Pressure is one of the fundamental thermodynamic parameters, which is a clean and effective tool to study material properties. It alters the interatomic bond distances, forces, volume, density, effective hybridization, electronic structure, and consequently material intrinsic characteristics. Raman scattering and synchrotron X-ray Diffraction (XRD) are the efficient and versatile probes to study the structural and electronic transitions induced by external stimuli such as pressure. Using this technique, interesting phenomenon such as insulator metal transitions, lattice dynamics, amorphization, isostructural transitions, structural phase transitions, topological quantum phase transitions etc. of materials can be investigated under extreme high pressure conditions.
In our group, we use Raman scattering and synchrotron XRD techniques to understand the pressure induced electronic and structural phase transitions in condensed matter systems. The recent studies include the identification and study of topological quantum phase transition in materials like TlBiSe2 , 1T-TiTe2, 1T-TiSe2 etc. The previous works include the utilization of Raman scattering, for probing the structural distortions of some of the rare-earth functional oxides as well as the electronic transitions of high spin-orbit coupling materials, as a function pressure.
