Journal of Materials Chemistry Blog

Seshadri is a professor of Materials and a Professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB). He received his BS degree in chemistry from St. Stephens College, Delhi, in 1989, and his PhD degree in solid state chemistry from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, in 1995. After some years as a postdoctoral fellow in Caen, France, and Mainz, Germany, he started a faculty career as an assistant professor in Bangalore in 1999, before moving to UCSB in 2002. Seshadri’s research program addresses structure-composition-property relations in functional inorganic materials, focusing currently on magnetic and correlated materials, catalysts, and phosphors.

1.      Which research projects are you working on at the moment?
This is an exciting time in our research. We continue to look at magnetic properties of oxides, and have added intermetallics to the list of materials. We also have an active and continuing program in phosphors for solid state lighting, and materials for heterogeneous catalysis. Newer avenues include thermoelectrics and batteries.

2.      What motivated you to focus on functional solid state materials?
Love at first sight. I started researching the chemistry and physics of solids — specifically carrying our redox titrations of high-temperature copper oxide superconductors — under the guidance of Professor C. N. R. Rao FRS, whilst an undergraduate, and I continue to be both fascinated and ignorant in the area. I will quit researching solids when I understand them, which is likely never!

3.      What are the hot topics in materials chemistry at the moment?
Materials for processes related to energy conversion and energy efficiency.

4.      What current problem would you like to see science provide a solution to?
I would love to see an understanding of high-temperature superconductors.

5.      What do you find to be the most rewarding aspect of your career?
Working with smart students at a great institution (UC Santa Barbara).

6.      What’s the secret to being a successful scientist?
I wish I knew. I do know how to be a happy scientist – work on things you don’t understand, but wish to.

7.      Which scientist past or present do you most admire?
Helen Megaw (1907-2002). Everything I do traces back to her in some way. An unsung hero of materials science.

8.      If you weren’t a scientist, what would you be?
I am a third-generation scientist. To even think of alternate careers is tantamount to apostasy.

If you’re interested to learn more about research in the Seshadri lab you can read a selection of papers below or check out their research pages on the group website.

• Spontaneously formed porous and composite materials (Feature Article)
• A protected annealing strategy to enhanced light emission and photostability of YAG:Ce nanoparticle-based films
• Preparation, magnetism and electronic structures of cadmium technetates
• Probing local structure in the yellow phosphor LaSr₂AlO₅ : Ce³⁺, by the maximum entropy method and pair distribution function analysis
• VO₂(B) nanorods: solvothermal preparation, electrical properties, and conversion to rutile VO₂ and V₂O₃
• La_{1−x−0.025}Ce_0.025Sr_2+xAl_1−xSi_xO₅ solid solutions as tunable yellow phosphors for solid state white lighting

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Gengfeng Zheng is currently a professor of Chemistry at Fudan University, China. He obtained his B.Sc. degree in Chemistry in 2000 from Fudan University, and obtained his Ph.D. degree in Chemistry in 2006 from Harvard University, under the guidance of Prof. Charles M. Lieber. During 2007-2010, he was a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Prof. Chad Mirkin at Northwestern University, USA. Dr. Zheng has been the recipient of the Professorship of Special Appointment (Eastern Scholar) at Shanghai Institutions of Higher Learning (2012), the China Ministry of Education New Century Excellent Talents (2011), and the Materials Research Society Graduate Student Gold Award (2006). His research interests include the synthesis of low-dimensional semiconducting nanomaterials, fabrication of nanodevices for solar energy conversion and lithium ion battery, and studies of hybrid nanomaterial-biomaterial interfaces for disease diagnosis.

1.      Which research projects are you working on at the moment?
We are working the synthesis of new low-dimensional semiconducting nanomaterials for energy conversion and storage, including: 1) metal oxide and sulfide nanowires for photoelectrochemical water splitting, and 2) hybrid porous and nanostructured materials for lithium ion battery and supercapacitors.

2.      What motivated you to work on porous and nanostructured materials?
Porous and nanostructured semiconducting materials with rationally designed architectures provide tunable electronic bandgap structures, efficient charge transport, and large interfacial area for surface reactions. A lot of unconventional properties and high device performances can be expected from these material building blocks.

Read the full interview

Samuel Thomas is an Assistant Professor of Chemistry at Tufts University, a position he has held since 2009.  He earned a B.S. in Chemistry in 2000 from the University of Rochester.  After a year-long stint at the Eastman Kodak Company as a research chemist, he entered graduate school at MIT.  He received his Ph.D. in organic chemistry in 2006 under the guidance of Prof. Timothy Swager.  From 2006-2009, he was an American Cancer Society postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Prof. George Whitesides at Harvard University.  Since starting his independent career at Tufts, Sam has been the recipient of a 2009 DARPA Young Faculty Award, a 2010 Thieme Publishers Journal Award, and a 2012 NSF CAREER Award.  His research focuses on using physical organic chemistry to design new photoresponsive materials for applications in self-assembly, sensing, and patterning.

1. Which research projects are you working on at the moment?
We work on three main projects in the area of photo-responsive organic materials: 1) Photochemical tuning of properties of conjugated polymers, 2) new applications of singlet oxygen chemistry, and 3) photochemical control of electrostatics.

2. What motivated you to focus on photo-responsive organic materials?
Light is such a versatile reagent.  It gives you real-time control over stoichiometry, energy, and spatial distribution.  It’s thrilling to exert that type of control over organic reactions, and use that control for inventing materials that do new things.

3. What are the hot topics in materials chemistry at the moment?
The rational design of condensed phase behavior from chemical structure

4. What current problem would you like to see science provide a solution to?
Two things: 1) The energy problem; 2) Increasing the possibility of science as a career for more people.

5. What do you find to be the most rewarding aspect of your career?
In terms of experiments, I live vicariously through the students who work in my lab.  Sharing the excitement of discovery with them is a real joy.

6. What’s the secret to being a successful scientist?
Passion and dedication…when an experiment or idea doesn’t work, coming back even more determined to solve the problem!

7. Which scientist past or present do you most admire?
A tie between Pasteur and Faraday.  Pasteur for the meticulousness of separating tartaric acid enantiomers by hand, and Faraday for amazing versatility and experimental genius.

8. If you weren’t a scientist, what would you be?
A musician.  I played the piano constantly as a teenager.

If you’re interested to know more about the Thomas lab’s research you can check out the group website or alternatively you can see a few of their recent papers below:

Structure, photophysics, and photooxidation of crowded diethynyltetracenes
Jingjing Zhang,  Syena Sarrafpour ,  Terry E. Haas,  Peter Müller and Samuel W. Thomas,
J. Mater. Chem., 2012, 22, 6182-6189

UV-induced fluorescence recovery and solubility modulation of photocaged conjugated oligomers
Robert H. Pawle, Victoria Eastman and Samuel W. Thomas,
J. Mater. Chem., 2011, 21, 14041-14047

Acene-linked conjugated polymers with ratiometric fluorescent response to ¹O₂
Jingjing Zhang,  Syena Sarrafpour,  Robert H. Pawle and Samuel W. Thomas III
Chem. Commun., 2011,47, 3445-3447

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