Three Bhatnagar Awards and one Bharat Ratna were awarded to city scientists in 2013. Prof D D Sarma, chairman of the Solid State and Structural Chemistry Unit of IISc, said, “2013 has been a good year for science in India and for the city.”

A research group, led by Prof C N R Rao of Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Science, established the most important ingredient for high catalytic activity for artificial photosynthesis that will ‘break’ water to produce high energy, hydrogen and oxygen. This ingredient is a single electron in a particular orbital in the oxides of manganese and cobalt.

The group of Prof D D Sarma of the Solid State and Structural Chemistry Unit of IISc, Bangalore, discovered that manganese ions, dropped in small quantities into semiconductor nanocrystals, such as zinc sulphide or cadmium sulphide, can emit intense colours of all hues from green to red, when excited with UV radiation.

This has huge significance in the field of display and lighting and can change the way nanocrystals are used in practical devices.

Researchers like Yamuna Krishnan, who won the Bhatnagar award this year at NCBS, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), devised a new cell biology technology that can simultaneously measure the pH in two different places in one cell.

In another study, a group led by Prof Arindam Ghosh of the Department of Physics, IISc, who too got a Bhatnagar award this year, established some remarkable properties of a hybrid layer of graphene on molybdenum disulfide, in a recent publication.

source: http://www.newindianexpress.com / The New Indian Express / Home> Cities> Bangalore / January 02nd, 2014