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- Highly efficient catalysts of Ruthenium clusters on Fe3O4/MWCNTs for hydrogen evolution reaction March 22, 2022
“Highly Efficient Catalysts of Ruthenium Clusters on Fe3O4/MWCNTs for Hydrogen Evolution Reaction” is the latest paper published by Prof Ranjit Thapa, Professor of Physics at SRM university-AP and his PhD scholar, Mr Samadhan Kapse, in ‘New Journal of Chemistry’ having an Impact Factor of 3.591.
In this work, the chemical co-precipitation technique is adopted to produce Fe3O4 nanoparticles under an inert atmosphere and was utilized for HER studies. The Ru nanoparticles were profitably deposited over Fe3O4/MWCNTs GC electrode using electrochemical deposition technique. The superior HER activity was achieved on Ru/Fe3O4/MWCNTs in 0.1 M H2SO4 aqueous media. We have demonstrated that the synthesized electrocatalyst offers a low overpotential of 101 mV to achieve a current density of 10 mA cm-2 towards the hydrogen evolution reaction. It displays long-term durability, exceptional cyclic stability even after 1000 cycles. DFT calculations imply that the availability of both octahedral and tetrahedral sites in Ru/Fe3O4/MWCNTs with low overpotential is more efficient towards HER. It is emphasized that a low percentage of ruthenium in the prepared catalyst can be substituted as a promising HER catalyst for sustainable energy technologies.
Abstract of the paper
Producing molecular hydrogen (H2) using water provides a sustainable approach for developing clean energy technologies. Herein, we report highly active ruthenium clusters (Ru) supported on iron oxide (Ru/Fe3O4) and Fe3O4/multi-walled carbon nanotubes (Ru/Fe3O4/MWCNTs) by simple electrochemical deposition in a neutral aqueous medium. The supported catalyst exhibits good hydrogen evolution reaction activity (HER) in an acidic environment. Cyclic voltammograms (CV) in potassium ferrocyanide (K4[Fe(CN)6]) confirm MWCNTs enhance the electron transfer process by decreasing the redox formal potential. The overpotential of Ru/Fe3O4/MWCNTs and Ru/Fe3O4 electrocatalysts versus reversible hydrogen electrode (RHE) was found to be 101 mV and 306 mV to reach a current density of 10 mA cm-2 . As prepared, the catalyst displays good stability and retain its HER activity even after 1000 cycles. Further, the stability of Ru/Fe3O4/MWCNTs was studied using chronopotentiometric (CP) technique for 12 hrs and found negligible loss in the catalytic activity towards HER. To explore the role of Ru and underneath MWCNTs to improve the catalytic performance of Fe3O4, density functional theory (DFT) calculations were carried out. DFT calculations indicate the octahedral site of Ru/Fe3O4 favours HER with low overpotential. However, Ru/Fe3O4/MWCNTs is more efficient towards HER could be due to the availability of both octahedral and tetrahedral catalytic sites.
Social implications of the research
Renewable energy generation is of greater importance in the present circumstances. This is caused by the depletion of non-renewable energy sources like fossil fuels and other hydrocarbon deposits and the release of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Hydrogen has gained considerable interest as an energy storage and energy carrier because of its high energy density (146kJ/g). Furthermore, its lightweight, profusion nature and the release of water during its combustion eliminate environmental pollution and thus contribute to defeating the global energy crisis. Also, hydrogen is an important and ideal energy source to develop fuel cells. A number of methods have been explored to generate molecular hydrogen. Among them, water electrolysis is a promising technology for generating high-purity hydrogen from water. An excellent electrocatalyst is obligatory to liberate hydrogen gas effectively from water. A higher HER activity is known to be obtained from platinum (Pt) and Pt-based catalysts. Given its high cost and low surplus, it limits expansion to the industrial scale. Over the few past decades, lots of efforts have been made by many research teams to find out alternative catalysts to substitute Pt electrodes.
The paper is published in collaboration with Shwetha Kolathur Ramachandra, Doddahalli Hanumantharayudu Nagaraju, and Shivanna Marappa; School of Applied Sciences, REVA University, Bangalore-560064, Karnataka, India. According to the research group, the density functional theory can boost the searching process of highly promising electrocatalysts for hydrogen evolution reactions in renewable energy generation.
