27 September 2023

– Ranjini Raghunath

Two-inch GaN-on-silicon wafer with power transistors, developed at CeNSE, IISc (Photo: Ashutosh Vishwakarma)

Researchers at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) have developed a fully indigenous gallium nitride (GaN) power switch that can have potential applications in systems like power converters for electric vehicles and laptops, as well as in wireless communications. The entire process of building the switch – from material growth to device fabrication to packaging – was developed in-house at the Centre for Nano Science and Engineering (CeNSE), IISc.

Due to their high performance and efficiency, GaN transistors are poised to replace traditional silicon-based transistors as the building blocks in many electronic devices, such as ultrafast chargers for electric vehicles, phones and laptops, as well as space and military applications such as radar.

“It is a very promising and disruptive technology,” says Digbijoy Nath, Associate Professor at CeNSE and corresponding author of the study published in Microelectronic Engineering. “But the material and devices are heavily import-restricted … We don’t have gallium nitride wafer production capability at commercial scale in India yet.” The know-how of manufacturing these devices is also a heavily-guarded secret with few studies published on the details of the processes involved, he adds.

Power switches are used to control the flow of power to – essentially turn on or off – electronic devices. To design the GaN power switch, the IISc team used a metal organic chemical vapour deposition technique developed and optimised over a decade by researchers in the lab of Srinivasan Raghavan, Professor and Chair, CeNSE. It involves growing GaN alloy crystals layer by layer on a two-inch silicon wafer to fabricate a multi-layered transistor. The entire process needs to be carried out carefully in a clean room to ensure that no defects arise due to environmental conditions like humidity or temperature, which can affect device performance. The team also took the help of Kaushik Basu, Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering (EE), and his lab, to build an electrical circuit using these transistors and test their switching performance.

GaN transistors typically operate in what is called a “depletion mode” – they are on all the time unless a negative voltage is applied to turn them off. But power switches used in chargers and adapters need to work the other way around – they normally need to be off and not carrying current, and should only turn on when a positive voltage is applied (“enhancement mode”). To achieve this operation, the team combined the GaN transistor with a commercially available silicon transistor to keep the device normally off.

“The packaging of the device was also indigenously developed,” explains Rijo Baby, PhD student at CeNSE and first author of the study. After packaging and testing, the team found the device performance to be comparable to state-of-the-art switches available commercially, with a switching time of about 50 nanoseconds between on and off operations.

Going forward, the researchers plan on scaling up the device dimensions so that it can operate at high currents. They also plan to design a power converter that can step up or step down voltages.

“If you look at strategic organisations in India, they have a hard time procuring GaN transistors … It is impossible to import them beyond a certain quantity or power/frequency rating,” says Nath. “This is essentially a demonstration of indigenous GaN technology development.”

From left to right: Srinivasan Raghavan, Manish Mandal, Rijo Baby, Kaushik Basu, Digbijoy N Nath (Photo: Ashutosh Vishwakarma)

REFERENCE:
Baby R, Mandal M, Roy SK, Bardhan A, Muralidharan R, Basu K, Raghavan S, Nath DN, 8 A, 200 V normally-off cascode GaN-on-Si HEMT: From epitaxy to double pulse testing, Microelectronic Engineering (2023).

This work is funded by MeitY & DST Nano Mission through NNETRA, MoE (MHRD) through NIEIN, and SCL/ISRO.

CONTACT:
Digbijoy Nath
Associate Professor
Centre for Nano Science and Engineering (CeNSE)
Indian Institute of Science (IISc)
Email: digbijoy@iisc.ac.in
Phone: +91 80 2293 2991

Rijo Baby
PhD student
Centre for Nano Science and Engineering (CeNSE)
Indian Institute of Science (IISc)
Email: rijobaby@iisc.ac.in

NOTE TO JOURNALISTS:
a) If any of the text in this release is reproduced verbatim, please credit the IISc press release.
b) For any queries about IISc press releases, please write to news@iisc.ac.in or pro@iisc.ac.in.

