Subhasree Banerjee

KU Leuven | ku leuven · Department of Chemistry

My doctoral research dealt with the preparation of silica nanostructures, their photoluminescence and an explorative study of a potential application of such nanostructures, functionalized with fluorophores. The motivation for this study is threefolds: Such nanostructures can be prepared by the soft chemical method of reverse micelle mediated sol-gel method (RMSG). The mechanism of the blue PL of such nanostructures and especially, the effect of simple chemical inputs on this PL is not well understood. Finally the surface of silica is covered with silanol (≡ Si-OH) groups, which can be functionalized using simple silanol chemistry. These properties are more pronounced with silica nanostructures having large surface area. Presence of large number of surface silanol groups in silica nanostructures renders them for easy surface fictionalization and their colloidal dispersion. This aspect has been exploited in the field of drug delivery and development of sensors

Synthesis of emissive silver nanoclusters and their characterization