Summary

Dr. V.K. Jindal was born on 19^th Jan. 1950 at Bhawanigarh (Punjab) and served as Professor at the Department of Physics in Panjab University till Jan., 2010. He was also the Coordinator of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology Program at Panjab University, which was started and initiated by him to impart M.Tech degree in Nanoscience and Nanotechnology.

Presently he is CSIR (Council of Scientific and Industrial Research) Emeritus Scientist at Panjab University. CSIR under its Emeritus Scientists Program provides financial assistance to superannuated outstanding scientists to pursue research in their respective fields of specializations.

Prof. Jindal is presently also a Governing Council member of the three new Nanotechnology centers at the Universities of Mumbai, Kolkata and Madras. He has been on the monitoring committee for overseeing progress of nanotechnology in these three Universities for quite some time. Each of these three centers have been sanctioned Rs.100 crores to develop national centers by the Government of India.

He is also an expert from UGC to assess and monitor Special Assistance under SAP program of UGC to fund some Universities.

Prof. Jindal has been the recipient of prestigious international fellowships, viz Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship of Germany, Fulbright Fellowship of USA and Third World Academy of Sciences grant of Italy. In addition he has been awarded senior research professor positions from the Ministry of German Research & Technology (BMFT) as well as at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. Under these programs he has spent over 5 years of his career in Europe and USA, in addition to regular visits under short programs and conferences to visit the globe. He had been National Speaker under Theoretical Physics Seminar Circuit as well as a visiting fellow at JN Centre at IISC Bangalore.

He is constantly being involved in activities of Fulbright foundations, is also a member of their National Selection Committee for Fulbright-Nehru Doctoral and Professional Research Fellowships. Under nomination from USIEF and Fulbright Foundations, he delivered a special C.V. Raman Memorial public lecture on National Science Day on 28^th Feb., 2009. The DRDO also involves him in deciding funding projects and is a Panel Member of their ARMREB research board. He is also a referee of some important research journals in physics, physical chemistry and nanotechnology. The Panjab University Syndicate in its meetings held on more than one occasion also felicitated Prof. Jindal for his research achievements.

He has extensively visited Europe and USA as well as Singapore, Australia and Nepal for research and seminars. He has published about 100 papers in international journals and about equal number in conferences and symposia and headed research group and is always keen to continue guiding research activities of the group.

The research achievements of Prof. Jindal highlight his expertise in theoretical as well as experimental physics. The significant experimental component involves using Neutron in elastic as well as Small angle neutron scattering experiments mainly conducted at ILL, Grenoble. His theoretical work is famous for modeling and coding anharmonic phonon line widths and shifts. For brevity, major research achievements of Prof. Jindal categorized decade wise and paragraphed are given below along with reference to his most important publications of that period. The nomenclature of decades is described as decade 1 clubbing the period (1980-1990), decade 2, the period (1990-2000) and 3 as post 2000.

In decade 1, the area of Anharmonicity of Solids was intensely explored, leading to famous publications giving a theory of simple as well as molecular crystals explaining the line widths and shifts of phonons in naphthalene ( J. Phys. C 16, 3061 (1983), Phys. stat. sol. (b) 133, 189 (1986), Phys. Rev. B 38, 4259-4268 (1988)). The codes written became very well known and were in use for a decade in his absence also. This was subsequently experimentally verified by using famous reactor at ILL, Grenoble in France, measuring phonon lifetimes and shifts in anthracene at temperatures from around 4K to room temperatures using their triple axis neutron inelastic spectrometer ( J. Phys. C 15, 7283-7294 (1982)).

In decade 2, in addition to continuity of decade 1, a new subject on viscoelastic materials – aqueous solutions of surfactants or micellar solutions was studied using Small Angle Neutron Scattering (SANS) Experiments performed again at ILL, Grenoble, France using SANS setup and a 2D detector; and at KFA, Julich, Germany. A real time transient behavior of these solutions was studied under application of shear gradient when the liquid crystalline behaviors organized itself and on its removal, when its decay took place. A theoretical model for the same was also suggested. The publication resulting from this is very well cited in literature ( J. Phys. Chem. 94, 3129 (1990)). During this decade, another applied problem of how materials break and how to control or prevent them from breaking under shock pressure was also studied. An application of the ideas was made by taking well studied sample earlier by us of naphthalene ( J. Appl. Phys. 83,5203, (1998)).

In decade 3, the subject of fullerenes and carbon nanotubes was in prime focus. A theoretical model that explained structural and thermodynamical properties of C₆₀ was formulated (Int. J. Mod. Phys.B, 14, 51-69 (2000)) and subsequently, similar model was suggested for carbon nanotube bunches (Phys. Rev. B 72, Art. No. 165428 (2005)). Realizing the significance of new materials in the form of fullerenes and carbon Nanotubes, he was amongst first few to suggest and apply a model potential to calculate their structural properties which were reasonably close to measurements. His research group grew tremendously in this decade and devoted effort to understand and suggest theoretical methodology for nanomaterials, especially carbon nanotubes, experimenting with ion irradiation on these (J. Appl. Phys. 94, 326-333 (2003), J. Appl. Phys. 104, 054306 (2008)), including boron-nitride tubes ( Nanotechnology 18 435711 (2007)).

and also attending to their production techniques. Important contributions have also been made predicting structure of carbon Nanotubes based on two bond lengths which have further been studied under high pressures (Phys. Rev. B 76, 195447 (2007), CARBON 447, 3247-51 (2009) CARBON 46, (2008) 349-358, CARBON 48, 744-55 (2010)).

Suggestion has been made that this pressure dependent nature of bond lengths can be exploited to characterize carbon nanotubes of various chiralities. This is an important contribution. Also in focus were electronic properties of C₆₀ under hetero substitution of carbons by nitrogen or boron atoms, encapsulating polynitrogen complexes inside C₆₀ resulting in a suggestion of new source of green energy (Phys. Chem A, 113, 9002-13 (2009) , J. Phys. Chem. C, 114, 9153–9160 (2010) ).