- Chanakya Karra admitted to PhD at Purdue University, USA March 21, 2022
Once you are a part of SRM University-AP, we ensure that your future is secured! With the guidance of Dr Sujith Kalluri, Assistant Professor, Electronics and Communication Engineering, Mr Chanakya wends his way to Purdue University, USA, a world-renowned research university, for doing his PhD. He secured admission with a full tuition fee waiver and teaching assistantship. Chanakya Karra spent his two years DST-SERB JRF position at SRM AP and has made remarkable contributions to SRM-Amararaja Centre for Energy Storage Devices.DST-SERB JRF position helped Chanakya resume his research career, which had a pause for over a year. “It fills me with immense joy to see the SRM-Amararaja Centre for Energy Storage Devices shape up with every possible equipment to conduct research on batteries. Kudos to the management and the efforts of the faculty associated with the centre,” says Mr Chanakya. He further mentioned that the research work conducted at SRM-Amara Raja Centre enabled him to write over three papers that catapulted his chances of admission.
“I would urge the students to make the best use of the opportunities available at SRM-AP and discuss their plans with the faculty. I am sure new avenues will open with the mentoring of world-class faculty at SRM”, says Mr Chanakya to the junior batches of students aspiring for a research career.
Mr Chanakya expressed his gratitude to the faculty members associated with Amararaja Centre for Energy Storage Devices- Dr Pardha Saradhi Maram, Associate Professor, Chemistry, Dr Surfarazhussain S Halkarni, Assistant Professor, Mechanical Engineering, Dr Laxmi Narayana Patro, Assistant Professor, Physics, and others.
Continue reading → - Microfluidic SERS as a powerful tool in Analytical Chemistry March 19, 2022
The Department of Chemistry is glad to announce that Dr J P Raja Pandiyan has published a paper titled ” Microfluidics and surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy, a win-win combination?” in the journal ‘Lab on a Chip’ having an impact factor of 6.79 in collaboration with researchers from different universities across India, Germany, and Japan.
Abstract of the Research
With the continuous development in nanoscience and nanotechnology, analytical techniques like surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) render structural and chemical information of a variety of analyte molecules in ultra-low concentration. Although this technique is making significant progress in various fields, the reproducibility of SERS measurements and sensitivity towards small molecules are still daunting challenges. In this regard, microfluidic surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (MF-SERS) is well on its way to join the toolbox of analytical chemists. This review article explains how MF-SERS is becoming a powerful tool in analytical chemistry. We critically present the developments in SERS substrates for microfluidic devices and how these substrates in microfluidic channels can improve the SERS sensitivity, reproducibility, and detection limit. We then introduce the building materials for microfluidic platforms and their types such as droplet, centrifugal, and digital microfluidics. Finally, we enumerate some challenges and future directions in microfluidic SERS. Overall, this article showcases the potential and versatility of microfluidic SERS in overcoming the inherent issues in the SERS technique and also discusses the advantage of adding SERS to the arsenal of microfluidics.
About the Raman Research Group at SRM AP
Raman spectroscopy, invented by Sir CV Raman in 1928 and got Nobel Prize in 1930, is a vibrational spectroscopic technique that works based on the principle of inelastic scattering of light. Surface-Enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) is one of the modern analytical techniques which can detect chemical and biomolecules in an ultra-low concentration. The research group is working on the development of the SERS technique to address the issues in food, environmental, energy and biological science.
The newly developed SERS substrates are mainly used for the detection of biological samples for disease diagnosis, food samples to ensure food safety, water samples to study the contamination and pollution rate. These studies can make meaningful social changes and improvements.
- Effects of Covid-19 on mental health March 19, 2022
The Department of Economics is delighted to announce that Dr Ghanshyam Kumar Pandey and his research group; Sheeba Moghal, Rakshit Barodia, and William Carey have published an article titled “COVID-19 and its effects on the mental health of people living in urban slums in India” in the ‘Journal of Information and Knowledge Management’, having an Impact Factor of 1.3.
The study confirms that more than three-fourth of the population suffer from mental stress due to the spread of COVID-19 and the lockdown imposed by the government. Eighty per cent of those surveyed stated that the stress had affected their decision-making. The study also confirms that the number of dependents, monthly income, number of living rooms, maintenance of physical distancing norms, avoidance of social gatherings, government support, health insurance, and living in a rented house are significantly related to the mental stress of people living in slums in Andhra Pradesh in India.
Abstract of the Research
The COVID-19 pandemic has had a devastating effect on the mental health of people from different backgrounds; these effects have been particularly acute among lower-income households and in slums. There has been a steep rise in mental illness and behaviours associated with it since 2020, especially in slums characterized by poverty, poor housing, high density, and unhealthy environments. This paper aims to examine the effect of COVID-19 on the mental health of people living in the slums of Vijayawada and Visakhapatnam in the state of Andhra Pradesh in India.
