Our research is focused on the synthesis, characterization, and applications of new nanostructured materials. Especially, we are interested in the synthesis of uniform-sized Nanocrystals and new nanostructured carbon materials.
I. Synthesis of Uniform-sized Nanocrystals
We developed a new generalized synthetic procedure to produce monodisperse nanocrystals of many transition metals, metal oxides, and metal sulfides without a size selection process. Highly-crystalline and monodisperse nanocrystals were synthesized from the thermal decomposition of metal-sufactant complexes. So far, we have synthesized monodisperse spherical nanocrystals of Fe, Co, magnetite, cobalt ferrite, Ni, MnO, Pd, zirconia, ceria, and Au.
Very recently, we were able to synthesize 40 gram of monodisperse magnetite nanoparticles without going through a size selection process (published in Nature Mater. and covered in CNN News and Chem. & Eng. News). By controlling the nucleation and growth processes, we were able to synthesize monodisperse magnetite nanoparticles with particle sizes of 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 16 nm. We developed a new generalized synthetic procedure to produce various nanorods. Diameter-controlled synthesis of magnetic nanorods was achieved.
So far we have synthesized nanorods of iron, iron oxide, iron phoshpide, cobalt phosphide, manganese phosphide, ZnO, and ZnS. Multi-gram scale synthesis of CdS, ZnS, PbS, and MnS were achieved.
II. Synthesis of New Nanoporous and Nanostructured Carbon Materials
Nanoporous carbons have been produced using various silica nanostructures as templates. Mesoporous carbons with several different pore structures have been synthesized using mesoporous silicas as templates and they were applied as supercapacitors and adsorbents for water pollutants. Uniform sized single wall carbon nanotubes (SWCNT) with diameters of 1.7 nm and 3.0 nm were synthesized using monodisperse iron nanoparticles dispersed in zirconia nanoparticle matrix as catalysts. Palladium hollow spheres were successfully applied as recyclable heterogeneous catalysts for Suzuki-cross coupling reactions.
