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Research Activities
Syntheses, Characterization of transition metal oxides/sulfide nanomaterials: Its electrochemical applications to hydrogen generation, biological molecules sensing
Abstract
Nanomaterials are not simply another step in the miniaturization of materials. They often require very different production approaches. There are several processes to create nanomaterials, classified as ‘top-down’ and ‘bottom-up’ approach. The top-down method starts from bulk materials, which are sculpted into nanosized features by carving, milling, etching and patterning. Lithography methods are getting more important to realize nanostructures in this top-down approach. Bottom-up methods construct structures or devices from the basic building blocks, i.e. atom by atom or molecule by molecule. Bottom-up approaches are usually able to produce devices in parallel and much cheaper than top-down methods. However, this method could potentially be outgrown as the size and complexity of the desired assembly increases, several synthetic routes are in practice that they either break larger particles to nanosize or employ nucleation and growth. For example Hydrothermal, Solvothermal, Ionothermal, Ionic liquid - assisted hydrothermal / solvothermal and combustion methods have been used for the synthesis of transition metal oxides / sulfide nanomaterials. The as-prepared materials will be characterized using various techniques such as XRD, FTIR, XPS, Raman spectroscopy, TGDTA, BET surface area, optical properties by UV- Visible spectroscopy, photoluminescence spectroscopy and morphology by SEM and TEM. The characterized transition metal oxides / sulfides will be used in any one (or more than one as the need may be) of the following applications: photocatalysis, lithium battery, hydrogen generation and anti-microbial activity.
SEM Images
TiO2 nanoparticles synthesized using ionic liquid
V2O5 nanorods and Nanoparticles using ionothermal method
Our interests include,
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