Research

Microwave absorbing materials

Rapid procreation and implementation of electronic appliances and telecommunication technology emerges a new hazard known as electromagnetic interferences (EMI) which affect human life, electronic devices and medical instruments. For effective shielding, material should contain either mobile charge carriers or electric and magnetic dipoles to interact with electric and magnetic vectors of electromagnetic radiation for resisting electromagnetic energy from any external sources. From a long period of time, metals have been used as EMI shielding materials but upcoming trend shifts towards polymer nanocomposites because of their light weight, noncorrosive nature and low price. Although polymer nanocomposites, containing carbonaceous fillers, have drawn great interest in the present science and technological field for their improved electronic and shielding effectiveness (SE) but still now they have suffered through processing difficulties, poor dispersion, high production cost. Since, properties of composites depend on several factors, such as, nature of polymer and filler, mixing technique, time and uniform dispersion of filler in polymer. Henceforth, our aim is to explore a new commercial method to develop cost effective, light weight, flexible polymeric composites with improved EMI shielding effectiveness altogether moderate mechanical and thermal stability at very low electrical percolation threshold.

Smart conductive fabrics

Textiles are mainly insulating material, by making the conductive textiles with the help of conductive materials such filler opened up new field of research area which are already being started from the end of twentieth century. Enhancement of electrical as well as textile properties is a challenging work because there is a huge difference in physical properties of conductive filler and textile. Textiles are inherently very soft and flexible with moderate mechanical properties in between metals and polymeric materials. So, making the conductive textiles without losing its inherent properties is a huge challenge. Moreover, with technological advantages and new application areas, creating noble demands for flexible conductive textiles for the electro-textiles (or e-textiles) or new field of interest e.g. medical textiles, sensors, EMI shielding fabric etc.

Hydrogel & Conductive: drug delivery

The starting of the path for hydrogels were initiated dates back at 1960 when Otto Wichterle (Austria-Hungary) and Drahoslav Lím (Czechoslovakia) innovated contact lens. After that extensive research has been done through the world. Inspiring from the multifunctional activity and tremendous synthetic tunability, our laboratory synthesizes various types of hydrogels. Traditionally hydrogels are a cluster of macromolecules/supramolecules which have propensity to swell in water. As of specialty we develop semi-interpenetrating polymeric network based hydrogels (semi-IPNs) for various applications. The main focuses on the semi-IPN type hydrogel is due to their high elastic response, superior gel strength, fine tuning in the water imbibition and inter texture/morphology, loading of several analytes, ease of fabrications of hydrogel monoliths and as an obvious demand on non-cytotoxicity nature. The main applications which we study in our lab are controlled release of drugs, fertilizer delivery, nanocomposite incorporated hydrogels, toxic pollutant removal, biocompatibility, superstretchablity, biodegradable vectors for analytes, analyte diffusion modeling, catalytic activity, conducting hydrogel and antibacterial behaviors and so on. 

Nanocomposites for food packaging

Polymer nanocomposite has attracted most attention in the food packaging industry. The high point of multidisciplinary research is required in polymer nanocomposite in food packaging to overcome the barriers like safety, technology, regulation, standardization, trained workforce, and technology transfer in order to achieve the benefit for commercial products in the global market. Polymer nanocomposite food packaging material with antimicrobial properties is particularly useful because of the high surface-to-volume ratio of nanofillers. Also, this property enhances surface reactivity of the nanosized antimicrobial agents compared to bulk counterpart, making them able to inactivate or kill microorganisms. The performance properties such as mechanical, barrier, optical, thermal, biodegradation, antimicrobial, and other functional properties are found in polymer nanocomposites for the packaging applications.

Carbon dot: Sensor, catalysis, biomedical applications

The recent era has witnessed the fast development of innovative nanotechnology in diverse region including biomedical, biological, and pharmaceutical applications. Carbon nanomaterials, including fullerenes, carbon nanotubes, graphene have gained remarkable attention owing to their unique properties and potential applications, including electrode materials, catalysis, adsorption, and gas storage among others. More recently, luminescent carbon dots, a newcomer in the domain of nanolights and nanomaterials have been studied extensively since past few years due to their excellent features. Carbon dots were discovered serendipitously by researchers purifying single-walled carbon nanotubes fabricated by arc-discharge methods. Regarding their size, excitation dependent photoluminescence (PL) character, easy of processing and easy water dispersability, carbon dots are drawing considerable attention in sensor design, cell tracking or fluorescence based live cell assays, medical diagnosis, photocatalysis, and also being potential building blocks for nanodevices. In our laboratory, we synthesize carbon dots from natural source by simple techniques. Such green approaches have more acceptance because of their low cost productive techniques, fast synthesis, high yield, and less hazardous in purification. Our research also includes application of these carbon dots in sensor and biomedical field. 

Recycle of Rubber waste: Recovery of carbon black and extraction of oil

The tire waste is an enormous global problem because of their non-biodegradability, their flammability and their chemical composition that leads to leaching of toxic substances into the ground on dumping and hazardous fumes on incineration. Since they are hefty and made of multiple materials, scrap tires present distinct challenges in recycling and disposal. Tires generally do not decay nearly as quickly as other waste in the landfill due to vulcanization of rubber in presence of sulphur; because of this, other material around the tire will decompose and cause the tire to rise to the surface of the landfill. we are working to invent a technology to get more advanced tire oil and carbon black with zero emission and with overcoming present drawbacks. Different recycling routes, like pyrolysis, super critical fluid extraction, devulcanization and combination of these three techniques will be investigated to convert them into oil, carbon black and other valuable products. The techniques will be optimized to pilot plant by considering yield of products, quality of products, production cost and safety parameters, global environmental emission and targeting to the ZERO EMISSION AND ZERO WASTE