Suresh Bhargava

• Distinguished Professor
• Managing Director at RMIT University

Natural coagulants are a biodegradable and potential alternative to chemical coagulants. Cassia fistula seeds and Cactus opuntia f‐indica are employed herein to reduce the concentration of methylene blue dye in aqueous solutions. Maximum removal efficiency was obtained by optimizing the process parameters by the Taguchi method in the design of expe...

Deep eutectic electrolytes (DEEs) show promise for future electrochemical systems due to their adjustable buffer capacities. This study utilizes machine learning algorithms to analyse the carbon dioxide reduction reaction (CO2RR) in DEEs with a buffer capacity of approximately 10.21 mol/pH. The objective is to minimize undesired hydrogen evolution...

Metal piano-stool complexes based on pyridinecarbothioamide (PCA) have shown promising antiproliferative and in vivo anticancer activity, in particular [Ru(cym)(p-F-PCA)Cl]PF6 (cym is η⁶-p-cymene; plecstatin-1). The impact of modifications of the PCA and π-bound ligands on biological properties has been extensively investigated. Herein, we explored...

With a vast landscape of material, careful distillation of the most important discoveries helps researchers find the key information. Publications in nanoscience cross conventional boundaries from chemistry to specialised areas of physics and nanomedicine. This volume provides a critical and comprehensive assessment of the most recent research and...

The selective conversion of glycerol into acrylic acid (AA) using polyoxometalate catalysts poses a challenge due to low conversion and selectivity, as the acrolein intermediate is not effectively stabilized on the catalyst surface. In this study, we introduce a novel approach to develop a bifunctional active catalyst that incorporates dehydration...

Producing green hydrogen in a cost‐competitive manner via water electrolysis will make the long‐held dream of hydrogen economy a reality. Although platinum (Pt)‐based catalysts show good performance toward hydrogen evolution reaction (HER), the high cost and scarce abundance challenge their economic viability and sustainability. Here, a non‐Pt, hig...

Smart, low-cost and portable gas sensors are highly desired due to the importance of air quality monitoring for environmental and defense-related applications. Traditionally, electrochemical and nondispersive infrared (IR) gas sensors are designed to detect a single specific analyte. Although IR spectroscopy-based sensors provide superior performan...

Ternary master slags based on the CaO-Al2O3-SiO2 system with CaO/SiO2 (C/S) ratio 0.3-1.0 were doped with 5-20 wt pct of anhydrous borax (Na2B4O7) to study the phase equilibria of the quinary CaO-Al2O3-SiO2-Na2O-B2O3 slag system within the temperature range 1050-1350°C. This research uses the well-known method of high temperature equilibration of s...

Mesoporous carbon spheres (MCSs) show great potential for using as high-performance anodes in potassium-ion batteries (PIBs). Design and synthesis of MCSs with suitable multiscale structures and heteroatom doping or co-doping in MCSs are successfully employed to optimize the ion and electron transportation, however, it is still a challenge to explo...

Treatment of the bis(chelate) complexes trans-[M(κ2-2-C6F4PPh2)2] (trans-1M; M = Ni, Pt) and cis-[Pt(κ2-2-C6F4PPh2)2] (cis-1Pt) with equimolar amounts or excess of PMe3 solution gave complexes of the type [(Me3P)xM(2-C6F4PPh2)2] (x = 2: 2Ma, 2Mb x = 1: 3Ma, 3Mb; M = Ni, Pt). The reactivity of complexes of the type 2M and 3M toward monovalent coinag...

Printed circuit boards (PCBs) from antiquated electronic goods were processed by a pyrometallurgical route to produce and separate alloy and slag phases. The process involved initial size reduction of PCBs, followed by pyrolysis at 500 C for 6 h and finally smelting of the solid materials in an electric furnace. A preliminary smelting test was perf...

Chemoselective oxidation of 5-hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF) over non-noble metals to produce a bioplastic monomer, 2,5-furandicarboxylic acid (FDCA), under alkaline-free conditions is challenging and worthy of investigation. HMF oxidation into FDCA involves the concurrent oxidation of primary alcohol and an aldehyde functional group into carboxylic g...

