Gas sensing – Health and Environmental Monitoring

Development of reliable room temperature operative gas sensors using low dimensional nanostructures are more wanted technology compared for its commercialization which could solve real-world problems not only related with industrial requirements but also applied in health and environmental monitoring applications. Our research group focusing on developing of novel gas sensing materials such as carbon nanotube (CNT), graphene, MOS2, SnO2, WO3, and WS2 and its related composites for trace level detection of gas species including volatile and non-volatile derivative family. Specific concerns with current methods for continuous respiration monitoring such as respiratory inductive or optoelectronic plethysmography are limited to clinical or research settings. Here, we planned to introduce a new sensor technology capable of discriminating different gas molecules in mixed environments along with good flexibility and on its wearable platform, which expected to shows ultra-fast response and recovery time.

Polyaniline anchored MWCNTs on fabric for high performance wearable ammonia sensor (Debasis Maity et al, journal of ACS Sensor 2018, 3, 9, 1822–1830)

Material Engineering for Organic and Inorganic Pollutants Degradation

The negative sides of modernization and technological development results with increasing contamination levels in environmental system needs to be addressed. In this connection, photocatalysis is one of the reliable methods applied to reduce the contaminations in water and its green approach for environmental remediation applications because of low cost, high efficiency and high stability compared to other degradation methods. Our research group developing different catalytic active materials for degradation of different dye molecules and removal of organic toxic pollutants. We are focusing on synthesis of various heterogeneous semiconductor catalysts such as, ZnFe2O4, g-C3N4, CdS, and TiO2 nanoparticles. In addition to that, our recently prepared Metal Organic Framework (MOF) with different nanostructures such as Ti-MOF, Fe-MOF, and Ni-MOF, etc., has also been identified as rock performance in catalytic degradation of dye molecules under visible light irradiation.

TiO2@Ti-MOF photocatalytic degradation mechanism (Pattappan Dhanaprabhu et al, Journal of electronic materials, 50, 2565-2575. 2021).

Electrochemical Biosensor

Biosensors has been identified on hot research topic in biomedical diagnosis and medical treatment applications. And also played a vital role to detect the disease related biomolecules such as virus, bacteria and fungus etc., and it’s also used to monitor the adequate amount of enzymes and amino acids in our body which helps to diagnosis the diseases earlier. Biosensor is generally defined as an analytical device which converts a biological response into a quantifiable and processable signal. Biosensor differs from other popular analytical system, such as high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), in that they are self-contained integrated device. In our laboratory we are both working enzymatic and non-enzymatic biosensors to focusing the neurotransmitters, amino acids with high sensitivity, selectivity and long storage life. Our research mainly focusing on synthesis of nanomaterial such as CNTs, graphene, and MOF nanostructures and using of this nanomaterial rapidly sensing of biomolecules and pesticides by electrochemical technique.

Mechanism for glucose detection by GOx/AuNP/PANI/rGO/NH2-MWCNTs biosensor (Debasis Maity et al., Materials Science & Engineering C, 110075, 105, 2019.)

Electrochemical capacitors or Supercapacitors

Electrochemical Supercapacitors are energy storage and power supply devices that are developed to meet the increasing demand for applications in powering vehicles and portable electronic devices. Supercapacitor possesses high power density compared to the battery and high energy density than the conventional capacitor. Our research group working on synthesis of different nanostructured materials with different size, shape and morphology and studied their supercapacitor performance in terms of electrochemical double-layer capacitor (EDLC) and pseudocapacitor. Our main research goal is to develop and identifying selective materials which has high energy density to enrich supercapacitor by combining of EDLC and pseudocapacitive materials together.

MnO2@N-PC composite for symmetric supercapacitor applications and Ragone plot for 9.0V symmetric supercapacitor (S Vargheese et al., ElectrochimicaActa364(2020) 137291)