1. Which research projects are you working on at the moment?
We are developing new methods for synthesizing complex metal oxide and chalcogenide nanocrystals. Once we’ve developed a route and collected materials, we are currently putting a lot of effort into controlling the surface chemistry of the resulting nanocrystals. Since small nanocrystals are predominantly surface, this is extremely important and necessary if one wants to extract any utility from these materials into a functional device. Along those lines, we are focusing on devices for energy conversion and storage. We are using our metal chalcogenide nanocrystals for low-cost solar cells and our metal oxide nanocrystals for dielectric capacitors. As a synthetic chemist, I get great satisfaction when a material my group has made and labored over ends up in a device that actually works well!
2. What motivated you to focus on the synthesis and properties of nanocrystals?
Organic chemists possess an incredibly powerful toolbox of reaction chemistry that allows them to rationally design molecules with desired functionality. Unfortunately, the toolbox for rationally designing functional inorganic nanocrystals is severely lacking. Moreover, many synthetic preps for inorganic nanocrystals are plagued by impurities, work-up issues, low yields, and irreproducibility. The concept of “materials by design” will never get off the ground with the existing limited design space. We got into this area thinking we could add some synthetic perspective to the problem.
Fungi-based porous carbons for CO2 adsorption and separation
Effective solvothermal deoxidization of graphene oxide using solid sulphur as a reducing agent
Controlling the dynamic behavior of heterogeneous self-oscillating gels
