Animangsu Ghatak

C. V. Seshadri Chair Professor

  • Email

    aghatak[AT]iitk.ac.in

  • Office & Lab Phone No.

    +91-512-259-6045/7146 (Office)
    +91-512-259-6362 (Lab)

  • Office & Lab

    NL-II-104 (Office)
    CESE-216 (Lab)

  • Group Home Page IRINS Profile

Research Interest

  • Adhesion and friction on soft interfaces
  • Fracture of soft thin sheets
  • Bio-inspired approaches in design of engineering materials

Education

  • B.Tech. IIT Kharagpur, 1994
  • M.Tech, IIT Kanpur, 1998
  • Ph.D, Lehigh University, PA, USA, 2003
  • Post-Doctoral Research at Cambridge University, UK
  • Post-Doctoral at Harvard University, USA, 2003-2004

Research Overview

Highly deformable, soft elastic, viscoelastic and poroelastic materials occur in many different applications e.g. soft tissues, artificial organs, therapeutic patches, shock absorbers, dampeners, platforms for micro-fluidic device, novel biomaterials in biology as stems, roots and leaves, sponges, cartilage layers and bones and so on and so forth. In this variety of situations these materials are exposed to many different forms of mechanical loads, e.g. tension, compression, torsion, bending which, due to the large deformability of these materials and their complex rheological character, can generate such responses which are different from that commonly observed with the liner elastic systems. An example of such a response is the kinking instability in a cylindrical rod of soft hydrogel, bent beyond a critical curvature. It is different from the commonly observed wrinkling instability. Besides, we have recently developed a microfluidic adhesive by embedding microchannels inside adhesive layers. By filling these channels with liquids we have shown that adhesion strength can be enhanced significantly. Our research on microfluidics has led to the development of a simple technique for generating complex 3D microstructures inside soft polymeric materials which have many potential applications, e.g. we have developed a novel multi-helical microfluidic mixer for rapid mixing of liquids.

Awards

  • SERB - Science and Technology Award for Research (SERB-STAR), 2020.
  • C. V. Seshadri Chair Professor, IIT Kanpur, 2019-2022.
  • Fellow of Indian National Academy of Engineering, 2018.
  • C. N. R. Rao Faculty Award, IIT Kanpur 2016.
  • DOST Professor S. K. Sharma Medal and Chemcon Distinguished Speaker Award, 2015.
  • Humboldt Research Fellowship for Experienced Researchers, 2010.
  • Mr. and Mrs. Gian Singh Bindra Research Fellowship, 2009-present.
  • Diamond Jubilee Young Achiever's Award of the Indian Institution of Chemical Engineering, 2007.
  • REACH 2007 Symposium Research Award of the Indian Institution of Technology, Kanpur.
  • Young Engineer Award of the Indian National Academy of Engineering, 2006.
  • Alan Gent best student paper in Second world congress on Adhesion and related phenomena, 2002.

Professional Affiliations

  • The Adhesion Society

Publications

  • N Singh, A Ghatak, Enhancement of the Rate of Surface Reactions by the Elastocapillary Effect, Langmuir, 40, 17, 8771–8780, (2024).
  • G Rawal, A Ghatak, Highly sensitive flexible capacitive pressure sensor with structured elastomeric dielectric layers, J. Micromech. Microeng., 34, 025012, (2024).
  • N Singh, A Kumar, A Ghatak, Studying kinetics of a surface reaction using elastocapillary effect, Journal of Colloid And Interface Science, 645, 266–275, (2023).
  • KK Kundan, A Ghatak, Coupled Effect of Axial Velocity of Insertion and Vibration of a Hypodermic Needle Puncturing into a Soft Brittle Solid ,Biomedical Materials & Devices, (2023).
  • A. Ghatak, How does a lizard shed its tail?, Perspective article in Science, 375, 721 (2022).
  • N. Singh, A. Ghatak, Hierarchically Rough Surface used as Rewritable and Reprintable paper, arXiv preprint arXiv :2111.12430 (2021).
  • K.K. Kuhar, M. Jesbeer, A. Ghatak, Soft gel-filled composite adhesive for dry and wet adhesion, ACS Applied Polymer Materials , 3, 3755 (2021).
  • • G. Rawal, A. Ghatak, Effect of roughness on the conductivity of vacuum coated flexible paper electrodes, Nano Select , 1 (2021).
  • • N. Singh, Y. Jain, K. Kishore, A. Ghatak, Liquid spreading induced by in-situ generation of metallic nano-particles, Langmuir , 36, 12237 (2020).
Complete list of Publications