Research Interests
The broad area of research for JCLABS is particle technology. The size range of interest is from nano to micro and a variety of application areas including nanofluid, anti-reflective coating and viral growth are addressed. We understand how parrticles behaves and believe that similar principles can be applied to solve a range of problems. Our application area spens from large scale industrial application like cleaning of spent sulfuric acids to making branched zinc oxide nanostructures for solar cells. Although our current interest includes experimental demonstration of easier synthesis protocols for nano and microstructures, the background theory and models are always in work to supply the necessary theoretical and quantitative support to the experiments. Current broad research area are as follows:
- Synthesis of copper nanostructures: Copper is an engineering nanomaterial and has not been explored adequately so far. We work on synthesis and stabilization of very small (sub 10 nm) oxidation resistant copper nanoparticles of very narrow size distribution. The particles we make can be stored as dry powder, some may be crystallized into colloidal superlattices with very uniform particles. We showed the way to produced very small nanoparticles using conventional CSTR and PFR! Our expertize is not only limited to nanoparticles, we also make nanosheets and nanowires (application in flexible TCO).
- Our second interest area is oxide nanomaterials. Copper oxide and silicon dioxide nanoparticles are being produced in our group for anti-reflecting glass. Our group is working on scalable synthesis of these materials.