Sayak Bhattacharya

Contact MP 1007, McLennan Physical Laboratories

Information Dept. of Physics, +1 437 987 4815
University of Toronto sayak.bhattacharya@utoronto.ca
60 St. George Street, Toronto, M5S1A7, Ontario, Canada

Work
Experience Postdoctoral Fellow, December 2016-till date, McLennan Physical Laboratory, Dept.
of Physics, University of Toronto
• Research topic: High-efficiency, thin-silicon, photonic crystal solar cell
• Advisor: Prof. Sajeev John

Education Ph.D., July 2016, Near field characteristics of spoof surface plasmon and tight
binding model description of wave dispersion in metallic and dielectric photonic
crystals (CGPA in course work 9.5/10)
• Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, New Delhi, India.
• Thesis title: Study of Electromagnetic Waves on a Structured Perfect Electric
Conductor Surface
• Advisor: Dr. Kushal Shah

M.Tech, RF and Microwave Engineering, 2010 (CGPA 8.76/10)

• Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, Kharagpur, India
• Thesis topic: Analytical and Numerical Treatment of Different Antennas, Scatterers
and Waveguides
• Advisor: Prof. Ajay Chakraborty

B.Tech, Electronics and Communication Engineering, 2008 (CGPA 8.59/10)

• Heritage Institute of Technology, Kolkata, India

Refereed 1. S. Bhattacharya, I. Baydoun, M. Lin and S. John, “Towards 30% power

Journal conversion efficiency in thin-silicon photonic-crystal solar cells”, Physical
Publications Review Applied, Vol. 11, 014005 (2019).
2. S. Bhattacharya and S. John, “Designing High-Efficiency Thin Silicon Solar
Cells Using Parabolic-Pore Photonic Crystals”, Physical Review Applied,
Vol. 9, 044009 (2018).
3. P. Kuang, S. Bhattacharya, M.L. Hsieh, S. John and S. Y. Lin, “Photonic
Crystals with a Continuous, Gaussian-type Surface Profile for Near-
perfect Light Trapping”, SPIE Journal of Nanophotonics, Vol. 12, 026011
(2018).
4. S. Bhattacharya and K. Shah, “Dispersion relation and self-collimation
frequency of spoof surface plasmon using tight binding model”, Journal
of Optics, Vol. 17, 065102 (2015).
5. S. Bhattacharya and K. Shah, “Multimodal propagation of electromagnetic
wave on a structured perfect electric conductor (PEC) surface”, Optics
Communications, Vol. 328, 102–108, (2014).
6. S. Bhattacharya and S. John, “Nanophotonics and energy harvesting”,
invited review article in Applied Physics Letters (APL) Photonics (To be submitted).

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 7. S. Bhattacharya and S. John, “Beyond 30% conversion efficiency in silicon
solar cells”, under review in Nature Scientific Reports.
8. H. Mei-Li, S. Chen, A. Kaiser, Y. Yan, B. Frey, I. Bhat, R. Dahal, S. Bhattacharya,
S. John, S. Y. Lin, “A low cost and large-scale synthesis of 3D photonic
crystal with SP2 lattice symmetry”, under review in APL Photonics.

Conference 1. Y. Kalepu, S. Bhattacharya and U. K. Khankhoje, “Algebraic reconstruction

Publications techniques for inverse imaging”, accepted in ICEAA-IEEE APWC 2016, Cairns
(Australia).
2. S. Bhattacharya and K. Shah, “On the characteristics of spoof surface plasmon in
the high frequency limit”, PIERS 2015, Prague (Czech Republic).
3. S. Bhattacharya and K. Shah, “Pitfalls in the analogy between spoof surface
plasmon and surface plasmon polariton”, 12th International Conference on Fiber
Optics and Photonics, Kharagpur (India), OSA Technical Digest, paper S5A.47,
2014.

Awards & • Our paper, “Designing High-Efficiency Thin Silicon Solar Cells Using Parabolic-
Achievements Pore Photonic Crystals”, Physical Review Applied, Vol. 9, 044009 (2018), illustrated
roadmap towards achieving 28-29% power conversion efficiency (well beyond the
current world-record of 26.7%) on a single-junction silicon solar cell and was featured
as Editor’s Suggestion in April issue.
• Selected (to a team of 25 Indian students and 25 Canadian students) for IC-IMPACTS
Summer Institute on Optical Sensing at University of Toronto (St. George Campus)
based on a competitive selection procedure during June, 2015 and received travel
grant.
• SPIE Best Student Paper Award in 12th International Conference on Fiber Optics
and Photonics, Kharagpur (India), December 2014.
• Conducted laboratory classes and imparted training to the scientists from several
Govt. organizations like ISRO, DRDO and teachers from several AICTE approved
colleges during the tenure of short term course on “Efficient Systems for Microwave
Transmission and Radiation”, organized by Dept. of E & ECE, IIT Kharagpur
(January 18th -January 23rd , 2010).
• Conducted laboratory classes and imparted training to the teachers of several AICTE
approved colleges during the tenure of the AICTE/MHRD staff development program
on “Fundamentals and Recent advances in RF & Microwave Communication”, organized
by Dept. of E & ECE, IIT Kharagpur (December 7th -December 20th , 2009).

Skills Numerical Techniques

Finite Element Method (FEM), Finite Difference Time Domain Method (FDTD),
Method of Moments (MoM), Eigensolver for photonic crystals with plane wave basis,
Multiple Multipole Method.
Software Packages and Programming Languages
Remcom XFdtd, Sentaurus, EMTL, MEEP, MPB, MATLAB, C, CUDA (for GPU
platforms).

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Teaching • 2 lectures on Bose-Einstein condensation as a part of the graduate level course on
Experience Statistical Mechanics in Dept. of Physics, University of Toronto (Fall, 2017).
• A guest lecture on Band structure calculation for dielectric and metallic photonic
crystal as a part of the graduate level course on Computational Electromagnetics
(EEL766) offered by Dr. Uday Khankhoje in IIT Delhi (April, 2015). Slides are
available at this link.
Teaching Assistant:
• Advanced Electromagnetics Fall, 2009
Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur
Instructor: Prof. Ajay Chakraborty.
• EMI/EMC Techniques [Theory] Spring, 2010
Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur
Instructor: Prof. Ajay Chakraborty.
• EMI/EMC Techniques [Laboratory] Spring, 2010
Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur
Instructor: Prof. Ajay Chakraborty.
• Engineering Electromagnetics Fall 2013; Spring, 2015
Indian Institute of Technology Delhi
Instructor: Dr. Kushal Shah.
• Engineering Electromagnetics Fall 2014
Indian Institute of Technology Delhi
Instructor: Dr. Uday Khankhoje.

References Prof. Sajeev John

University Professor, Government of Canada Research Chair holder and 2011 Thomson-
Reuters Citation Laureate
Dept. of Physics E-mail: john@physics.utoronto.ca
University of Toronto
Dr. Kushal Shah
Associate Professor
Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science E-mail: kushals@iiserb.ac.in
IISER Bhopal
Dr. Uday Khankhoje
Assistant Professor
Dept. of Electrical Engineering E-mail: uday@ee.iitm.ac.in
Indian Institute of Technology Madras
Dr. Kedar B. Khare
Associate Professor
Dept. of Physics E-mail: kedark@physics.iitd.ac.in
Indian Institute of Technology Delhi

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