In recent years, rechargeable sodium–air batteries have attracted extensive attention and developed rapidly for electrochemical energy storage applications due to low costs, abundance of precursor resources, and high energy density.

Producing green hydrogen in a cost-competitive manner via water electrolysis will make the long-held dream of meeting energy needs with hydrogen instead of fossil fuel a reality. Although platinum-based catalysts show good performance towards hydrogen evolution reaction (HER), the high cost and scarce abundance challenge their economic viability fo...

This research represents that the bifunctional catalyst (Cu/RHSiO 2 –Al–Mg) which has the lowest lattice strain can significantly enhance catalytic reactivity such as the furfural conversion into furfural acetate.

Transition metal oxide (TMO)‐based anodes attract much attention for lithium storage due to the merits of high theoretical capacity, facile synthesis, and easy scale‐up. Moreover, the increased working potential avoids the issue of lithium dendrites formation and thus improves battery safety. Herein, we propose a route to significantly improve the...

Graphite is a widely used anode material in commercial lithium-ion batteries (LIBs), but its low theoretical specific capacity and extremely low redox potential limit its application in high-performance lithium-ion batteries. However, developing lithium-ion battery anode with high specific capacity and suitable working potential is still challengin...

The use of electrical appliances and electronic gadgets has been increasing at a fast rate in Bangladesh mainly because of the increased economic growth in recent years. With this growing demand, the generation of waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) is increasing since all items end up in the e-waste stream at the end of their life. Th...

In honour of Eddie (Ed) Abel, past president of the Royal Society of Chemistry, who passed away on April 19, 2021, at 89.

The phase equilibria in the CaO-Al2O3-SiO2 ternary system doped with around 5, 10, 15 and 20 wt% B2O3 was studied using a high-temperature equilibration followed by rapid quenching technique. Fifteen samples with CaO/SiO2 (C/S) ratios of 0.3, 0.6 and 1.0 containing 15.6-19.1 wt% Al2O3 were equilibrated at a range of temperatures close to predicted...

Chemical sciences and engineering have made outstanding contributions in fulfillment of the needs of our technological society and upliftment of the quality of human life by enabling critical technologies for processing and manufacturing of high-volume essential commodities such as detergents, creams, sanitizers, pharmaceuticals, textiles, plastics...

Science and engineering have been instrumental in advancing the progress of humanity and are the key enablers that are shaping our very present and the future, improving our health and living standards, allowing humanity to leave the planet, walk on the moon, and explore distant stars and galaxies. Additive manufacturing (AM) or 3D printing is the...

Functional ceramic materials with magnetic, electronic, piezoelectric, superconducting and other dielectric properties constitute an important field of materials research. Indeed, their broad potential enables them to be applied in various applications and are hence considered to be ‘smart materials’. However, ceramics are one of the more difficult...

Since its first use to build sculptures, additive manufacturing has come a long way to become a prominent and prolific modern technology with wide acceptance due to significant benefits and advantages arising from its adoption and implementation in different industrial and consumer sectors. AM is rapidly paving a path towards an intensified technol...

Once considered to be a field specific to mechanical sciences, additive manufacturing has now proliferated into all streams of science and swiftly becoming a true global phenomenon. Moving well beyond printing of customized prototypes and trinkets, many enterprises now manufacture using 3D printing at moderate to large scale. Massive improvements i...

The emergence of additive manufacturing (AM) as an industry standard has brought unprecedented opportunity to many fields. Some examples of areas that particularly benefit from this technology include biological implantation, biomedicine, aerospace, advanced materials, automotive, tooling, and many chemical industries. This vast and growing sphere...

Objective The main objective is to formulate solid lipid nanoparticles conjugated with cyclic RGDfk peptide encapsulated with gemcitabine hydrochloride drug for targeting breast cancer. Significance The hydrophilic nature of gemcitabine hampers passive transport by cell membrane permeation that may lead to drug resistance as it has to enter the ce...

