Aparna Deshpande

PhD Physics,
IISER Pune

mail-icon aparna.d@iiserpune.ac.in










Welcome, My name is Aparna. I am a Physics Professor at IISER Pune. I am passionate about and have been associated with the reasearch field for around 10+ years. I zoom into the world of materials in my STM (Scanning Tunneling Microscopy) laboratory where we visualize, probe and manipulate matter atom-by-atom. I am also motivated by teaching and learning of physics in particular and science in general. Connecting to lay persons about what I teach and research is also very special to me. I am presently the faculty incharge of the Smt. Indrani Balan Science Activity center.


Welcome, My name is Aparna. I am a Physics Professor at IISER Pune. I am passionate about and have been associated with the reasearch field for around 10+ years. I zoom into the world of materials in my STM (Scanning Tunneling Microscopy) laboratory where we visualize, probe and manipulate matter atom-by-atom.

Background: About My STM Laboratory:
STM Lab is located in the h-cross block of IISER campus. The h-cross block is specially designed to house all experimental physics labs. Utmost attention has been paid to details like uninterrupted power supply, vibration isolation areas, and custom built interiors for every lab.

The lab houses two major instruments:

  • Omicron STM operating in ultra high vacuum (UHV) and at low temperature (LT), 77 K and 4.2K (UHV-LT-STM) for dedicated STM, spectroscopy and atom and molecule manipulation experiments at 77 K and 4.2 K.
  • Nanosurf atomic force microscope (AFM) and STM, table top models, for projects at room temperature (300 K) and in ambient environment.



Current Research Topics

  • Borophene: The world of 2D materials, also known as flatland, that emerged with the disovery of graphene not too long ago, has a new entrant named BOROPHENE which is the 2D network of boron atoms. Borophene can host vacancy-mediated superstructural motifs that induce structural polymorphism.


  • Heterostructures of 2D materials: The family of exfoliable materials like graphene, and transition metal dichalcogenides like MoS2, WS2, WSe2 and so on, are amenable to a vertical and lateral stacking in the form of single layers due to the weak Van der Waals interaction between the layers. Such an assembly yields emergent properties.


  • Charge density waves: Charge density waves (CDWs) are a periodic modulation of electronic density concomitant with lattice distortion. The origin of CDWs in TiSe2 and VSe2 is still an open and an interesting question.


  • 2D Van der Waals magnetic materials: The isolation of a monolayer of magnetic material has opened an exciting subfield to probe stable magnetism in 2D. Understanding bulk magnetic materials also can have long standing implications in the world of spintronics.




Current Members
BSMS Students
  • Pranjal Panwar (5th year MS Thesis ongoing)
PhD Students
  • Umashankar Rajput (Jan 2019 - Present)
  • Vaibhav Walve (Aug 2020 - Present)
  • Nikhil Singh (Jul 2023 - Present)


Alumni
BS MS Students PhD Students
  • Dr. Imrankhan Mulani
  • Dr. Sk Rejaul
Post-Doc Fellow
  • Dr. Sumati Patil
  • Dr. Giriraj Vyas


Key Publications
  1. "Unveiling different structural orderings in Fe 5-xGeTe2", Vaibhav Walve, Piyush Parakh, Umashankar Rajput, Akash S. Mhase, Kirandeep Singh, and Aparna Deshpande, accepted in Phys. Rev. B (July 2024)

  2. “Liquid phase exfoliated borophene on Au(111)”, Umashankar Rajput, Md Faiz Akhtar, Vaibhav Walve, Imrankhan Mulani, Giriraj Vyas, Somnath Bhowmick, Prashant Kumar and Aparna Deshpande, J. Phys. Chem. C 128 (9), 4104-4110, (February 2024)

  3. Rejaul Sk, Debayan Mondal, Imrankhan Mulani, Priya Mahadevan, and Aparna Deshpande, “Emergent Negative Differential Resistance with an Undisturbed Topological Surface State”, . J. Phys. Chem. C 2022, 126, 39, 16744.

  4. Imrankhan Mulani, Umashankar Rajput, Luminita Harnagea, and Aparna Deshpande” Perturbation of charge density waves in 1T-TiSe2″ Phys. Rev. B 103, 125430 (2021)

  5. Abhijit Biswas, Arundhati Sengupta, Umashankar Rajput, Sachin Kumar Singh, Vivek Antad, Sk Mujaffar Hossain, Swati Parmar, Dibyata Rout, Aparna Deshpande, Sunil Nair, and Satishchandra Ogale “Growth, properties, and applications of nanolaminate Ti3AlC2 thin films” Phys. Rev. Applied 13, 044075(2020).

