Welcome to the Shon Group
Feb. 2024: Ragaa completed her thesis defense successfully. Congratulations!
Jun. 2023: Saba successfully defended her thesis and completed all requirements for her M.S. degree. Congrats!
Apr. 2023: Faraz defended his thesis and completed his journey at CSULB! Congratulations!
Mar. 2023: Big congratulations to Jan for successfully defending his thesis!
Feb. 2023: Congratulations to Ragaa for being advanced as a semifinalist to the next phase of the prestigious DoD SMART Scholarship-for-Service Program!
Jan. 2023: Edwin and Christos' work is being published in Nanomaterials. Congratulations!
Aug. 2022: Excited to be one of subcontracted PIs of Ensembles of Photosynthetic Nanoreactors (EPN), a $10.5 million EFRC led by UCI (PI: Ardo)!
July 2022: Congratulations to Dominick and Nick for the acceptance of their manuscript in RSC Advances.
Apr. 2022: Announcement - Nanomaterials Outreach Program (NOP) with a 6-week laboratory activity for high school students is available in the Shon Lab from June 27 to August 5, 2022. For more information, send an inquiry email to ys.shon@csulb.edu.
Dec. 2021: Nick defended his thesis successfully! Congratulations!
Oct. 2021: Big congratulations to Edwin for defending his thesis successfully!
July 2021: Dominick completed his thesis defense. Congratulations!
Apr. 2021: Alam's review paper on the catalysis of water-soluble metal nanoparticles is accepted for publication in ACS Applied Nano Materials.
Our catalysis research focuses on three general areas:
1) Green catalysis: Colloidal metal nanoparticles for selective and/or multifunctional chemical transformations in water or greener organic solvents
2) Biocompatible nanocatalysis: Lipid-metal nanoparticle assemblies (LNAs) for biologically relevant reactions under physiological conditions
3) Photocatalysis: Carbon nanoparticles and carbon quantum dot-metal nanoparticle hybrids for photo-enhanced chemical catalysis
(1) Avila, E.; Nixarlidis, C.; Shon, Y.-S. Water-Soluble Pd Nanoparticles for the Anti-Markovnikov Oxidation of Allyl Benzene in Water. Nanomaterials 2023, 13(2), 348.
(2) Ortega, D.; Pavlakovich, N.; Shon, Y.-S. Effects of Lipid Bilayer Encapsulation and Lipid Composition on the Catalytic Activity and Colloidal Stability of Hydrophobic Palladium Nanoparticles in Water. RSC Adv. 2022, 12, 21866-21874.
(3) Alam, A.-M.; Shon, Y.-S. Water-Soluble Noble Metal Nanoparticle Catalysts Capped with Small Organic Molecules for Organic Transformations in Water. ACS Appl. Nano Mater. 2021, 4, 3294-3318.
(4) Tieu, P.; Nguyen, V.; Shon, Y.-S. Proximity Effects of Methyl Group on Ligand Steric Interactions and Colloidal Stability of Palladium Nanoparticles. Front. Chem. 2020, 8, 599.
(5) Mahdaly, M. A.; Zhu, J. S.; Nguyen, V.; Shon, Y.-S. Colloidal Palladium Nanoparticles for Selective Hydrogenation of Styrene Derivatives with Reactive Functional Groups. ACS Omega 2019, 4, 20819-20828.
(6) Vargas, K. M.; San, K. A.; Shon, Y.-S. Isolated Effects of Surface Ligand Density on the Catalytic Activity and Selectivity of Palladium Nanoparticles. ACS Appl. Nano Mater. 2019, 2(11), 7188-7196.
(7) Vargas, K. M.; Shon, Y.-S. Hybrid Lipid-Nanoparticle Complexes for Biomedical Applications. J. Mater. Chem. B 2019, 7, 695-708.
(8) Pan, H.; Low, S.; Weerasuriya, N.; Wang, B.; Shon, Y.-S. Morphological Transformation of Gold Nanostructures on Graphene Oxide: Effects of Capping Ligands and Surface Interactions. Nano Converg. 2019, 6, 2.
(9) Chen, T.-A.; Shon, Y.-S. Alkanethiolate-Capped Palladium Nanoparticles for Regio- and Stereoselective Hydrogenation of Allenes. Catalysts 2018, 8, 428.
(10) San, K. A.; Shon, Y.-S. Synthesis of Alkanethiolate-Capped Metal Nanoparticles Using Alkyl Thiosulfate Ligand Precursors: A Method to Generate Promising Reagents for Selective Catalysis. Nanomaterials 2018, 8, 346.