11 September 2023

– Sandeep Menon

Scientists at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) have developed a new approach to potentially detect and kill cancer cells, especially those which form a solid tumour mass. They have created hybrid nanoparticles made of gold and copper sulphide, which can kill cancer cells using heat, and enable their detection using sound waves, according to a study published in ACS Applied Nano Materials.

Early detection and treatment are key in the battle against cancer. Copper sulphide nanoparticles have previously received attention for their application in cancer diagnosis, while gold nanoparticles, which can be chemically modified to target cancer cells, have shown anticancer effects. In the current study, the IISc team decided to combine these two into hybrid nanoparticles.

“These particles have photothermal, oxidative stress, and photoacoustic properties,” says Jaya Prakash, Assistant Professor at the Department of Instrumentation and Applied Physics (IAP), IISc, and one of the corresponding authors of the paper. PhD students Madhavi Tripathi and Swathi Padmanabhan are co-first authors.

When light is shined on these hybrid nanoparticles, they absorb the light and generate heat, which can kill cancer cells. These nanoparticles also produce singlet oxygen atoms that are toxic for the cells. “We want both these mechanisms to kill the cancer cell,” Jaya Prakash explains.

Schematic indicating photo-theranostic potential of TSP-CA (Image: Madhavi Tripathi)

The researchers say that the nanoparticles can also help diagnose certain cancers. Existing methods such as standalone CT and MRI scans require trained radiology professionals to decipher the images. The photoacoustic property of the nanoparticles allows them to absorb light and generate ultrasound waves, which can be used to detect cancer cells with high contrast once the particles reach them. The ultrasound waves generated from the particles allow for a more accurate image resolution as sound waves scatter less when they pass through tissues compared to light. Scans created from the generated ultrasound waves can also provide better clarity and can be used to measure the oxygen saturation in the tumour, boosting their detection.

“You can integrate this with existing systems of detection or treatment,” says Ashok M Raichur, Professor at the Department of Materials Engineering, and another corresponding author. For example, the nanoparticles can be triggered to produce heat by shining a light on them using an endoscope that is typically used for cancer screening.

Previously developed nanoparticles have limited applications because of their large size. The IISc team used a novel reduction method to deposit tiny seeds of gold onto the copper sulphide surface. The resulting hybrid nanoparticles – less than 8 nm in size – can potentially travel inside tissues easily and reach tumours. The researchers believe that the nanoparticles’ small size would also allow them to leave the human body naturally without accumulating, although extensive studies have to be carried out to determine if they are safe to use inside the human body.

In the current study, the researchers have tested their nanoparticles on lung cancer and cervical cancer cell lines in the lab. They now plan to take the results forward for clinical development.

Photothermal response of TSP-CA: (a) Images are shown before irradiation and 10 min (at the end of irradiation) using CW at 1064 nm. (e) IR thermal camera images obtained for different concentrations from 0 min (before irradiation) to 6 min are shown for one cycle (Image: Madhavi Tripathi and Swathi Padmanabhan)

REFERENCE:

Tripathi M, Padmanabhan S, Jaya Prakash, Raichur A, Seed-Mediated Galvanic Synthesis of CuS–Au Nanohybrids for Photo-Theranostic Applications, ACS Applied Nano Materials (2023).

CONTACT:

Jaya Prakash
Assistant Professor
Department of Instrumentation and Applied Physics (IAP)
Indian Institute of Science (IISc)
Email: jayap@iisc.ac.in
Phone: +91-80-2293 2274
Lab website: https://pnjayaprakash88.wixsite.com/fist-lab

Ashok M Raichur
Professor
Department of Materials Engineering
Indian Institute of Science (IISc)
E-mail: amr@iisc.ac.in
Phone: +91-80-2293 3238+91-80-22933238 +91-80-22933238
Lab website: https://materials.iisc.ac.in/~amr/Welcome.html

NOTE TO JOURNALISTS:

a) If any of the text in this release is reproduced verbatim, please credit the IISc press release.

b) For any queries about IISc press releases, please write to news@iisc.ac.in or pro@iisc.ac.in

6 September 2023

IBM today renewed its research collaboration with Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Bombay and Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore to transform and drive breakthrough innovations in the field of hybrid cloud and artificial intelligence (AI). IIT Bombay joined the IBM AI Horizon Network in 2018 to advance AI research in India, and in 2021, IBM and IISc Bangalore launched the IBM-IISc Hybrid Cloud lab to advance research in hybrid cloud technologies and drive breakthrough innovations in this area.

