Dr. Santanu Kumar Pal
Associate Professor, Chemical Sciences

Major Research Projects:

Design, Synthesis and Characterization of Soft Materials:   The approaches of our laboratory towards functionalized soft materials involve design, synthesis, characterization and functionalization of Liquid Crystals (LCs), search for new cores that form LCs, hybridization of different types of LCs that may form new LC phases and so on. An emphasis on LC polymers having electrical and optical properties will be studied for potential applications to molecular nano-devices.

Metal Ion-Based Chemical Sensing: The goal of this research is to develop principles based on surface-driven orientational ordering transitions in thermotropic LCs that will enable design of chemically-responsive soft-materials. The ultimate goal will focus on development of science and technology that may, in the long term, enable the design of materials capable of responding to their chemical environment.

Nanoparticles in liquid crystals and liquid crystalline nanoparticles:   The main scientific objective in this project is to study and understand the soft self-assembly behaviour of nanomaterials functionalized with organic groups (here LC molecules) to provide a new resource of materials for applications in nanosciences.

Liquid Crystal based Biosensors: Development of new principles which offer the basis of general and facile approaches to the building of new sensing platforms that can report on the presence/organization of biological species at aqueous-LC interfaces.

Nano-channels for efficient Proton Conduction:   Synthesis of new LC phases having a balance between the required supramolecular organization of proton-conducting groups and the flexibility for molecular reorientation. These systems will provide a viable platform for developing efficient proton transporting materials.

Selected Publications