- Heartfulness Education Trust collaborates with SRM University-AP March 19, 2022
In a meeting held at SRM University-AP campus, the Heartfulness Education Trust (HET) inked an MoU with the university on staff training, in-depth faculty training and other inner well-being workshops. The collaboration aims to promote preventive healthcare and heartfulness practices.Heartfulness Education Trust advocates bridging ancient tradition with modern scientific understanding through workshops, internships for students, Conclave/Roundtable on Heartfulness Leaderships and other offerings of HET. The collaboration intends to help the students to improve their learning skills and behaviour, inculcate humility, emotional maturity, confidence, stress management, self-awareness and most importantly, develop a sense of purpose towards life.
“SRM University-AP looks forward to organising purposeful programmes with the Heartfulness Trust”, University Vice-Chancellor Prof V S Rao remarked. Sri Ramesh Krishnan, Programme Director (HET), talked about the vision and mission of the trust. “Our curriculum is devised for all streams of education and can potentially contribute to helping students attain the highest form of being”, he added. Ms Harshada Kulkarni from Heartfulness Education Trust also joined the MoU signing ceremony among other delegates.
Registrar-Dr R Premkumar, Prof Sudhindra Nath Panda, Dean – Faculty Development; Prof B V Babu, Dean-School of Engineering and Sciences; Dr Vinayak Kalluri, Associate Dean- Quality Assurance and Rankings and Controller of Examinations; Prof T Ragunathan, Associate Dean-in-Charge (Engineering)-School of Engineering and Sciences; Prof R S Desikan, Associate Dean-in-charge, School of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences (SLASS) & School of Entrepreneurship and Management Studies (SEAMS); Prof C Durga Rao, Associate Dean-in-Charge (Sciences)- School of Engineering and Sciences; Dr Arundhati Ghanwar, Associate Director- ITKM and Corporate Communications; and Dr Venkata N Nori-Associate Professor, Mechanical Engineering were present during the occasion.
Continue reading → - Dr Sujith Kalluri is honoured with “ICTSGS Service Award for Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)” March 17, 2022
Dr Sujith Kalluri from the Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering was honoured with the “ICTSGS Service Award for Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)” in the recently held First International Conference on Technologies for Smart Green Connected Society 2021. The conference was jointly organised by the Electrochemical Society, USA, Yamagata University, Japan, and United Nations FAO, Italy. The award was presented for Dr Kalluri’s contributions in organising the international conference with the relevant audience. Dr Kalluri would further take up the role of Guest Editor in some of the prestigious peer-reviewed international journals.
The honour presented to Dr Kalluri further leads to research and professional collaboration with SPAST Foundation, Yamagata University Japan, and The Electrochemical Society USA.
Continue reading → - Sohith Chowdary received admission offers from world-class universities March 17, 2022
The Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering could not be prouder as their student Sohith Chowdhary Akkineni turned out to be the next in the line of the lucky handful who has received admission offers from various world-class universities. Giving wings to the dreams of students makes the university a choice destination for next-generation where dreams are turned into reality.
With its priority being, teaching the students to dream big and facilitating their journey ahead, more students have found a place to initiate the primary strides towards a world of opportunities looming ahead. They bring laurels back to the university by placing its name on the global map. Sohith Chowdary has also reciprocated his love and respect for SRM University-AP by making the best use of the conducive learning atmosphere, experienced faculty, and cutting-edge infrastructure which opened the doors for higher studies abroad. He received admission offers from the University of Maryland, Northeastern University-Boston, George Washington University with a scholarship of 25% of the tuition fee, and Rochester Institute of Technology with yet another whopping scholarship of $15,561.
“I am indeed grateful to my HOD, Siva Sankar sir for giving me deeper insights into the course I have chosen, and to Swetha ma’am of International Relations Office for helping me get the necessary documents from the college. Besides, I would also like to thank all my professors, Sujith Kalluri sir, Gangi Reddy Salla sir, and Sateeshkrishna Dhuli sir for their Letters of Recommendation”, said Sohith. He also expressed his desire to start a career in the field of research in Telecommunication Networks.
As a word of advice to his juniors, Sohith said, “Choose a course that interests you, rather than following everyone else, do research in the course you have chosen, and apply to international universities preferably before the priority deadline”. With the number of students enrolling into international universities rising, SRM University-AP continues to build a legacy of its own in the domain of global education.