Through the collaboration, IBM aims to drive innovation and provide practical solutions to complex global challenges by tapping the intellectual talent of students, faculty and industry researchers. By pushing the boundaries of knowledge and exploring new approaches, the project seeks to enhance various aspects of technology and contribute to a more advanced and efficient future.

The collaborations will focus on several areas including:

• Extending the prior research in natural language processing and question answering, while striving to provide more comprehensive and accurate responses. In terms of performance optimisation, the major focus will be on achieving fast and efficient results when performing inferencing on devices such as smartphones and in hybrid cloud environments.
• Machine learning for time series involving deep generative AI models for multi-variate data, and self-supervised representation learning models. These innovations can bring the power of foundation models and generative AI to multiple application areas such as health care, Industry 4.0 and smarter cities.
• Creating sophisticated computer programs that can detect and explain fake news and half-truths using advanced Artificial Intelligence techniques. The aim is to improve upon the earlier research on biases and trust in AI, making sure that false information is accurately identified and thoroughly explained.
• Building new technologies to orchestrate and optimise workloads in a hybrid cloud environment, including edge clouds, quantum-classical, and serverless. The goal will be to leverage observability and analytics capabilities spanning the hybrid multi-cloud environment to efficiently manage resources and seamlessly orchestrate workloads, to improve the performance and reliability of applications. 
• Developing techniques for sustainable computing, involving devising methods to accurately quantify and optimise carbon emissions for hybrid cloud workloads and studying emerging architectures for their performance-power trade-off. 

“The synergy between the abundant talent in IIT Bombay and a technological leader like IBM can not only expand the horizons of knowledge but also address problems of national importance, such as affordable healthcare, educational outreach, and smart management of growing industrial and urban infrastructure,” added Prof Sachin Patwardhan, Dean (R&D), IIT Bombay.

“The engagement with IBM researchers is helping us explore some of the practical dimensions of the research challenges in Cloud platforms and sustainability, and investigate the means to democratise access to quantum hardware in the Cloud for scientific and enterprise applications. Our doctoral students also appreciate the chance to engage with leading researchers and practitioners from IBM Research,“ said Prof Yogesh Simmhan, Associate Professor, Department of Computational and Data Sciences, IISc. The collaboration with IISc is led by Prof Simmhan, along with faculty members Dr J Lakshmi (Supercomputer Education and Research Centre), Prof Parimal Parag (Department of Electrical Communication Engineering) and Prof Prathosh AP (Department of Electrical Communication Engineering). 

Speaking on the collaborations, Dr Amith Singhee, Director, IBM Research India, said, “Collaboration fuels innovation, and our collaboration with IIT Bombay and IISc Bangalore underscores the importance of combining diverse expertise. By merging IBM’s technological prowess with the cutting-edge research skills of these prestigious institutions, we foster a collaborative ecosystem that pushes the boundaries of scientific discovery. Together, we strive to explore new horizons and address pressing challenges, empowering India’s research community to create tangible impact and shape a brighter future for all.” 

Over the last few years, the collaborations between IBM and IIT Bombay as well as IISc have yielded significant research outcomes and technological advancements. Spanning topics such as natural language processing, complex question answering, trust and explainability in AI, IT operations, distributed computing, and AI for Code, these collaborations have resulted in numerous research publications, MTech and PhD theses. For instance, the IBM-IIT-Bombay collaboration led to the use of machine learning for Indian Languages NLP and addressed challenges related to low resource understanding of Hindi language sense, intent, sentiment and natively understand documents in Hindi.

