanak and Dr Amit Chakraborty in the Nanomaterials Characterisation laboratory in the Stephenson Institute