Nanozymes are defined as nanomaterials exhibiting enzyme-like properties, and they possess both catalytic functions and nanomaterial's unique physicochemical characteristics. Due to the excellent stability and improved catalytic activity in comparison to natural enzymes, nanozymes have established a wide base for applications in environmental pollu...

INTRODUCTION Electronic waste (e-waste) is one of the fastest growing waste streams across the world with a global generation of more than 50 Mt every year (Forti et al, 2020). Rapid technical advancement together with growing demand for modern electronic and electrical equipment (EEE) is contributing to shortages of key metals and minerals. It is...

The present study focuses on synthesis of novel high-performance acrylic acid (AA) grafted polyethersulfone (PES) ultrafiltration (UF) membranes for purification of small therapeutic biomolecules such as urea, insulin, and cobalamin. The membranes were indigenously synthesized by adding polyethylene glycol (PEG) of 6 kDa M.Wt. as a pore former and...

Generation and fine-tuning of surface plasmon resonances is a prerequstite for several established and emerging applications such as photovoltaics, photocatalysis, photothermal therapy, surface-enhanced spectroscopy, sensing, superlensing and lasing. We present a low-cost and scalable lateral electrodeposition method for fabrication of high aspect...

The uniformity of porous heterostructures developed for gas sensing is essential to achieve repeatability in both sensor output and fabrication processes. Colloidal lithography has previously proven to be an excellent approach in obtaining seamless/uniform composite structures as sensitive layers in various applications including chemical/gas sensi...

Deep eutectic solvents (DESs) are efficient media for CO2 capture, and an electroreduction process using the deterministic surface of single-atom electrocatalysts is a facile way to screen gas absorption capacities of novel DESs. Using newly prepared transition-metal-based DESs indexed as TDESs, the interfacial mechanism, detection, quantification,...

A novel approach of candle soot templated TiO2/Ag nanostructures to fabricate highly active photocatalyst and self-cleaning Surface-Enhanced Raman Scattering (SERS) substrates is demonstrated. A three-stage synthetic approach involves the replication of the fractal structure of candle soot in forming a high surface area porous TiO2 nanostructure us...

A new bis(thienyl)imidazole-based fluorescent organic molecular sensor (TIBIT) was prepared and fully characterized by NMR spectroscopy, mass spectrometry and single crystal X-ray diffraction. The sensing application of TIBIT towards metal ions in solution was investigated using UV-vis, fluorescence, and surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS)....

Regenerative cooling paired with catalytic cracking of hydrocarbons can address thermal management and efficient fuel combustion in supersonic air streams, as a sustainable approach in developing high-speed flight vehicles. Solid acid catalyst promoted cracking of supercritical hydrocarbon fuels can combine physical and chemical heat sink capacitie...

A hybrid machine learning (ML) aided experimental approach was proposed in this study to evaluate the growth kinetics of Candida antarctica for lipase production. Different ML models were trained and optimized to predict the growth curves at various substrate concentrations. Results on comparison demonstrate the superior performance of the Gradient...

This article analyses Bangladesh export–import data to quantify historically generated e-waste from four types of discarded electronic devices (mobile phones, TVs, tablets, and computers/laptops) and uses the trends to predict the generation of e-waste from these devices up to 2030. From this data, together with estimated redundancy rates, printed...

The present study focuses on understanding various residual solvent effects on the physical morphology and separation characteristics of polyamide-imide (Torlon) membranes. The dense membranes were indigenously synthesized by phase inversion technique using various solvents including, N, N-dimethyl formamide (DMF), N, N-dimethyl acetamide (DMAc) an...

Presence of various types of micro-pollutants in domestic, industrial and municipal wastewater and landfill leachates are hazardous for living organisms. Thus, industries need to follow stringent requirements for discharging the chemicals in aquatic system. Organic pollutants, including dyes, hormones, phenols, pharmaceuticals, aromatic compounds,...

The selective C-C bond cleavage of mono- and bicyclic naphthenic molecules via catalytic ring opening plays a vital role in refining low-quality fossil oils and pyrolysis oils derived from municipal...

