IIT-Hyderabad, University of Hyderabad joint team granted patent for nanomaterial fabrication

Account subscription benefits alongside Premium Stories, Editorials, Opinions and more. Unlock these with Subscription The View From India Looking at World Affairs from the Indian perspective. First Day First Show News and reviews from the world of cinema and streaming. Today's Cache Your download of the top 5 technology stories of the day. Data Point Decoding the headlines with facts, figures, and numbers Health Matters Ramya Kannan writes to you on getting to good health, and staying there The Hindu On Books Books of the week, reviews, excerpts, new titles and features. Researchers from the University of Hyderabad (UoH) and the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT)-Hyderabad have secured patent for a novel method to fabricate thin transition metal dichalcogenide (TMDC) nanosheets using Bessel beam femtosecond laser ablation. The patented technology offers a rapid, cost-effective, and scalable alternative to conventional fabrication techniques, UoH said in a release. The innovation was developed by Sai Santosh Kumar Raavi, Challa Rajendra Kumar, and Moram Sree Satya Bharati from IIT-H, and senior professor at UoH’s School of Physics, Soma Venugopal Rao. TMDCs are two-dimensional materials with applications in next-generation electronics, optoelectronics and photonics. Existing methods to isolate ultra-thin TMDC layers are often slow, expensive, or difficult to scale. The new approach uses a specially shaped femtosecond laser beam to precisely separate TMDC layers by breaking weak van der Waals forces (short-range intermolecular attractions) without altering the material’s chemical structure. The process enables the instant production of pristine single- and few-layer nanosheets, the release explained.