Dr. Ariharan and Dr. Kamalan Kirubaharan joined Department of Coating

Dr. Ariharan earned his doctorate in Materials Science & Engineering and postgraduate (Masters of Technology) in Materials & Metallurgical Engineering from IIT-Kanpur in 2018 and 2011, respectively. He earned his Masters of Science (Materials Science) from College of Engineering Guindy (Anna University, Chennai) in 2009. His undergraduate degree (Bachelors of Science) was in Physics from Pioneer Kumaraswamy College (Manonmanium Sundaranar University), Nagercoil, India. He is the all India rank holder of the Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering (GATE-2009) and Joint Admission Test for M.Sc. (JAM-2007), conducted by IITs and IISc-Bangalore, India. He is the recipient of the Nanomaterials and Energy Prize-2019 by the journal-Nanomaterials and Energy and National Post-Doctoral Fellowship-2018 (NPDF), sponsored by the Science and Engineering Research Board (SERB), Government of India. His NPDF (February 2019-August 2021) research work was carried out at IIT-Madras, India on the development of carbonaceous materials reinforced ZrO₂ based advanced materials. His area of research concentrated on understanding the role of carbon nanotube in the mechanical, tribological and thermal properties of ceramics based composites/coatings. He also worked on ultra-high temperature ceramics based nanocomposites for thermal protection systems, hydroxyapatite based biomaterials for biomedical applications and analytical electron microscopy.

He has published more than 25 research articles in peer-reviewed journals and conference proceedings. Also, has presented over 10 lectures at international conferences. He is a reviewer of journals from Elsevier, Wiley, Springer, ICE and Taylor & Francis publishers. Also, he is a life-time member of the Electron Microscopy Society of India (EMSI) and Powder Metallurgical Society of India (PMSI).

His current research domain is to develop ceramics based advanced materials (for thermal barrier coatings and thermal protection system, etc.), tailoring the properties of materials for extreme environments and tribology of engineered surfaces.

Dr. Kamalan Kirubaharan received his Ph.D in Chemistry from Sathyabama Institute of Science and Technology (India), in 2019 with the thesis titled “Investigation on microstructure and corrosion properties of compositionally graded coatings of YSZ/Ni-YSZ on nickel base superalloys prepared by electron beam evaporation technique”, which was awarded with “highly commended” status.  He has worked on the design and development of Ni/YSZ based multilayer diffusion barrier coatings to mitigate corrosion and high temperature oxidation in superalloys for nuclear vitrification components. He has twelve years of research experience in the field of ceramic coatings for corrosion and high temperature applications, ceramic matrix composites, and metal/ceramic thin films prepared by various physical vapor deposition (PVD) techniques. He has experienced in various thin film deposition processes such as thermal evaporation, electron beam physical vapor deposition (EBPVD), pulsed laser deposition (PLD) and RF/DC magnetron sputtering systems.  Apart from these he has hands on experience in handing analytical tools such as scanning electron microscopy, confocal Raman spectroscopy, stylus profilometer, X-ray diffractometer, and frequency response analyzer.

As an investigator, he has received 6 Indian government funded projects from defense and aerospace sectors and one institutional funding for product development and commercialization during the year 2017-2022. He has 31 published papers, with more than 215 citations, and 6 Indian patents. As a convener, he organized one international conference, one national workshop and many online webinars.

Dr. Kamalan will focus on the development of coatings on superalloys for high temperature applications.

Dear Ariharan and Kamalan, we wish you a lot of success in FunGlass team!