Adhikary Research Group

Synthesis and Characterization of Nanomaterials: The study of nanomaterials is an exciting area of research which offers opportunities for innovation of new features. Our research focuses on the synthesis of nanoscale metal chalcogenide and mixed chalcogenide materials and characterization of their properties. The properties of nanomaterials strongly depend on the phase, size, shape and morphology. Hence, synthesis of stable monodispersed nanocrystals with controlled shape, size and morphology is a real challenge in nanoscience.  Further shape control of nanocrystals is also very important because of the strong correlation between the shape and the chemical, physical, electronic, optical and catalytic properties of nanoparticles. These shape, size and morphology of nanocrystals are mainly controlled by crystal growth kinetics. In this context, we are studying the role of surface active agents in phase  selectivity, shape and morphology modulation and size tuning.

​

Single-source Precursor (SSP) Chemistry: Our group is specially interested in developing the chemistry of  compounds of transition elements, main group metals and rare earths with chalcogen containing ligands (dithiocarboxylato, dithiocarbamato etc.). We have revealed that many of these compounds can be used as SSP to metal chalcogenides (as amorphous or crystalline materials and films). These metal-chalcogenide materials have potential applications in the areas of photo-catalysis, enzyme mimics, photo- and electro-chemical sensors, photo-conductivity etc. The main objective is to get total control over the synthesis of chalcogenide materials. Currently we are interested in the rare earth metals.  We have also developed sing precursor routes to synthesize several binary and ternary nanoparticles (ZnS, CdS, CuS, FeS, Ag2S, MES2 (M = Cu, Ag; E = In, Ga), MoS2, VS2, Sb2S3 and Bi2S3.

 

Application of Nanomaterials: We are investigating various physical properties of these nanomaterials including luminescence, photo-catalytic, electro-chemical sensing, photo-conducting and enzyme mimicking behavior.