Research

Anisotropic semiconductor nanomaterials

Functional properties of nanomaterials are highly dependent on their structure and morphology. Anisotropic nanomaterials provide long range of atomic periodicity to a specific crystallographic direction that potentially make the nanocrystals highly efficient in electron transportation, increasing its demand in the fabrication of optoelectrical devices, sensors, storage device as well as in photo-catalysis. Developing anisotropic semiconductor nanocrystals with variable shape, size and compositions and finding their application in photocatalysis is one of our current research focuses.

Transition metal ion doping

Transition metal ion doing in semiconductor nanocrystal is a well-known strategy to induce novel functional properties in the semiconductor hosts. It has always been fascinating and exciting to work in transition metal ion doping as an appropriate combination of host-guest can lead to exotic material-properties that can shed a new light to the field of optoelectronics. One of our current research focuses is to find the right combination of host-guest to come up with novel functional nanomaterials.

Heterostructure-nanomaterials

Integration of multiple components in a single nanocrystal induces novel properties that are not feasible with individual entity, and hence tremendous research efforts have been made to synthesize a variety of hetero-structure semiconductor nanomaterials for various applications, including solar energy harvesting, photocatalysis, opto-electronics, and so on. Typically, formation of a new interface influences the surface properties and the crystals lattice strain of the nanocrystals that has a direct impact on the behavior of the bound electron-hole pair that dictates the functional properties of the nanocrystals. One of our current research focuses is to synthesis of hetero nanostructure nanomaterials and find their applications in photo-catalysis and photo-voltaic.

Photo-voltaic

Research on renewable energy is one of the hot topics in the current time. Semiconductor nanomaterials are well known for their applications in photovoltaics to harnessing solar energy to electricity. One of our research focuses is to check how good the materials are in absorbing solar light, so that they can potentially be used as solar light absorbers in fabricating the highly efficient solar cell in the future.  We fabricate simple low cost photodetector to check the light absorbing capability of the newly developed semiconductor nanomaterials.

Photocatalysis

Recently, photo-induced catalysis by semiconductor nanocrystals has garnered tremendous attention because of its extensive contribution to the demand for sustainable energy, environmental detoxification and synthesis of industrially valuable organic compounds. Most of the semiconductor nanocrystals that are being used for catalysis absorb either ultraviolet or visible light of the solar spectrum. A large portion of the solar spectrum is near-infrared, which remained unexplored for this purpose. One of our current research focuses is to develop near-infrared absorbing semiconductor nanocrystals and utilize them in single step organic reactions for synthesizing commercially valuable organic compounds.