High school chemistry tells you that the most stable valency associated with oxygen should be "2-". The most stable oxide between potassium and oxygen should then be K₂O. Surprisingly we find that the most stable oxide is K₂O₂. Why then is H₂O more stable than H₂O₂? Read More

       The legendary Damascus swords were found to consist of nanomaterials [Nature, 444, 286 (2006)]. Should nanomaterials be stronger than their bulk counterparts? Read More

       Strongly correlated phenomena are seen in compounds with transition metals/f-electrons in them. Recently we showed that a p shell system could be an example of orbital ordering. The model required to describe the orbital ordering was different from the Kugel-Khomskii model. Read More

       Doping electrons into the polymorph of a well known metallic oxide CrO₂ led to an insulating ground state. Our calculations showed that this compound was a rare and possibly the first example of a charge ordered ferromagnet. Read more.

       The world is excited at the discovery of the first two dimensional crystal graphene. This nobel winning work has raised several questions of whether a truly two-dimensional crystal can exist or it lives in a three-dimensional world with small long wavelength ripples. The puzzle was when the ripples were also found on supported films of graphene. In a recent work we showed how one could have flat films of graphene on substrates. Read More