Research Projects

The environmental scenario requires effective, efficient, and practically feasible solutions for selective detection of toxic cations, anions, and neutral molecules. These toxins pose severe health hazards to humans, including kidney, liver damage, disruption of oxygen transport, and respiratory problems. Environmental pollution also affects the flora and fauna of our ecosystem. Various analytical techniques are available for their detection, but they require expensive instrumentation, large sample amounts, and are not easily transportable for real sample measurements. This project aims to design simple chemosensors with high selectivity, sensitivity, and detection limit for these analytes. The chemosensors will be synthesized using salicyaldehyde-quinoxaline conjugates, benzimidazole-Schiff bases, quinoxaline-naphthaldehyde conjugates, fused isoindole-imidazole moieties, quinoxaldehyde-rhodamine conjugates, and Quinoxaline-tetrazole conjugates bearing different substitutions. Detailed absorption/fluorescence spectroscopic studies will be performed, including Jobs plot, limit of detection (LOD), reversibility, Benesi-Hildebrand plot, Time Correlated Single-Photon Counting (TCSPC) experiments. The probe and probe-analyte compositions will be characterized using Single Crystal X-ray crystallography, ESI-MS, FT-IR, ¹H, ¹³C, ¹⁵N-NMR titrations, and DFT/TDDFT analysis. The sensing method will be applied on paper strip-based useable modes and real samples like river water, tap water, soils, and industrial effluents. Collaboration with industries will be initiated to develop smartly engineered and bio-compatible capsules that can detect the targeted analyte in real samples. This will benefit both healthcare, environmental, and industrial sectors.