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

Recent Publications
  • Singh, N., Jain, Y., Kishore, K., Ghatak, A. Liquid spreading induced by in-situ generation of metallic nano-particles, Langmuir, Paper Published online

  • Kundan, K. K., Ghatak A. Fingering instability during fracture of a gel block subjected to shear loading, Physical Review E, 2020, Vol 102, pp 013002-1-9.

  • Rajbanshi, P., Ghatak, A., Analysis of mixing in helical micro-channel, Physical Review Fluids, 2020, Vol 5, pp 064502-1‐17.

  • Maiti, S. Singh, N., Ghatak, A. Confinement induced alteration of morphologies of oil-water emulsion, Langmuir 2019, Vol 35(10), 3797-3804.

  • Kundan, K. K., Laha, S. and Ghatak, A. Vibration assisted puncturing of a soft brittle solid, Extreme Mechanics Letters 2019, Vol 26, pp. 26-34.