CONTACT:   

IIT-B – Mrs Falguni Banerjee Naha, Public Relations Officer| Email: pro@iitb.ac.in 

IISc – Office of Communications | Email: news@iisc.ac.in

IBM – Antonetta Kumar | Email: antonkum@in.ib

5^th September 2022

On 5^th September 2022, the Government of Telangana and the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru, announced the signing of an agreement to jointly create India’s first Agricultural Data Exchange (ADEx). ADEx will be built upon India Urban Data Exchange (IUDX), a pioneer in enabling the use of data for public good. IUDX was also created in IISc in partnership with the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA) and has launched a variety of platforms, tools, and applications that have benefitted urban citizens.

The partnership with the Government of Telangana will bring these same concepts to the agriculture sector, enabling a variety of new services for the farmers ranging from more credit options, better insurance products, improved seed tracking, more targeted farming advisory and so on.

ADEx will be piloted in Telangana with a select set of partners and use-cases by early 2023, followed by a production rollout within the same state during that year. Both Public and Private sector data shall be made available through ADEx and a variety of start-ups and more established companies will be encouraged to build these new farmer services. It is expected that the ADEx will then be made available to other states and broadly deployed across the nation.

Shri Jayesh Ranjan, Principal Secretary IT, Government of Telangana, said, “Data is the key to enabling new services for our farmers and improving the agriculture sector. With ADEx, we hope to enable a new ecosystem of application developers who will now have access to a best-of-breed data platform to create applications targeted at bringing technology-driven change to the sector. We are thrilled to collaborate with IISc in this endeavor.”

Prof G Rangarajan, Director, IISc, said, “A nation, where the majority of people make their livelihood from agriculture, needs to apply its considerable technical firepower to this sector. With the ADEx initiative, IISc is pleased to be a part of that effort and we have high hopes that this will help the farmers of Telangana and eventually the nation.”

About IUDX

The IUDX Programme supports India’s Smart Cities Mission within the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA) and facilitates the use of data to achieve the full potential of technology and innovation within Indian cities. It is set up as a multidisciplinary programme within the Society for Innovation and Development in the Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru. The IUDX programme addresses technical and non-technical issues related to the use of data to create public good. The open-source platform developed by the programme enables higher operational efficiency in city administration by facilitating the data exchange between various civic bodies, municipal departments, application developers, and relevant data consumers.

Contact:
IUDX Programme: info@iudx.org.in
IISc Office of Communications: news@iisc.ac.in

8^th September 2022

Axis Bank, India’s third largest sector bank, has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru, pledging to dedicate the Pediatrics Wing at IISc’s new Bagchi-Parthasarathy Hospital.

The Axis Bank Pediatrics Wing will be equipped with the latest technology in neonatal care and will have twenty state-of-the-art Neonatal ICU (NICU) beds for the care of critically-ill neonates. The dedicated wing will also enable postgraduate students to undergo world-class training in pediatrics care and further contribute to the development of innovative solutions in this field. This will take forward the IISc Medical School’s ethos of creating a generation of physician-scientists, capable of melding clinical care with cutting-edge research. The Axis Bank Pediatrics Wing is expected to be operational by early 2025.

Commenting on the occasion, Prof Govindan Rangarajan, Director, IISc, said, “We thank Axis Bank for partnering with us in our quest to push the frontiers of clinical research through the establishment of the Axis Bank Pediatrics Wing. Innovation in neonatal and pediatric care is the need of the hour in a fast-developing country like India. Axis Bank’s support of the pediatrics wing at IISc will contribute to securing the health of our country’s future generations.”

Mr Subrat Mohanty, Group Executive, Axis Bank, said, “We are proud to partner with the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), India’s premier research institution, for the Pediatrics Wing at the Bagchi-Parthasarathy Hospital. Our aim is to achieve excellence in clinical research in the field of pediatrics and neonatal care that is critical for India. We hope this collaboration serves our community and the nation for a long time.”

