Inorganic solids when reduced to dimensions in the order of nanometers offer some interesting possibilities. For example, at nanoscale, the inorganic solids behave like “super-molecules” or “chemical species” whose behavior is unknown. There are two possibilities with this set of new chemicals: (i) One can re-engineer products using these nanoscale building blocks (nanoparticles, nanowires and nanotubes) by building materials for systems; and (ii) one could design new products using the new properties that these new chemicals might possess.

Our group is actively pursuing several applications that can be categorized as:

• Transdermal drug delivery
• Gas sensors and electrochemical sensors
• Solar energy based water splitting for hydrogen generation
• Optical sensors using bandgap engineering of nanowires based on quantum confinement effects