Seminar by Prof. Ajayan Vinu, Global Innovative Center for Advanced Nanomaterials, University of Newcastle, Australia on "Advanced Functional Nanoporous Materials for Energy and Environmental Applications"

13 Jun 2019
Seminar Room #350
Abstract
Mesoporous materials have been receiving a lot of attention owing to their excellent textural parameters including high specific surface area, large pore volume and uniform pore size distribution. These properties make them available for various applications including energy storage and conversion, adsorption, separation, catalysis, sensing and drug delivery. By modifying the functional elements in the framework structure of the mesoporous materials, the application possibilities of these materials could easily be expanded. For example, the incorporation of hetero atoms such as boron and nitrogen in these mesoporous materials can introduce new properties to these materials including electronic and semi-conducting properties. Although there have been series of mesoporous boron nitride or carbon nitride materials with C3N4 stoichiometry reported [1-6], only a little attention has been given to the mesoporous materials with C3N5, C3N6, C3N7, etc even though they have unique band structure. In this talk, I will present the preparation, structural and morphological control, and the functionalization of highly ordered and graphitic carbon nitride materials with tunable nitrogen contents. The relation between the structural parameters and the performance of these materials in various applications including catalysis, sensing, and carbon capture and energy storage will be demonstrated [7-11]. In the second part of the talk, the fabrication of various nanoporous films including carbons, nitrides, semiconducting nanostructures, and biomolecules with tunable macroporosity, thickness, and morphology will be presented [11]. These porous films have been fabricated by using P123 block copolymer and polystyrene spheres as templates, and utilized for sensing. For example, nanoporous CN film offers the superior affinities for toxic acid molecules but the selectivity can be totally reversed for basic molecule after treatment with UV. The application of these fascinating materials for carbon capture, water splitting, oxygen reduction reaction will also be presented [12-16].