- Novel method to optimise optical information transmission March 17, 2022
Mr D Lenin Babu from the Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering published his research “A Novel 8-Channel DWDM demultiplexer on Silicon Photonic Crystal slab: Design and Analysis” in Elsevier journal ‘Optik’, having an impact factor of 2.44. This research was carried out under the supervision of Dr Sreenivasulu Thupakula, Assistant Professor, Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering.
Abstract:
The published research presents a novel method to achieve optical information transmission at improved speed and reliability. Multiplexing and demultiplexing are the techniques used to enhance the information transmission rates and effective utilisation of channel bandwidths in communication systems. Dr Thupakula and Mr Lenin Babu proposed a new design with a minimised size of approximately 1mm and reduced information loss.
The team collaborated with the Applied Photonics Laboratory, Department of Electrical Communication Engineering, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, to conduct the research.
“The ongoing research is useful not only for communication applications but also for refractive index based sensing applications such as biosensing, Force sensing etc. Our future work includes Integrated optics-based antenna design for THz communication systems, Waveguide devices for sensing applications at THz wavelengths etc.,” said Dr Thupakula.
Continue reading → - SRMAP signed MoU with Speed Engineering Solutions March 17, 2022
SRM University-AP has inked a Memorandum of Understanding(MOU) with Speed Engineering Solutions Pune. The MoU will significantly benefit the students of the Department of Mechanical Engineering in their studies and overall industry exposure. As part of the understanding, the following activities will be carried out-
- Speed Engineering will deliver interactive and insightful webinars on Product Design-Development and similar topics to all students of the university.
- Speed engineering will conduct online workshops on product design at subsidised charges for BTech and MTech students.
- Speed engineering will offer full-time summer internships on Industry oriented product design and development to our BTech and MTech students.
- Speed engineering will offer a series of skill-building projects based on industry work to the BTech and MTech students. They will work under the joint guidance of SRMAP faculty and experienced Speed Engineering professionals. These projects will be based on real-life industry problems.
- Speed engineering will offer in-campus internships to some of the students of SRM AP based on their project performance.
- Speed engineering will offer jobs to some of the brightest students based on their project performance.
Prof Prakash Jadav welcomed the initiative and said, “This MOU is an excellent initiative for the mechanical engineering department. Our students will get huge benefits such as the latest training on Product design and Simulations, CAD, CAE and many other things. The benefits do not end here. Our students will further be able to convert opportunities to work on live industry projects and internships into attractive job offers. I am certain that our students will reap all the benefits from this collaboration.”
Know more about Speed Engineering Solutions: About Us – Speed Engineering Solutions
Continue reading → - Machine learning algorithms predict stock market trends March 17, 2022
Understanding stock market trends is crucial for investors to make key decisions. It was indeed a wonderful moment when Katla Sai Naveen from the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, presented a paper for the first time with an intelligent solution to that problem. The paper “A Novel Stock Price Prediction Scheme from Twitter Data by using Weighted Sentiment Analysis” was presented at the 12th International Conference on Cloud Computing, Data Science & Engineering (CONFLUENCE-2022), organised by Amity University, Noida, UP, India. It was co-authored by Nikhila Korivi, Godavarthi Chandra Keerthi under the mentorship of Dr V M Manikandan, Assistant Professor, Computer Science and Engineering. The paper will later be published in IEEE Xplore Digital Library.
Abstract:
Stock market forecasting is one of the most interesting research areas for many professionals and researchers. Economic conditions, investor sentiment, current events, future guidance, and a variety of other factors have an impact on the stock market. Since the stock market changes swiftly from time to time, it might be tough for a user or investor to keep up with the shifting trend. Combining sentiment analysis with a machine learning model, a solution to this problem has been introduced. Sentiment analysis is a text mining procedure that has one of the most important uses in analysing user reviews and evaluating the overall sentiment of a piece of text. The purpose of this research work is to create a machine learning model that takes recent tweets from the Twitter API and categorises each message as positive, bad, or neutral. Later, the impact of the person who wrote the tweet is also considered while predicting the trend. The parameters such as the total number of followers, the emotion of each comment on each post of selected stock, the number of likes and retweets are considered. An overview of the selected stock’s potential will be given to the user as the output.
This research will be useful for businessmen and people with enthusiasm for the stock market. The research will provide insights and intelligence to help make profitable decisions. False positives during sentiment analysis is a major concern in this domain. The team is focused on improving the existing approaches with better methods to identify false positives.
Continue reading →
