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LATEST NEWS

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  • Many many congratulations to Rohit on an excellent Viva and for completion of his Phd. He  is now off to work with Bettina Lotsch at MPI for Solid State Research.

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  • Very proud to have Payal receive a best poster prize at our department's annual meeting. Congratualations to Payal. Dec 2023

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  • Very proud to announce that Rohit has won the 1st poster prize at ISMC (Interdisciplinary Symposium on Materials Chemistry Dec. 2022). A very apt reward for all his hard work. Congratulations to him indeed.

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  •  A big congratulations to Rohit on his 1st paper. His amazing work on being able to synthesize true 'Green Hydrogen' is presented. It encompasses using not only sunlight & recyclable cheap catalyst, but most importantly , the work uses sea water splitting effectively (and it works better than splitting deionzied water)! You can read all about  it in ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces 2022. 

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  • Check out the latest work by Ashish and Yukit on comparison of ReS2 and MoS2. Details here: Full Paper

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  • Congratulations to Charu for starting as a prestigious Raman Postdoc at IISc in V. Kaliginedi's lab.

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  • Best wishes to Yukti for her future. She successfully completed her Phd Viva in Feb. 2020. She is now moving on and working at DBT India Alliance as a Science Communications officer.

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  • Congratulations to Ashish for his latest 2020 J. Phys. Chem C Paper. Six weeks for review and acceptance! Congratulations all round.

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  • Happy to share our lab's latest work on Front Cover of Langmuir:  https://pubs.acs.org/toc/langd5/35/28  This was an invited review and some of the work by Charu and Yukti is summarized therein. Congrats to the whole lab for this recognition.

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  • Yukti's paper has been highlighted in the top 100 papers accessed in Scientific reports in 2018. Click here for the site. Amazing job Yukti!!

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  • Divya's work has been chosen for an oral presentation at the Nano 2018 in Hong Kong. Congratulations to her and she has got her trip fully funded with a travel award as well!

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  • Yukti and Charu have presentations (oral and poster respectively) at MRS 2018 Spring Meeting in Arizona. Well done to both of them and also for getting their visit fully funded by travel awards!

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  • The entire work of this lab has been honoured by CRSI (Chemical Research Society of India) for a Bronze Medal in Chemistry 2018. A big big thank you to all students (past and present) for contributing to this recognition. This would not have been possible without your dedication!

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  • The entire work of this lab has been honoured by DST Nanomission. DK has received “Young Career Award in Nanoscience and Technology 2016”

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  • Divya S and Yukti Arora selected for Oral Presentations at IUMRS-ICYRAM 2016 in  Bangalore Dec 2016.

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  • Congratulations to Yukti for being shortlisted for the 4th IGCW-2015 Green Chemistry Awards. Final notice in December 2015.  

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  • Congratulations to Charu for being selected for best poster award at the DCS Annual 2015 Meeting in November 2015.

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  • Chandan, Priyanka, Charu and Yukti - all selected for oral presentations at the  International Conference NANO 15

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  • May 2015: D Khushalani selected as FRSC - Fellow of Royal Society of Chemistry

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  • February 2015: Abhilasha Purwar (Project student in 2012) becomes a Rhodes Scholar - Congratulations!

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  • February 2015: Pankaj wins best MSc poster award at ChemFest 2015, University of Hyderabad.

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  • Dec. 2013: Shama and Biswajit win best poster award at IUMRS-ICA 2013 (International Union of Materials Research Societies – International Conference in Asia) held in Bangalore

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SEM Images of BiVO4 as (a) oval structures (b) octahedra (c) nanoparticles (d) nanorods (e & f) top and side view of aligned rods on FTO

 

RESEARCH THEME

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The architecture of inorganic structures (specially on the nanoscale) has become an important parameter (in addition to the stoichiometry) that can be manipulated in order to optimize a material for advanced applications.  These structures are known to possess interesting and useful optical, electronic and/or magnetic properties that can subsequently be exploited in a wide variety of applications ranging from novel forms of catalysis to solar energy conversion. The choice of application is contingent on not only the chemical composition of the material but also on the overall morphology, and even more precisely on the accessible surface area. Currently, there are a myriad of methods available for fabrication of such intricate inorganic structures. However, irrespective of employing a certain fabrication method, the formation of well-organized materials is not trivial as various parameters have to be regulated.  These include uniformity of size, stabilization against collapse, consistency in the chemical composition and growth of the overall structures with preferred morphology (thin films, spheres, fibers, helical spirals etc.).  

The principal aim of the research in our lab has been to augment the current understanding of the concepts in supramolecular templating of inorganic materials for formation of nanostructures. To be more precise, self-assembling amphiphilic structures (e.g. synthetic or naturally occurring surfactants, peptides, and/or block co-polymers) in the presence of diffusion-controlling media (such as gels, microemulsions, non-aqueous solvents) are used to provide a temporary ‘scaffold’.  This self-assembled template provides a complex 3-dimensionsal structure which has features on the nanometer length scale. Subsequently, colloidal inorganic building blocks (sol-gel precursors and/or nanoparticles), when introduced into this media, are then organized (ideally) into the inverse replica of the template. More importantly, this template, under appropriate conditions, is able to exploit the principles of molecular recognition and in turn structure-direct and size-constrain the condensing inorganic precursors. Interestingly, cooperative assembly imparts intricate morphological characteristics to the products that were previously unattainable.

 

SEM Images of Top - Aligned TiO2 nanowires on FTO

Bottom - Hollow Hydroxyapatite Nanotubes

 

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