ABOUT AXIS BANK:

Axis Bank is the third largest private sector bank in India. Axis Bank offers the entire spectrum of services to customer segments covering Large and Mid-Corporates, SME, Agriculture and Retail Businesses. With its 4,759 domestic branches (including extension counters) and 10,161 ATMs across the country as on 30th June 2022, the network of Axis Bank spreads across 2,702 cities and towns, enabling the Bank to reach out to a large cross-section of customers with an array of products and services. The Axis Group includes Axis Mutual Fund, Axis Securities Ltd., Axis Finance, Axis Trustee, Axis Capital, A.TReDS Ltd., Freecharge and Axis Bank Foundation.

For further information on Axis Bank, please refer to the website: https://www.axisbank.com.

CONTACT:

IISc
Office of Communications | news@iisc.ac.in

Axis Bank
Piyali Reddy / Shruti Mudup
+91 9322657983 / +91 9820651056 | Corporate.Communication@axisbank.com

12^th September 2022

– Faizan Bhat

Cell membranes transition seamlessly between distinct 3D configurations. It is a remarkable feature that is essential for several biological phenomena such as cell division, cell mobility, transport of nutrients into cells, and viral infections. Researchers at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) and their collaborators have recently devised an experiment that sheds light on the mechanism by which such processes might occur in real time.

Image (false coloured) of a sponge-like phase of fluidic colloidal membranes, self-assembled from a binary mixture of short and long rods. Credit: Ayantika Khanra

The researchers looked at colloidal membranes, which are micrometre-thick layers of aligned, rod-like particles. Colloidal membranes provide a more tractable system to study as they exhibit many of the same properties as cell membranes. Unlike a plastic sheet, where all the molecules are immobile, cell membranes are fluidic sheets in which each component is free to diffuse. “This is a key property of cell membranes which is available in our [colloidal membrane] system as well,” explains Prerna Sharma, Associate Professor at the Department of Physics, IISc, and corresponding author of the study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 

The colloidal membranes were composed by preparing a solution of rod-shaped viruses of two different lengths: 1.2 micrometre and 0.88 micrometre. The researchers studied how the shape of the colloidal membranes changes as one increases the fraction of short rods in the solution. “I made multiple samples by mixing different volumes of the two viruses and then observed them under a microscope,” explains Ayantika Khanra, a PhD student in the Department of Physics and the first author of the paper.

Image (false coloured) of a fluidic colloidal membrane self-assembled from a binary mixture of short and long rods  Credit: Ayantika Khanra

When the ratio of short rods was increased from 15% to between 20-35%, the membranes transitioned from a flat disc-like shape to a saddle-like shape. Over time, the membranes started merging together and growing in size. Saddles were classified by their order, which is the number of ups and downs encountered as one moves along the saddle edge. The researchers observed that when the saddles merged laterally, they formed a bigger saddle of the same or higher order. However, when they merged at an almost right angle, away from their edges, the final configuration was a catenoid-like shape. The catenoids then merged with other saddles, giving rise to increasingly complex structures, like trinoids and four-noids.

To explain the observed behaviour of the membranes, the researchers have also proposed a theoretical model. According to the laws of thermodynamics, all physical systems tend to move towards low-energy configurations. For example, a water droplet assumes a spherical shape because it has lower energy. For membranes, this means that shapes with shorter edges, such as a flat disk, are more favoured. Another property that plays a role in defining the membrane configuration is the Gaussian curvature modulus. A key insight of the study was to show that the Gaussian curvature modulus of the membranes increases when the fraction of short rods is increased. This explains why adding more short rods drove the membranes towards saddle-like shapes, which are lower in energy. It also explains another observation from their experiment where low-order membranes were small in size, while high-order membranes were large.

“We have proposed a mechanism for curvature generation of fluidic membranes that is new. This mechanism of tuning the curvature by changing the Gaussian modulus could be at play in biological membranes as well,” says Sharma. She adds that they want to continue studying how other microscopic changes in the membrane components affect the large-scale properties of membranes.

