Publications

The scalable production of hydrogen fuel through electrochemical water reduction needs efficient Earth-abundant electrocatalysts to make the whole water-splitting process more energy efficient. In this Article, we report that an Al-doped CoP nanoarray on carbon cloth (Al-CoP/CC) behaves as a durable hydrogen evolution electrocatalyst with superhigh activity in 0.5 M H₂SO₄. It demands a pretty low overpotential of 23 mV to drive a geometrical catalytic current density of 10 mA cm^-2, outperforming all reported non-precious metal catalysts. Density functional theory calculations reveal that Al-CoP has a more thermo-neutral hydrogen adsorption free energy than CoP. Notably, this Al-CoP/CC is also superior in activity and durability as a bifunctional catalyst for alkaline water electrolysis, and its two-electrode water electrolyser delivers 10 mA cm^-2 water-splitting current at a cell voltage of 1.56 V in 1.0 M KOH. This work offers us an attractive cost-effective catalyst electrode in water-splitting devices for large-scale production of hydrogen fuels.

In today’s world, efficiency and margin of safety are prime considerations for any applications. To address such parameters in aerospace or high-tech consumer products, there are still limitations in terms of capabilities from a material perspective. Aluminium 7075 is predominantly used as a combination material in these applications, but it has many drawbacks such as early wear/friction, low fatigue life cycle, high weight ratios, high deformation and stresses. To overcome these key issues, many reinforcements have been used to date. However, the results are not so convincing with respect to tribological applications, and the aforementioned issues still persist. In the current work, a novel hybrid composite comprising Aluminium 7075 as substrate and the reinforcement of silicon carbide and aluminium oxide at varying combinations of 3 to 9% in steps of 3% and a constant percentage of 5% were added, respectively. The exhaustive work focuses on extracting the mechanical, tribological and physical properties of a hybrid composite. Furthermore, a microcharacterisation study of these combinations was carried out using FE-SEM and EDX. In a continuation to this simulation, a study was performed using ANSYS Workbench to identify a suitable gear application with real-time loading conditions. The observed results show a tensile strength of 366 MPa for 6%SiC, hardness of 93 VHN and wear rate of 0.00025 mm3/Nm for the 9%SiC combination.

NiSe nanowire arrays solvothermally grown on nickel foil behave as an efficient 3D anode for electro-catalytic oxidation of methanol in alkaline media with strong durability.

Contagious diseases are the principal cause of mortality, particularly respiratory viruses, a real menace for public health and economic development worldwide. Therefore, timely diagnosis and treatments are the only life-saving strategy to overcome any epidemic and particularly the ongoing prevailing pandemic COVID-19 caused by SARS-CoV-2. A rapid identification, point of care, portable, highly sensitive, stable, and inexpensive device is needed which is exceptionally satisfied by sensor technology. Consequently, the researchers have directed their attention to employing sensors targeting multiple analyses of pathogenic detections across the world. Nanostructured materials (nanoparticles, nanowires, nanobundles, etc.), owing to their unique characteristics such as large surface-to-volume ratio and nanoscale interactions, are widely employed to fabricate facile sensors to meet all the immediate emerging challenges and threats. This review is anticipated to foster researchers in developing advanced nanomaterials-based sensors for the increasing number of COVID-19 cases across the globe. The mechanism of respiratory viral detection by nanomaterials-based sensors has been reported. Moreover, the advantages, disadvantages, and their comparison with conventional sensors are summarized. Furthermore, we have highlighted the challenges and future potential of these sensors for achieving efficient and rapid detection.

Understanding mechanical behaviour of molecular crystals has been the focus of intense research over the last few years with the advent of instrumented nanoindentation techinque, which can probe the nanoscale mechanical properties of tiny volume materials and allows to establish structure-mechanical property relationships of various materials. However, to date, most of the indentation experiments were performed in quasi-static conditions at a relatively low loading rates. Here, we report the effect of loading rate on the plastic deformation behaviour of different molecular crystals, studied using instrumented nanoindentation technique. Experimental results indicate that the measured hardness values are loading rate insensitive irrespective of the structure, crystal packing, and bonding characteristics of the crystals examined here. The possible reasons for this loading-rate insensitivity and implications for applications in pharmaceutical manufacturing are discussed.

Abstract A visible‐light‐induced protocol for copper(I)‐catalyzed azide‐alkyne cycloaddition is reported. With the aid of semiconductor zinc oxide nanoparticles (ZnO NPs) as a heterogeneous photocatalyst, a copper(I) catalyst is formed. A variety of azide and alkyne components have been examined and the system tolerates different substrates in the click reaction well.

Abstract The methanol‐to‐olefins (MTO) process over H‐SAPO‐34 is investigated by using an operando approach combining UV/Vis and IR spectroscopies with on‐line mass spectrometry. Methanol, methoxy, and protonated dimethyl ether are the major species during the induction period, whereas polyalkylated benzenes and polyaromatic species are encountered in the active stage of the MTO process. The accessibility of SAPO‐34 is linked with the amount of methoxy species, whereas the formation of polyaromatic species that block the pores is the main cause of deactivation. Furthermore, the reaction pathways responsible for the formation of olefins and polyaromatics co‐exist and compete during the whole MTO process, and both routes are directly related to the amount of surface polyalkylated benzene carbocations and methoxy species. Hence, a first‐order kinetic model is proposed and comparable activation energies for both processes are obtained.

The industrial production of NH3 mainly uses the Haber–Bosch process, which consumes plenty of energy and releases large quantities of greenhouse gas. Electrocatalysis provides a promising alternative to realize low-emission and energy-saving pathways to achieve low-carbon and sustainable NH3 production, where a highly identifiable and highly active electrocatalyst is desired for the N2 reduction reaction (NRR). Herein, our recent experimental observations prove that hollow Bi2MoO6 spheres serve as a highly efficient electrocatalyst for NRR with brilliant selectivity. At −0.6 V versus the reversible hydrogen electrode, the facilitator can acquire values for the FE and production rate as 8.17% and 20.46 μg h–1 mg–1cat., respectively. Meanwhile, hollow Bi2MoO6 spheres also demonstrate excellent electrochemical and structure durability.