Synthesis of Nanostructures via Different Chemical Strategies

I will be presenting work carried out on two distinct projects.

Project I

Over the past few years, hollow silica spheres have attracted a great deal of attention as they have shown to be potential candidates as carriers in drug delivery, photonics, in catalytic applications etc. I will discuss here a facile one-step strategy for the formation of hollow silica spheres. The mechanism employs a template free route for the formation of hollow cavity. A novel amphiphile consisting of dodecyl ester of an aromatic amino acid, L-tyrosine (LET), has been used for the synthesis of hollow silica spheres. The resultant silica spheres are used as a template for the formation of Silica-silver and silica-polyanthranilic composite hollow spheres. 

Project II

In recent years Ionic Liquids have proved to be efficient solvents due to their properties like negligible vapour pressure, Stability, recyclability and non–flammability etc. Ionic Liquids (IL) are basically molten salts which are liquid below 100 °C. They essentially consist of an anion and a cation. Synthesis of metal nanoparticles (NPs) especially in the range of 5 nm and lesser has been a great concern over the years. Recent reports have showed that IL acts as an effective capping agent which indeed increases the stability of metal nanoparticle. Here in, we introduce amino acid based ionic liquids for the synthesis of metal nanoparticles.