REFERENCE: 

Khanra A, Jia L, Mitchell N, Balchunas A, Pelcovits R, Powers T, Dogic Z, Sharma P, Controlling the shape and topology of two-component colloidal membranes, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2022). 

https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.2204453119

CONTACT:

Prerna Sharma
Associate Professor
Department of Physics
Indian Institute of Science (IISc)
Email: prerna@iisc.ac.in
Phone: +91-80-2293 2010

Website: https://sites.google.com/site/biocolloids/

NOTE TO JOURNALISTS:

a) If any of the text in this release is reproduced verbatim, please credit the IISc press release.
b) For any queries about IISc press releases, please write to news@iisc.ac.in or pro@iisc.ac.in.

14^th September 2022

– Sindhu M

Researchers from the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) have designed a new method to deliver a vaccine candidate for tuberculosis (TB). It involves using spherical vesicles secreted by bacteria coated on gold nanoparticles which can then be delivered to immune cells. This can potentially trigger an immune response and offer protection against the disease.

Caused by the bacterium Mycobacterium tuberculosis, TB kills over a million people worldwide every year. The only effective vaccine currently in use is the BCG vaccine. It contains a weakened form of the disease-causing bacterium. When injected into our bloodstream, it triggers the production of antibodies that can help fight the disease.

Transmission electron microscope image of gold nanoparticles coated with bacterial Outer Membrane Vesicles (Credit: Edna George)

While the BCG vaccine works well in children, it is not as effective at protecting adolescents and adults. This prompted Rachit Agarwal, Assistant Professor at the Centre for BioSystems Science and Engineering (BSSE), IISc, and his group to develop a potential subunit vaccine candidate that contains only parts of the infectious bacterium to stimulate an immune response.

Scientists have earlier developed subunit vaccines based on just a handful of proteins from the disease-causing bacteria, but none of them have been effective so far. Instead, Agarwal’s group decided to use Outer Membrane Vesicles (OMVs). OMVs are spherical membrane-bound particles released by some bacteria, and contain an assortment of proteins and lipids which could induce an immune response against the pathogen.

“They’re safer compared to a live bacterium, and since they are membrane-derived, they contain all kinds of antigens,” explains Agarwal, the senior author of the paper published in Biomaterials Advances. Subunit vaccines typically only contain a limited number of antigens – bacterial proteins that can elicit an immune response in the host. In contrast, OMVs contain a variety of antigens and can induce a better immune response, according to the researchers.

Mycobacterium-derived OMVs are usually unstable and come in different sizes, making them unsuitable for vaccine applications. But the OMVs coated on gold nanoparticles (OMV-AuNPs) by the IISc team were found to be uniform in size and stable. The researchers also found that human immune cells showed a higher uptake of OMV-AuNPs than of OMVs or gold nanoparticles alone.

“Producing the OMVs is a complex process, and scaling it up was challenging,” says Avijit Goswami, a former postdoctoral fellow at BSSE and one of the first authors of the study.

“To synthesise OMV-AuNPs, the OMVs and the gold nanoparticles are forced together through a 100 nm filter. The OMVs break up in the process and encapsulate the gold nanoparticles,” explains Edna George, a former postdoctoral fellow at BSSE, and co-first author of the study.

In the study, immune cells cultured in the lab were treated with OMVs derived from Mycobacterium smegmatis, a related bacterial species that does not cause disease in humans. In future studies, the team plans to develop gold-coated OMVs derived directly from Mycobacterium tuberculosis and test them on animal models to take the results forward for clinical applications. Such efforts could open up new avenues for the development of vaccines for other bacterial diseases as well.

 REFERENCE: 

George E, Goswami A, Lodhiya T, Padwal P, Iyer S, Gautam I, Sethi L, Jayasankar S, Sharma PR, Dravid AA, Mukherjee R, Agarwal R, Immunomodulatory effect of mycobacterial outer membrane vesicles coated nanoparticles, Biomaterials Advances (2022).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bioadv.2022.213003 

CONTACT: 

Rachit Agarwal
Assistant Professor
Centre for BioSystems Science and Engineering (BSSE)
Indian Institute of Science (IISc)
Email: rachit@iisc.ac.in
Phone: 080-2293-3626

Website: https://be.iisc.ac.in/~rachit/index.html

NOTE TO JOURNALISTS: 

a) If any of the text in this release is reproduced verbatim, please credit the IISc press release.
b) For any queries about IISc press releases, please write to news@iisc.ac.in or pro@iisc.ac.in.

