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Nanoparticles and Nanotechnology for Energy and the Environment

Nanotechnology is a recent, revolutionary development in Science and Engineering. It aims at manipulating atoms, molecules, and nanometer-sized particles containing a few hundred to millions of atoms with the goal of creating new materials, devices. It will likely impact virtually all areas of the physical sciences, biological sciences, and health sciences. Nanoparticle research seeks to exploit the strong size dependence of the physical and chemical properties of nanometer-sized particles. Properties are usually significantly different from those of isolated atoms or molecules and from bulk material. This opens up the opportunity, for instance, to create materials and devices with entirely new properties.

The mission of our laboratory is to understand and manipulate from a fundamental standpoint the physical and chemical phenomena in the formation and application of nanoscale materials.

Our current research activities  

Aerosol based Processing to create new NanoMaterials for Energy, and the Environment
  • Materials under Extreme Conditions
  • Materials for solar thermal production of fuels.
  • Materials for chemical looping combustion.
  • Formation of ultra-high surface area nano particles.
  • Formation of new classes of materials with high energy release (nanoenergetics).


Develop new instrumentation for characterization of nanoparticles relevant to Energy, Environment and NanoMedicine

  • Development of ultra-fast mass spectrometry methods.
  • Development of fast microscopy/thermommetry to study fast dynamic reaction processes.
  • Development of on-line ion-mobility methods to study the properties and  reactivity of nanomaterials
  • Development of Hyphenated methods involving ion-mobility-mass spectrometry to characterize nanoparticles.


Develop and apply molecular based modeling tools for understanding gas-to-particle conversions and nanoparticle properties
 
  • Use Molecular Dynamics and Monte Carlo methods to understand properties and reactivity of nanoparticles.

Latest News 

Scientists unveil fire-safe fuel

Ionic liquids