Thin films of oligomers were synthesized on PTFE substrates and they were studied for separation of product from liquid chemical reaction mixture. Three different types of membranes were fabricated using a technique called ‘covalent molecular assembly’. Covalent molecular assembly is a synthesis technique in which a substrate is sequentially immers...

We perform gas sensing using an infrared metasurface microspectrometer. We train a machine learning classifier by subjecting the microspectrometer to four different gases. We demonstrate the detection of methyl-ethyl-ketone at the permissible exposure limit.

Polypropylene (PP) remains the primary material for hernia meshes due to its biocompatibility, physical strength and ease of fabrication. However, PP meshes are still subject to complications such as mesh movement and bacterial infection that ultimately lead to mesh failure. This study describes a two-step functionalization of a PP mesh through dop...

Surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) has attracted much attention as it can deliver “fingerprint” type selectivity and detect organic compounds and other analytes down to single molecules. Conventional methods to produce reliable SERS sensors require high cost and control in the morphology and topology of the sensors. The lack of recyclabilit...

Fluoride ion plays a pivotal role in a range of biological and chemical applications however excessive exposure can cause severe kidney and gastric problems. A simple and selective molecular sensor, 4,5-di(thien-2-yl)-2-(4-(1,2,2-triphenylvinyl)-phenyl)-1H-imidazole, DTITPE, has been synthesized for the detection of fluoride ions, with detection li...

The cobalt oxide-vanadium oxide (Co3O4-V2O5) combined with reduced graphene oxide (rGO) having band gap of ∼3.3 eV appeared as a suitable photocatalyst for selective oxidation of 2-naphthol to BINOL. C2-symmetric BINOL was achieved with good yield using hydrogen peroxide as the oxidant under UV-light irradiation. The same catalyst was chirally modi...

Metal migration from 3D printed metal support into Zeolite film causes unprecedented catalytic cracking of methylcyclohexane

We report investigations on the anticancer activity of organometallic [MII/III(η⁶‐p‐cymene/η⁵‐pentamethylcyclopentadienyl)] (M=Ru, Os, Rh, and Ir) complexes of N‐heterocyclic carbenes (NHCs) substituted with a triazolyl moiety. Depending on the precursors, the NHC ligands displayed either mono‐ or bidentate coordination via the NHC carbon atom or a...

Crystallization is an experimental phenomenon that does not always depend on predicted data for efficient processing. It, therefore, becomes important to conduct experiments in the seeded or unseeded crystallization process to gain insight into the growth kinetic parameters. The knowledge of the process and kinetic parameters is proved useful in de...

Increasingly explored over the last decade, gold complexes have shown great promise in the field of cancer therapeutics. A major obstacle to their clinical progression has been their lack of in vivo stability, particularly for gold(III) complexes, which often undergo facile reduction in the presence of biomolecules such as glutathione. Herein, we r...

The design and synthesis of surface engineered functional inorganic nanomaterials for environmental applications is a long-standing goal of biomimetic research. Further developments in using nanomaterials for environmental engineering applications rely upon their surface modification, efficient sensing, stability under harsh conditions, biocompatib...

The behaviour of nickel (Ni), cobalt (Co) and major impurities such as aluminium (Al), trivalent chromium [Cr(III)] and ferric iron [Fe(III)] during the partial neutralisation of synthetic pressure acid leach (PAL) liquors and pulps was investigated. Ferric iron precipitation took place between pH85°C 2 to 3, and up to 54% of Cr(III) and 42% of Al...

1.Introduction In the past decade, numerous efforts have been taken to develop one-dimensional nanomaterials with specific morphologies such as nanowires and/or NAs because of their large surface to volume ratio. These morphologies also offer a possibility for surface modification so their versatile material properties can be used for different app...

Phase equilibria of CaO-Al2O3-SiO2-Na2O slags were studied by thermal equilibration and quenching. The primary phases of the quenched slags were identified, and their equilibrium compositions determined by electron probe microanalysis. Liquidus temperatures of the slags were bracketed within an uncertainty of ± 10–20°C. Anorthite (CaO·Al2O3·2SiO2),...

