Sheetal Kumar Jain

Our group’s research focus is on developing new magnetic resonance spectroscopic methods and techniques to elucidate structural and dynamical details of renewable energy materials such as semiconductors for solar energy harvesting, catalysts for biomass energy conversion reactions and electrolytes. Properties such as ion-mobility in solid-electrolytes, conversion efficiency in perovskites and catalytic activity of solid-catalysts are determined by atomic structures and dynamics. Solid-state NMR is a powerful technique that can provide insights into fundamental structure-property relationships, which are crucial in guiding rational design principles for the advancement of next-generation materials. While solid-state NMR has unique capabilities that allows non-invasive characterization of systems regardless of their crystallinity, the low sensitivity of the technique is still a major challenge that needs to be addressed.

Our goal is to take a multifaceted approach to overcome the sensitivity problem of the technique. We apply advanced quantum mechanical simulations for spin-dynamics to design advanced methods to minimize the loss of polarization during the experiments. At the same time, we will use dynamic nuclear polarization (DNP) to enhance the sensitivity of NMR by orders of magnitude through polarization transfer from highly sensitive electron spins to the nuclear spins. The sensitivity boost provided by DNP is revolutionizing the field of NMR due to which DNP enhanced NMR is rapidly emerging as a material characterization technique. Thus, our group is an interdisciplinary research group in which both experimental and theoretical projects are being pursued.