  6. Rejaul Sk and Aparna Deshpande, “Unveiling the emergence of functional materials with STM: metal phthalocyanine on surface architectures”, invited review article for Molecular Systems Design & Engineering, 4, 471 (2019).

  7. Rejaul Sk, Imrankhan Mulani, and Aparna Deshpande, “Emergent Properties of Organic Molecule-Topological Insulator Hybrid Interface: Cu-Phthalocyanine on Bi2Se3” J. Phys. Chem. C 122, 40, 22996 (2018).

  8. Rejaul Sk, Srilatha Arra, Barun Dhara, Joel S. Miller, Mukul Kabir, and Aparna Deshpande, “Effect of Cyano Substitution on the Step-Edge Adsorption of Copper Phthalocyanine on Au(111)”, Phys. Chem. C 122, 22, 11848 (2018).

  9. Rejaul Sk, Srilatha Arra, Barun Dhara, Joel S. Miller, Mukul Kabir, and Aparna Deshpande, “Enhancing the Intermolecular Interaction by Cyano Substitution in CuPc”, Phys. Chem. C 122, 1, 429 (2018).

  10. Sumati Patil, Sadhu Kolekar, Aparna Deshpande, “Revisiting HOPG superlattices: Structure and conductance properties”, Surface Science, 658, 55-60, (2017).

  11. Rejaul Sk, Mandar Shirolkar, Barun Dhara, Sulabha Kulkarni, and Aparna Deshpande,“Enhancing the thermopower and tuning the resistivity in Bi2Se3 with Fe-doping”, Chemical Physics Letters, 638, 94 (2015).

  12. Aparna Deshpande, Chun-Hong Sham, Justice M. P. Alaboson, Jonathan M. Mullin, George C. Schatz, and Mark C. Hersam, Self-Assembly and Photopolymerization of Sub‑2 nm One-Dimensional Organic Nanostructures on Graphene, J. Am. Chem. Soc., 134, 16759 (2012).

  13. Aparna Deshpande and Brian LeRoy, “Scanning probe microscopy of graphene“, Physica E, 44, 743 (2012) (invited review article).

  14. Aparna Deshpande, Wenzhong Bao, Feng Miao, Chun Ning Lau, and Brian LeRoy, Spatially resolved spectroscopy of monolayer graphene on SiO2, Phys. Rev. B, 79, 205411 (2009). Accompanying synopsis in Physics. Link.

  15. Aparna Deshpande, Dandapani Acharya, Joel Vaughn, Saw-Wai Hla, Handan Yildirim, Abdelkader Kara, and Talat Rahman, Atom-by-atom extraction using scanning tunneling microscope tip-cluster interaction, Phys. Rev. Lett., 98, 028304 (2007).

  16. Violeta Iancu, Aparna Deshpande and Saw-Wai Hla, Manipulating Kondo Resonance in Two-Dimensional Molecular Self-Assembly, Phys. Rev. Lett., 97, 266603 (2006).



Since joining IISER Pune in August 2011 I have taught physics lab courses spanning 1st year to 4th year, and a course in digital electronics with lab component, Electricity part in the Electricity & Magnetism course.During the pandemic I coordinated the introductory physics lab course where, in an unprecedented effort at IISER Pune across all disciplines, low cost physics lab kits were sent to the students to carry out experiments at home. Vivas and exams were then conducted in the online mode.




Coordination committee member of the newly established Department of Science Education (DSE) at IISER Pune.

Check out the Faculty Application at IISER Pune.



Our Lab's Bulletin

  • Our first paper on Borophene
  • Congratulations Piyush on successfully defending his MS thesis in December 2023 !
  • Congratulations to Imran for defending his PhD thesis successfully !
  • Congratulations Subhrajit on successfully defending his MS thesis in May 2024!
  • Just accepted in Phys. Rev. B— Our work on Fe(5-x)GeTe2 "Unveiling different structural orderings in Fe (5-x)GeTe2",
    By -> Vaibhav Walve, Piyush Parakh, Umashankar Rajput, Akash S. Mhase, Kirandeep Singh, and Aparna Deshpande
"The test of all knowledge is experiment."

- RICHARD FEYNMAN