This fellowship has been awarded for his research contribution in the area of achieving sustainable- / renewable-energy in the context of today’s need of the society, because fossil fuels (non-renewable energy sources) are not only getting depleted day by day from our planet, but also its use affect our environment drastically by releasing large amounts of carbon dioxide into the air.
Professor Samar Kumar Das
Samar K. Das has been exploring functional inorganic materials that are vital to address the issues of sustainable- / renewable-energy and a clean environment. In order to contribute to these contemporary issues, he works on water splitting project to develop inexpensive metal-oxide based materials that not only work as catalysts for water splitting but also exhibit proton conductivity and oxygen reduction for the fuel cells (sustainable energy issue); his group developed materials that can sense toxic substances, e.g., azide anion and methanol (health care issue) and can be used to capture aerial CO2 (environment issue).
During the next five-years (J. C. Bose fellowship duration), Samar K. Das group would like to work on photo- and electro-catalytic water splitting, electrocatalysis in general and developing metal-oxide based (inexpensive) proton exchange membranes for fuel cells to achieve carbon-free sustainable energy.