Seminar by Dr. Nitesh Kumar, Max Planck Institute for Chemical Physics of Solids, Germany on "An overview of topological materials: From synthesis to applications"

25 Jan 2019
Seminar Room #350
Talk Title : "An overview of topological materials: From synthesis to applications"
Abstract
The rise of graphene in the last decade created a paradigm shift in the fundamental as well as application-oriented research of materials chemistry and condensed matter physics. Subsequently, a closely related field of topological materials prospered soon after the discovery of topological insulating states in bismuth chalcogenides. In the last few years, owing to the discovery of topological states in semimetals and metals (so called Dirac and Weyl semimetals), the area of topological materials has gained as a status of broad research area for chemists and physicists. However, the theoretical formulation of topological states is complex, they can be easily understood in terms of the behaviour of graphene. In this talk, I will introduce variety of topological states in simple compounds and try to understand their classifications based on symmetry, heaviness of the elements involved etc. Although these compounds are related to graphene fundamentally, they exhibit properties superior to graphene in many cases, for example extremely large mobility of electrons, high conductivity, record breaking magnetic field induced increase in the electrical resistivity etc. Based on these excellent electronic properties, I will show that topological semimetals are also ideal candidates for hydrogen evolution catalysis.