HYDERABAD: Professor Samar Kumar Das, faculty at the School of Chemistry, University of Hyderabad was awarded the prestigious J. C. Bose fellowship on Saturday. This fellowship has been awarded for his research contribution in the area of achieving sustainable/renewable-energy.
His research is important in the context of today’s society, as fossil fuels (non-renewable energy sources) are not only getting depleted day by day from our planet, but also its use affects our environment drastically by releasing large amounts of carbon dioxide into the air.
During the next five years of the fellowship, Professor Das’ group would be working 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.
Samar K Das has been exploring functional inorganic materials that are vital to address the issues of sustainable or renewable energy and a clean environment.
In order to contribute to these contemporary issues, he works on a 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. His group developed materials that can sense toxic substances, for example, azide anion and methanol (health care issue) and can be used to capture aerial CO2.