Inorganic Materials Group

Welcome to Dr. Joyee Mitra's Research Group at CSIR-Central Salt & Marine Chemicals Research Institute Bhavnagar!

We are a team of passionate chemists engaged in developing inorganic materials (especially metallogels of low molecular weight gelators), and metal-free systems with the aim to explore their applications in catalysis and in biomass conversion. Our research interests also include pollutant sequestration, healthcare and energy conversion/ storage related applications of our materials. Our group constitutes of problem-solvers who bring different ideas and perspectives in our work.

"If you can't explain it simply, you dont understand it well enough" - Albert Einstein

Research areas

  • Metallogels are intriguing smart materials with potential applications encompassing diverse fields. Our goal is to design purpose-built metallogels with emphasis to self-healable metallogels, for applications in healthcare, catalytic applications, energy conversion & storage systems.

  • We are engaged in designing materials to transform plant biomass into valuable chemicals and fuel additives. We aim to harness the naturally available renewable carbon resource, with the aim to value-add waste plant biomass.

  • We strive to design metal-free organic systems, both ionic and covalent, that would be effective in catalyzing important organic transformations, and in photo/electrocatalytic water splitting reactions. Their intriguing properties and morphological aspects, are of interest to us as well.

Representative Publications

1. Regulating the heteroatom doping in metallogel-derived Co@dual self-doped carbon onions to maximize electrocatalytic water splitting. E. Saha, K. Karthick, S. Kundu, J. Mitra. J. Mater. Chem. A 2021, 9, 26800-26809.

2. Self-Assembled Melaminium Adipate Lamellae for Adsorptive Removal of Anionic Dyes from Wastewater. J. Johnson, E. Saha, A. Chhetri, E. Suresh, J. Mitra. ACS Appl. Polym. Mater 2021, 3, 651-660.

3. Electrocatalytic Oxygen Evolution in Acidic and Alkaline Media by a Multistimuli-Responsive Cobalt(II)Organogel, ACS Sustainable Chem Engg. 2019, 7, 16094-16102.

4. Multistimuli-Responsive Self-Healable and Moldable Nickel(II)Based Gels for Reversible Gas Adsorption and Palladium Sequestration via Gel-to-Gel Transformation, ACS Appl. Mater. Interfaces 2019, 11, 10718-10728.

5. Visible light induced degradation of pollutant dyes using a self-assembled graphene oxide– molybdenum oxo-bis (dithiolene) composite, New J. Chem. 2018, 42, 14229-14238.

6. Pd/C-Catalyzed Reactions of HMF: Decarbonylation, Hydrogenation, and Hydrogenolysis, Green Chem. 2015, 17, 307-313. (Themed collection: 2015 most accessed Green Chemistry articles)

Book Chapters

  1. S. Gundekeri, J. Mitra, M. Varkolu. Classification, characterization, and properties of edible and non-edible biomass feedstocks in Advanced Functional Solid Catalysts for Biomass Valorization, Elsevier Inc, 2020. DOI: 10.1016/B978-0-12-820236-4.00004-0.

  2. J. Mitra, M. Saxena. Molybdenum / Tungsten Chalcogenides: Synthesis, Structure and Applications in Encyclopedia of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology, American Scientific Publishers, 2017.