Catalytic hydrogenation of 1,3-butadiene to produce selectively 1-butene has considerable importance in the hydrocarbon industry and presents a significant challenge in tuning the catalyst selectivity towards 1-butene, understanding the reaction and kinetic mechanism. Selective hydrogenation over metal oxide-supported palladium catalysts is conside...

Chemical routes for synthesizing semiconductor heterostructures (SHs) from viewpoints of improved band energetics in an optoelectronic device continue to be a lucrative area. Here we report on the experimental and theoretical band alignment correlated by XPS and UV-DRS analysis at the n-n nanointerfaces of CaO-ZnO heterostructure. A wet synthesis r...

The primary pathways by which nickel (Ni) and cobalt (Co) loss could occur from acidic sulfate solution during partial neutralisation of synthetic nickel laterite pressure acid leach solutions (to pH 4 at 85 °C) was investigated. Knowledge of the avenues by which Ni and Co loss occurs will enable minimisation of valuable metal losses through optimi...

An approach in modern medicinal chemistry to discover novel bioactive compounds is by mimicking diverse complementary pharmacophores. In extension of this strategy, a new class of piperazine-linked cinnamide derivatives of benzimidazole-pyrimidine hybrids have been designed and synthesized. Their in vitro cytotoxicity profiles were explored on sele...

Global temperature has risen >1 °C since the preindustrial era, resulting in well-documented adverse climate impacts including extreme weather (floods, droughts, storms, and heat waves), a rise in sea level accompanying melting polar and glacial ice, and disrupted crop growth. These changes are closely correlated with anthropogenic greenhouse gas e...

Ethene is a commodity chemical of great importance for manufacturing diverse consumer products, whose synthesis via crude oil steam cracking is one of the most energy-intensive processes in the petrochemical industry. Oxidative dehydrogenation (ODH) of ethane is an attractive, low energy, alternative route to ethene which could reduce the carbon fo...

The recovery of valuable and critical metals from electronic wastes (ewaste) via the pyrometallurgical route has some challenges including high processing temperatures. Designing appropriate slag systems based on the major elemental components in e-waste could bring operational advantages by lowering the liquidus temperature. In this study, the qua...

Old industrial landfill leachate (OILL) poses a significant challenge to the environment, due to the large volumes of the solid waste directly discharged into landfills which leach out by percolation during rainfall and degradation of organic waste. Various separation processes have been used for the treatment of OILL to reduce environmental pollut...

Catalytic partial oxidation of methane to produce syngas were studied over calcined hydrotalcites of varying Mg/Al ratios supported Rh catalysts. Hydrotalcites of varying Mg/Al ratios were prepared using their hydroxide precursors and intercalating them with amino acid lysine. Upon calcination, these hydrotalcites converted into their mixed metal o...

Australia has an advantage of having an abundant source of solar- and wind-based renewable energy. It can be utilized for renewable hydrogen production via liquid ammonia (NH3) pathway. Countries importing renewable ammonia can decompose it back to pure hydrogen using CSIRO (Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization) metal membra...

A close-packed gold nanorods (Au-NR) monolayer was deposited on titanium-based quartz crystal microbalance (QCM) and its performance for elemental mercury (Hg ⁰ ) vapor sorption and detection was compared with that of...

The high demand for H2 gas sensors is not just limited to industrial process control and leak detection applications but also extends to the food and medical industry to determine the presence of various types of bacteria or underlying medical conditions. For instance, sensing of H2 at low concentrations (<10 ppm) is essential for developing breath...

Recently, in healthcare sectors, specifically for personalized health monitoring, motion sensing, and human–machine interactions, the rising demand for stretchable and soft electronic devices is significant. In particular, stretchable, skin mountable, breathable, wearable, light weight, and highly sensitive sensors are needed for detecting subtle d...

We present a novel approach for fabricating multicomponent ordered nanostructures using colloidal lithography and electrodeposition techniques, enabling maskless, targeted and uniform material deposition. As an example of the capability of our approach to develop low-cost ordered complex structures, we fabricated long-range ordered crystals (LROCs)...