RESEARCH

Addressing global challenges in reducing energy costs and in developing alternative energy sources is critical to the future. We are a multi-disciplinary research group with group members having background ranging from chemistry, biotechnology, paper technology to polymer science and technology. Our research is mainly focused on the development of multifunctional nano- materials for high end applications.

CURRENT RESEARCH

The major research themes in our current research are:

Nanoporous Materials: -

Porous materials are of scientific and technological importance because of the presence of voids of controllable dimensions at the atomic, molecular, and nanometer scales, enabling them to discriminate and interact with molecules and clusters. They have numerous applications in the field of catalysis, photonic devices, environmental pollution control, biological molecules separation and isolation, sensors, membranes, hydrogen and energy storage, etc. In our group we are focusing on synthesis of low density,high surface area hierarchical nanoporous material by adopting several conventional and no-conventional synthesis approches and studying their application in gas storage, energy storage and adsorptive removal of water pollutant.

Nanostructure Immobilized Paper Matrices For High-End Applications:-

The main focus of this research is to fabricate the papers with metal/metal oxide nanoparticles, metal/non metal doped metal oxides, organic porous materials or biomolecules which can be used for the degradation of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) present in the environment and also be used for the detection and deactivation of bacteria or fungi.

The flexible supercapacitor devices will be fabricated using paper matrices immobilized with metal/metal oxides/organic materials nanostructures and electrochemical supercapacitor study will be carried out.

Heterogeneous Catalyst for conversion of carbon dioxide into value added products: -

The world is likely to emit almost 40 Gt/year of CO2 into the atmosphere. Even if only a small fraction of the globally emitted CO2 is captured, there will be a large quantity of CO2 available to society for use in a variety of ways. Thus, CO2 should not be regarded as a waste product, but as an asset that, with human ingenuity, could be used in a sustainable way. Since sustainability is at the intersection of environmental, economic, and intergenerational stewardship, the selection of a CO2 utilization process must offer net CO2 and waste reductions compared to conventional methods of producing the same end product, must be economical, and must not leave any additional problems for future society to solve .In our group, we are exploring the application of high surface area nanoporous materials having different kind of functionality in the pore wall as heterogeneous catalyst for the conversion of carbon dioxide into value added products.

Electrocatalysis and Energy Storage: -

Electrocatalysis is a crucial component to many different energy and industrial applications. We (FML group) mainly focus on applying fundamental understanding to design the materials for CO2 reduction and hydrazine oxidation. Furthermore, we have recently started to work on electrocatalytic nitrate reduction, hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) and oxygen evolution reaction (OER). Using our fundamental science capabilities, FML group is trying to make significant and pioneering contributions to the most important aspects of energy storage technology. Therefore, we are also concentrating on discovery of new materials, development of advanced electrode and electrolytes design and cell evaluation of energy storage devices (e.g., supercapacitors).

FUNDED PROJECTS