Joint Successes of Physicists from Ostrava and Indian Allahabad
Science knows no boundaries today. With the advent of modern communication technologies, research teams around the world are becoming increasingly interconnected. A strong bond has recently formed between the Czech city of Ostrava and Indian Allahabad, pushing the frontiers of knowledge and bringing significant results in the field of nanostructure physics.
In 2019, the innovative research of physicists from the Faculty of Science in Ostrava (published herde) caught the attention of scientists Sitangshu Bhattacharya and Rekha Verma from the Indian Institute of Information Technology (IIIT) in Allahabad. This marked the beginning of a scientific collaboration between Ostrava and Allahabad, which has since led to deeper cooperation and joint projects.
The scientists from Ostrava and Allahabad jointly prepared a project, which, under the Inter-Excellence program of the Czech Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports and the Indian Ministry of Science, received support and opened doors to collaboration. During the project, in addition to publications by the Ostrava team, joint results from both teams were published in prestigious journals of the American Chemical Society (article 1 here and article 2 here).
“What's innovative about these publications is the use of highly advanced quantum physics methods. The published results contributed to the discovery of extraordinary properties of new two-dimensional (2D) materials made from Group 5A atoms in the periodic table,” says Miroslav Kolos, a member of the project team.
The course of the project, which facilitated the mobility of scientists between the Czech Republic and India, intensive workshops, and the exchange of knowledge and experience, was not disrupted by the coronavirus pandemic, and the project was successfully completed. At the beginning of 2023, this project was rated “Excellent” by the Czech Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports, a testament to the high quality of the achieved results.
In the fall of 2023, Indian colleagues arrived in Ostrava, and this meeting further confirmed the mutual interest of both scientific groups and their willingness to embark on new challenges. This year, a joint paper was published focusing on research into a new 2D material from the MXene family, which could be applied in fields such as optoelectronics.
A major opportunity for further development and deepening of Czech-Indian cooperation in the field of material sciences is the strategic LERCO project at the University of Ostrava. Under its umbrella, the Czech-Indian team has already published a paper exploring a potential heterostructure of tungsten carbide with boron nitride (more here).
“The published results include, among other things, the photoluminescence spectrum of tungsten carbide, which was calculated using one of the most advanced methods available in theoretical modeling of the optical properties of materials,” says František Karlický, head of the Nanostructure Physics group at the Department of Physics, Faculty of Science, University of Ostrava.
LIST OF PUBLICATIONS:
Kolos M., Karlický F.: Accurate Many-Body Calculation of Electronic and Optical Band Gap of Bulk Hexagonal Boron Nitride. Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys. 21(7), 3999–4005, 2019
Kolos M., Cigarini L., Verma R., Karlický F., and Bhattacharya S.: Giant Linear and Nonlinear Excitonic Responses in an Atomically Thin Indirect Semiconductor Nitrogen Phosphide. J. Phys. Chem. C 125(23), 12738–12757, 2021
Kolos M., Verma R., Karlický F., Bhattacharya S.: Large Exciton-Driven Linear and Nonlinear Optical Processes in Monolayers of Nitrogen Arsenide and Nitrogen Antimonide. J. Phys. Chem. C 126(35), 14931–14959, 2022
Kumar N., Kolos M., Bhattacharya S., Karlický F.: Excitons, Optical Spectra, and Electronic Properties of Semiconducting Hf-based MXenes. J. Chem. Phys. 160(12), 124707, 2024
Saraswat R., Kolos M., Verma, R. Karlický F., Bhattacharya S.: Phonon Assisted Exciton Processes in Two-dimensional Tungsten Monocarbide. J. Phys. Chem. C, 128(20), 8341–8350, 2024
Updated: 18. 10. 2024