16^th September 2022

Indian Institute of Science (IISc) and Shell India have entered into a partnership to promote research and development in the areas of energy and environment. The partnership seeks to build on cutting-edge energy and environment related research being carried out at the Interdisciplinary Centre for Energy Research (ICER), IISc.

On Thursday, 15 September 2022, a research agreement was signed at the Institute in the presence of Prof Govindan Rangarajan, Director, Indian Institute of Science (IISc) and Yuri Sebregts, Chief Technology Officer at Shell.

The key aspects that the partnership will focus on include reducing Green House Gas emissions and promoting decarbonisation through innovations such as low-carbon fuels, distributed electrification, carbon sinks, hydrogen generation, efficient power and refrigeration cycles using supercritical carbon dioxide, and so on. Structured research projects will be initiated under this research agreement involving Shell scientists as well as faculty members and students at IISc.

Decarbonisation of diverse industrial sectors and increased access to clean energy through technological intervention has a special place in the Indian context, given its push for net-zero emissions. With climate change taking centre stage, a strong emphasis is on decarbonisation through alternative fuels and improving efficiency as well as utilisation of existing fuels.

Prof Govindan Rangarajan said, “This collaboration with Shell India will help us tackle pressing energy challenges at the national and international level through cutting-edge technology development that will help reduce the global carbon footprint. We are excited to partner with Shell India to achieve these ambitious goals.”

The collaboration also envisages developing India-focused solutions to meet the energy transition needs outlined by the Government of India. It is also expected to increase capacity building in the country through training programmes at the postgraduate level, opening up opportunities for students to pursue industry internships, and encourage entrepreneurial ventures by young researchers.

“This partnership demonstrates how crucial it is for academia and industry to collaborate. By integrating expertise from diverse partners, we are able to accelerate the development of ground-breaking technologies that provide much-needed solutions for the energy transition. I look forward to the impactful innovations that no doubt will follow from this research agreement with IISc,” said Yuri Sebregts, Chief Technology Officer at Shell.

ICER has been carrying out both fundamental and applied research in energy-related areas, with a strong emphasis on translating products to the energy market. It was conceived in 2012 as a part of the Institute’s post-centenary vision to pursue socially relevant research in line with the Government of India’s national missions. ICER seeks to expand its activities in several domains, with emphasis on process and material development, the latter involving collaborations with manufacturing industries.

 CONTACT: 

IISc Office of Communications | news@iisc.ac.in

20^th September 2022

– Seemadri Subhadarshini

Several industrial, automotive, and healthcare applications rely on accurate and precise measurement of pressure. Flexible and wearable pressure sensors are typically fabricated using petroleum-based polymers. The solid waste generated from using such non-biodegradable plastics is harmful for the environment. To avoid this issue, researchers at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) have now fabricated pressure sensors that use paper as the medium.

A pressure sensor detects physical pressure and converts it into an electrical signal that is displayed in the form of a number indicative of its magnitude. Nowadays, paper-based electronic devices are gaining greater attention owing to their natural biodegradability, excellent flexibility, porous fibrous structure, light weight, and low cost. However, paper-based sensors developed so far have certain disadvantages.

“In any sensor, there is always a trade-off between sensitivity and dynamic range. We want to have high sensitivity. Sensitivity is essentially a measure of the smallest entity (amount of pressure) that we can detect. And we want to sense that quantity over an extensive range,” says Navakanta Bhat, Professor at the Centre for Nano Science and Engineering (CeNSE) and corresponding author of the paper published in the ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering. His team has proposed a design for the paper sensor that, by virtue of its structure and multilayering, achieves high sensitivity and can detect a broad range of pressures (0-120 kPa) with a response time of 1 millisecond.

