Prof. Ashish K Sharma
Professor of Physics
Publishes as Ashish Kumar — the name on all 91 papers, three patents and every award.
Department of Physics & Astronomical Sciences
Central University of Jammu, J&K — 181143, India
Three of India’s national missions rest on the same few materials, and this laboratory works on all three. The Semiconductor Mission needs ohmic and Schottky contacts on SiC and GaN that hold up in production — the DRDO CARS project delivers them to SSPL. The National Quantum Mission needs the single-defect states that decide coherence to be measured, not inferred. The space programme needs mirrors, detectors and electronics that survive radiation, which the ISRO RESPOND multilayer work addresses.
The common thread is defects — what they do to charge and heat transport, and how far that can be turned to use, from thermoelectric legs that make power out of waste heat to devices that keep working in a satellite or a reactor hall. The group measures them on instruments it builds itself, including a pioneering in-situ capability that records a deep-level spectrum while the ion beam is still arriving. Funded without a break since 2015 by DST, SERB, ISRO, DRDO, UGC and IUAC.
Probing Matter at the Quantum Scale
Prof. Ashish K Sharma is an experimental physicist whose work bridges fundamental condensed matter physics and applied energy technologies. He completed his Ph.D. from IIT Delhi in 2013 under Prof. Rajendra Singh, pioneering in-situ electrical characterisation of GaN devices under live ion-beam irradiation.
His tenure at the Inter-University Accelerator Centre (IUAC), New Delhi (2013–2021) — first as a DST-INSPIRE Faculty awardee and later as a SERB Research Scientist — saw him independently design five custom cryogenic measurement systems. After two years at UPES Dehradun he joined Central University of Jammu in 2023 as Associate Professor, and was promoted to Professor with effect from July 2026.
The programme runs on two legs. Energy — thermoelectric conversion, organic and inorganic, printed and bulk, reaching temperatures beyond the narrow window in which bismuth telluride stays efficient. Power devices — SiC, GaN and β-Ga2O3 for the electronics that radar, satellites and power conversion depend on. Defect engineering with ion beams is the method common to both, and what it measures is answered by calculation rather than left as a number.
What makes the group unusual is that it builds what it measures with. More than five cryogenic systems designed and commissioned from scratch, at a fraction of commercial cost, all still in daily use and open to groups beyond this one — one of them published in Review of Scientific Instruments and now standard equipment for collaborating national laboratories. Instruments first, results after.
Education
Select Honours
Areas of Investigation
Six lines of work, one question: what defects do to the electrical and thermal transport of a semiconductor, and how far that can be turned to use.
Energy — Thermoelectric Conversion
Turning a temperature difference into current, in all four families at once: organic (PEDOT:PSS, doped P3HT), inorganic (Bi2Te3, GaN, β-Ga2O3 above the 150 °C ceiling), hybrid, and printed flexible devices.
Power Semiconductor Devices
SiC, GaN, β-Ga2O3 and graphene on silicon, built into Schottky diodes, AlGaN/GaN HEMTs, photodetectors and heterostructures — and the contact metallurgy that decides whether any of them is manufacturable.
Defects in Semiconductors
Native and induced — from growth, from irradiation, from implantation. Deep level transient spectroscopy across 80–500 K, with 1/f noise and Hall transport, including a pioneering in-situ DLTS capability that reads the spectrum during irradiation.
Experiment with Theory Behind It
A capacitance transient says a trap sits 0.6 eV down; it does not say which atom is missing. SRIM/TRIM, molecular dynamics and DFT in Quantum ATK and WIEN2k answer that, so a measured level is assigned to a structure.
Instruments Built Here
More than five cryogenic measurement systems designed, built and commissioned in the group — high precision at a fraction of the commercial price, all still running, and open to users beyond the group. One is published in Rev. Sci. Instrum.
New Materials for Space
2D materials and carbon nanotubes, and the nanomaterial multilayer mirrors they make possible for extreme-ultraviolet and soft X-ray polarimetry — coatings that have to survive the radiation environment the defect work characterises.
"The most important instrument in any laboratory is the mind that designs it — curiosity turned into steel, glass, and measurement."
— Research Philosophy, Prof. Ashish K SharmaActive National Projects
Currently running three national projects together worth ₹95.38 Lakh in active funding from India's premier science agencies.
Nanomaterials Prototype for EUV / X-ray Polarimetric Missions
ISRO RESPOND · RES-URSC-2023-010 · 2024–2027
High-Quality Ohmic and Schottky Contacts on SiC and III–V Semiconductors
DRDO CARS · 2023–2026 · with SSPL-DRDO, Delhi
Ion-Beam-Induced Defect Engineering for Thermoelectrics
IUAC UFR-76304 · 2024–2027 · in-situ measurement under live beam
Latest Research Output
Custom-Built Scientific Systems
More than five precision measurement systems independently designed, fabricated, and commissioned — a defining feature of the research programme
Seebeck & Resistivity Setup
80 K – 650 K · Wire, thin film & bulk. One of very few such systems designed indigenously in India. Used by multiple collaborating groups nationally.
Thermal Conductivity & ZT Setup
300 K – 1000 K · Complete thermoelectric figure-of-merit (ZT) characterisation. Rare capability at Indian universities.
In-Situ DLTS Under Live Ion Beam
Unique in-situ DLTS facility for real-time characterisation of GaN under live SHI irradiation — unmatched in India.