S D Mahanti

Fixed Term Professor Emeritus, Department of Physics & Astronomy
Profile photo of  S D Mahanti
Photo of: S D Mahanti

Bio

A major part of my NSF CRG (Chemical Research Group) research program (Billinge, Hogan, Kanazidis, Mahanti, Pinnavaia, Thorpe) involves a fundamental understanding of the physics of self-assembly of amphiphiles and physical properties of confined particles inside meso- and nanoporous media. The types of porous media we are concerned with have pore sizes ranging from several angstroms (as in Zeolites) to about 50 angstroms (as in MCM41 and novel systems discovered at MSU by Prof. Pinnavaia's group). We have developed a very efficient model to study via computer simulation the self-assembly problem and have been able to understand the physics of micellar formation and both co-operative and non co-operative routes to the formation of ordered structures. With Aniket Bhattacharya, who was a research associate here and is now an Assistant professor at the University of Central Florida, I am working on the temperature dependence of the critical micelle concentration using 3-dimensional lattice simulations. We have proposed a new way to look at this problem by monitoring the peak in the heat capacity as a function of temperature near the micellar transition. With Prof. Pinnavaia, we are exploring the possibility of using proto-zeolitic nano-clusters in enhancing the structural stability of nanoporous materials. [Hoang Khang](http://www.pa.msu.edu/people/mahanti/students.html) (grad student) and [Hong Li](http://www.pa.msu.edu/people/mahanti/collaborators.html) (research associate) are involved in this project.

# Education:
* 1968: Ph.D., University of California, Riverside
* 1963: M.S., University of Allahabad, India (University Gold Medalist)

Selected Publications

  • Electronic and thermoelectric properties of full-Heusler alloy Fe2VAl: effect of on-site Coulomb interaction (with Dat Thanh Do & Mal-Soon Lee) Phys. Rev. B 84(12), p125104 (2011).
  • Electronic Structure of Complex Bismuth Chalcogenide Systems (with Daniel Bilc, Hong Li, and Paul Larson) Published in the Proceedings of the Conference on Chemistry, Physics, and Materials Science of Thermoelectric Materials: Beyond Bismuth Telluride; ed. M. G. Kanatzidis, S. D. Mahanti, and T. P. Hogan (Kluwer Acadedmic, 2003)
  • Electronic Structure of the Ternary Zintl-Phase Compounds Zr3Ni3Sb4, Hf3Ni3Sb4, and Zr3Pt3Sb4 and their similarity to half-Heusler compounds such as ZrNiSn (with P. Larson, J. Salvador, D. Bilc, and M.G. Kanatzidis) Physical Review B 74, 035111, (2006)
  • On the Stability of the Saturated Ferromagnetic State in the Double Exchange Model; Effect of Quantum Fluctuations of the Localized Spins (with A. Taraphder and T. A. Kaplan, under preparation)
  • REAu3Al7 (RE = Rare Earth): new ternary aluminides grown from aluminum flux (with S. E. Latturner, D. Bilc, J. R. Ireland, C. R. Kannewurf, and M. G. Katatzidis) Journal of Solid State Chemistry 170, 48 (2003)
  • REAu3Al7 (RE = Rare Earth): new ternary aluminides grown from aluminum flux (with S. E. Latturner, D. Bilc, J. R. Ireland, C. R. Kannewurf, and M. G. Katatzidis) Journal of Solid State Chemistry 170, 48 (2003)