We're about the science.
Professor
Department of Materials Science and Engineering
Department of Physics and Astronomy
University of Delaware
208 DuPont Hall
210 Sharp Lab
Newark DE 19716
Email: ismat@udel.edu
Phone: (302) 831-1618
Fax: (302) 831-4545
Website: http://www.mseg.udel.edu/faculty_research/faculty_form.php?fnid=4
Ph.D., Materials Science, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, 1987
B.E., Metallurgical Engineering, University of Karachi, Pakistan, 1978
Energy: Depletion of fossil fuels has lead to focus on alternate sources of renewable energy. Our focus is on designing and synthesis of nanostructured materials for photovoltaic, thermoelectric, and photolysis. Materials of interest are nanocomposites where quantum dots, nanoclusters, and nanoparticles are dispersed in various large band semiconductor matrices.
Environment: Several processes are in fashion for environmental remediation including plasma processing, chemical cleaning, adsorption, etc. One energetically efficient process is photocatalysis which uses the sun light for pollutant degradation. Our interest is in designing new photocatalyst, with tailored band structure and modified size, that could potentially use the full sun spectrum. Materials of interest are large band gap semiconductor, e.g., TiO2, WO3, SrTiO3, etc.
Health: With the increasing availability and application of nanoparticles, the bioactivity of artificial nanoparticles is becoming an area of serious concern. In this regard, we are studying the interfacial interaction of engineered nanoparticles with marine organisms. We are also interested in understanding the mechanism of nanoparticle cell ingestion.
Nanoparticle Synthesis: The work described above is based on the synthesis of nanoparticles by a variety of techniques including sol-gel, chemical vapor deposition (CVD), sputtering, pulsed laser deposition (PLD), etc.