Research Projects

The growing global demand for sustainable energy and green chemical processes calls for innovative catalytic systems to enhance energy conversion and selective chemical transformations. Visible light, a renewable energy source, holds immense potential for driving photocatalytic organic reactions, enabling crucial industrial and environmental chemical processes. Electrocatalysis, on the other hand, offers a robust platform for water splitting and advanced energy storage in capacitors. A promising approach in this field is catalytic site modulation in multicomponent nanostructures, enabling tunable and selective activity by manipulating external stimuli in the catalytic environment. Atomically dispersed metals, including noble and non-noble variants, on semiconductor matrices represent an advanced catalytic system, maximizing atom utilization and atom economy. Support matrices such as binary metal chalcogenides, alloy nanoparticles, and graphitic frameworks, known for their unique optical, electronic, and magnetic properties, offer significant potential as heterogeneous catalysts for organic transformations, though this application remains underexplored. This project aims to advance catalytic site modulation in atomically dispersed metals (e.g., Cu, Ni, Zn, Ag, Ru) embedded in nanostructured semiconductor matrices such as heterostructured semiconductors, metal chalcogenides, alloys, and graphitic materials. Photocatalytic efforts will be focused on visible light-mediated organic transformations, including copper-free azide-alkyne cycloaddition (AAC) for synthesizing 1,2,3-triazoles, quinazoline synthesis, and palladium-free Suzuki-Miyaura cross-coupling. These reactions are crucial for synthesizing medicinal and industrial compounds. In electrocatalysis, the focus will be on water splitting for hydrogen and oxygen generation and advanced energy storage in capacitors. The project will emphasize innovative strategies to dynamically tune catalytic sites through atomically precise metal engineering, optimizing active site geometry, oxidation states, and electronic properties. A bottom-up synthesis strategy will balance kinetic and thermodynamic growth regimes, using surface-selective surfactants for controlled morphologies and stoichiometries. Incorporating defects, heterojunctions, and interfaces will further improve light absorption, charge separation, and catalytic activity. Our preliminary laboratory trials with basic systems have yielded promising results, providing a strong foundation for this work. By developing advanced catalytic systems, this project aims to contribute transformative approaches to sustainable energy and green chemical processes, aligning with India’s renewable energy and green chemistry goals and addressing global challenges in energy conversion and chemical synthesis.