Research

Welcome to the Nanoscale Materials for Energy Lab, directed by Prof. Richard Robinson.  Due to their finite-size and accelerated diffusion constants, nanomaterials provide a unique set of properties and compositions not available at the bulk scale.

We have three main thrusts:

Synthesis and Chemical Transformations in Nanocrystals

We utilize the “bottom-up” approach to synthesize monodisperse nanoparticles through colloidal chemistry.  The size, composition, and shape of these nanoparticles are tuned by controlling reaction conditions.  Our aim is to create rational methods for synthetic nanochemistry to spawn a wide array of new nanomaterials for energy applications.

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Nanocrystals in Energy Applications

By creating nanostructured materials for energy applications we are leveraging the unique properties of nanomaterials such as electronic and acoustic confinement.  Other advantages of nanostructured materials are their high surface to volume ratio.  Our focus in this area is on complex metal oxides and sulfides.  Important to all our work is that we maintain environmentally friendly materials and synthetic techniques, and produce the materials through scalable nanomanufacturing.

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Synchrotron X-ray Characterization of Nanomaterials

Working at beamlines such as CHESS (Cornell High Energy Synchrotron Source) and Brookhaven National Laboratories, we interrogate nanomaterials with a variety of advanced characterization techniques such as: x-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS), x-ray emission spectroscopy (XES), Resonant inelastic X-ray scattering (RIXS), total scattering with pair distribution function (PDF) analysis, and in-situ small angle and wide angle x-ray diffraction.

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