The sensor is made of plain and corrugated cellulose papers coated with tin-monosulfide (SnS) stacked alternatively to form a multi-layered architecture. SnS is a semiconductor that conducts electricity under specific conditions. “Paper in itself is an insulator. The major challenge was choosing an appropriate 3D device structure and material to give conductive properties to paper,” says Neha Sakhuja, a former PhD student at CeNSE and the first author of the paper.

Wearable paper pressure sensor (Credit: Neha Sakhuja)

When pressure is applied on the sensor’s surface, the air gaps between the paper layers decrease, increasing the contact area between these layers. Higher contact area leads to better electrical conductivity. On releasing the pressure, the air gaps increase again, thus decreasing the electrical conduction. This modulation of the electrical conductivity drives the sensing mechanism of the paper sensor.

“Our key contribution is the simplicity of the device. It is like creating paper origami,” explains Bhat.

The sensor shows promise in being developed into a flexible and wearable electronic device, especially in the healthcare sector. For example, the research team mounted it onto a human cheek to investigate the motion involved in chewing, strapped it to an arm to monitor muscle contraction, and around fingers to track their tapping. The team even designed a numeric, foldable keypad constructed using the in-house paper-based pressure sensor to demonstrate the device’s usability.

“The future applications of this device are limited only by our imagination,” says Bhat. “We would [also] like to work on increasing the stability and durability of these sensors and possibly collaborate with industries to manufacture them in large numbers.”

REFERENCE:
Sakhuja N, Kumar R, Katare P, Bhat N, Structure-Driven, Flexible, Multilayered, Paper-Based Pressure Sensor for Human–Machine Interfacing, ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering (2022).

https://doi.org/10.1021/acssuschemeng.1c08491

CONTACT:

Navakanta Bhat
Professor, Centre for Nano Science and Engineering (CeNSE),
Indian Institute of Science (IISc)
Email: navakant@iisc.ac.in
Phone: 080-2293-3312

Website: http://nnfc.cense.iisc.ac.in/nano/

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21^st September 2022

The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) and Indian Institute of Science (IISc) have signed an MoU on Friday, 16 September 2022, to collaborate on a national initiative towards the creation of high-quality medical datasets representing India’s diversity. ICMR and IISc will develop a technology-enabled hubs-and-spokes system of collecting and curating data through institutions across the country. ARTPARK (AI & Robotics Technology Park), a not-for-profit foundation promoted by IISc, will serve as the initiative’s partner for technology development and programme management.

Artificial Intelligence solutions – for screening, diagnosis, and decision support – hold much promise to improve access to healthcare, and boost productivity and effectiveness of health human resources at all levels. Quality-assured and curated medical imaging datasets that truly represent India’s diversity of people, settings, and needs will accelerate research and innovation to realise that promise. Such independent, benchmark data will also help assess AI-based tools developed by startups and companies, and thus accelerate deployment in practice.

By leveraging premier medical institutions as hubs and bringing together experts from both medicine and data science, the team driving this initiative will help standardise data collection from many “spoke” institutions. It will also help curate that data and aim to make them available, in accordance with applicable policies and laws, to the broader community of researchers and innovators.

Welcoming the initiative, Prof Govindan Rangarajan, Director of IISc, said, “Our goal is to bring together the best of technology, data science, and medical research to improve healthcare. This partnership with ICMR will enable us to do exactly that by creating invaluable datasets to propel the next generation of innovations for India and the world.”

Sh Rajeev Roy, Sr Financial Advisor, ICMR, said, “ICMR is investing in medical research of the country through its various focused programs. The present MoU will enhance the outcome of the investment by providing value-added, reusable data sources to researchers from medical research and engineering institutions.”

Dr Harpreet Singh, Head Division of Biomedical Informatics, ICMR, added, “Both IISc and ICMR share a rich history of holding the highest standards in research for more than 100 years. Activities and interests of both institutes complement each other, and thus, the activities proposed under the MoU, particularly the medical data platform, will provide far-reaching benefits to public health.”

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