LUMS Faculty Awarded Research Grant of PKR 11.82 Million
June 27, 2012
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Dr. Falak Sher, Faculty, Department of Chemistry, Syed Babar Ali School of Science and Engineering has been awarded a research grant of PKR 11.82 million by the Higher Education Commission (HEC), Islamabad. This is one of the four multimillion research grants awarded to the chemistry faculty during the past one and half years.
The research theme of this project is the development of thermoelectric metal oxide materials for energy conversion technologies. Thermoelectric materials are promising candidates of renewable sources of energy as they can directly convert the temperature gradient into electricity and vice versa. These materials could potentially be used in efficiently harvesting waste heat from the industrial processes or heat directly from the sun as electricity and low temperature cooling by using electric current. The choice of transition metal oxides as potential thermoelectric materials is made due to advantages of low cost, low toxicity, high thermal stability and simple synthesis and processing conditions.
For this research project, funds for the purchase of a powder X-Ray Diffractometer (XRD) have also been approved. XRD is a fundamental characterisation tool for crystal structure determination which is widely used in materials science research. This facility would be very useful for research in the areas of electronic materials, semiconductors, magnetic materials, optical materials, high temperature superconductors, materials for lithium-ion batteries, materials for water splitting and hydrogen storage, fuel cells, solar cells, heterogeneous catalysis and many more exciting areas. It would facilitate the undergraduate and graduate students at the Syed Babar Ali School of Science and Engineering in gaining valuable experience in cutting-edge research areas.
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