Banner St Andrews
Landscape: St A Town and Sea
SUPA
University of Edinburgh
Sapienza Universita di Roma
logo_Amity_University.gif
logo_University_of_Tokyo.gif
Logo-St_Andrews-Crest.jpg
PAscal (2009)
Dhanapriya Dhanapriya (2010)
Ewha Woman University (Seoul-Korea)
PbSe nanoParticles IFFT Pattern
EaStCHEM
Heriot Watt University
Queen's University Belfast
EaStCHEM
SUPA
EPSRC
Scottish Funding Council
CEA
PAscal (2007)
IMSaT
Organic Semiconductor Centre
HnC
St Andrews University
Location St A - UK map
View of St A and Towards the Sea
View of St A from West Sand
HnC Logo
Sea from St Andrews View of a Beach around St A
View of Castle Sand at St A
View of St A under the Sun
View of Market Street at St A
View of St A Cathedral
View of the Harbour of St A
Royal Society
Colloidal InN nanoTubes
PbSe nanoParticles Absorption Spectra
ZnO nanoRods
ZnO nanoRods
ZnO nanoRods
Colloidal CdSe nanoParticles Colloidal CdSe nanoParticles
Colloidal PbSe nanoParticles Colloidal PbSe nanoParticles
Colloidal PbSe nanoParticles Colloidal PbSe nanoParticles
PbSe nanoParticles
Silver nanoParticles
Silver nanoParticles
Silver nanoFibres
Colloidal Silver nanoParticles
Colloidal Silver nanoParticles
Colloidal Silver nanoParticles
Colloidal Silver Cubes-Pyramids-Rods
Micelles & Surfactants
Micelles for Colloidal Syntheses
POSS-vbp Dendrimer
POSS-vbp Dendrimer
POSS-vbp Dendrimer
POSS-vbp-N Dendrimer POSS-vbp-N Dendrimer
POSS-vbp-N Dendrimer POSS-vbp-N Dendrimer
Dendron Dendron
Dendron Dendron
Vinyl Biphenyl based Dendron
Vinyl Biphenyl based Dendron
Vinyl Biphenyl based Dendron
Inorganic Dendrimer Core Inorganic Dendrimer Core
Inorganic Dendrimer Core Inorganic Dendrimer Core
Inorganic Dendrimer Core Inorganic Dendrimer Core
Inorganic Dendrimer Core Inorganic Dendrimer Core
Inorganic Dendrimer Core Inorganic Dendrimer Core
Inorganic Dendrimer Core Inorganic Dendrimer Core
Inorganic Dendrimer Core Inorganic Dendrimer Core
Organic-Inorganic Hybrid Dendrimer
Shu (2008)
University of St Andrews
Colloidal Silver Cubes-Pyramids
University of Glasgow
Photonic4Life
P4L

Accessing both physical and chemical pathways to fabricate small building units has contributed to developments in various research fields including medical science, photonics, micro- / nano-technology. The market for nanotechnology products is expected  to reach 1.5 trillion US$ by 2015, with major applications in healthcare, environment, energy, display, and telecommunication. Success in most of theses areas may however not be based on a single type of material, either organic or inorganic but potentially a combination of both to either tune or to create new specific properties.

Our efforts focus then on organic-inorganic and inorganic-inorganic materials with the shared requirement for them to be soluble in solvents. Our activities involve inorganic chemistry, physical characterisation along with development of experimental set-up and collaborations to extend the range of accessible materials and techniques both experimental and numerical.

Inorganic nanoParticles

Nanotechnology, for which the size of materials is so small that surface and confinement effects drive the properties away from the bulk, relies strongly on the interplay between physics and chemistry for the control of exotic properties. A very successful path to fabricate and tune inorganic nanoparticles (nPs) is based on colloidal chemistry, which over the past 20 years led to an impressive improvement in the quality of a large range of nPs including metal, semiconductor materials (Quantum Dots, QDs) and magnetic materials.

The small size enhances the effective surface and confinement contributions, driving material properties away from the bulk even though relying strongly on interplays between physics and chemistry. Successful approaches of solution chemistry include the fabrication of a large range of inorganic nanocolloids with for instance a large control over geometrical shapes (spheres, rods, tube, tetrapodes, etc), reproducible luminescence efficiency as high as 85%, or room-temperature ferromagnetism. Among the most promising advanced materials are hetero nanostructures made with two or more different materials engineered in core-shell structures or grafted to one another and sometimes even providing mixed dimensionality (spherical and elongated) to the final nanoparticles.

Hybrid nP

In addition, nPs are now mature enough to be inserted into optoelectronic devices such as sensors, LEDs, solar cells, transistors, … promising cheaper processes, higher efficiencies, flexible devices, or even new applications such as textile electronics.

We do not aim at addressing all of these exciting topics but by combining our expertise, resources and collaborations, we "cherry pick" those we think we can have a contribution to.

LEDs

Hybrid Inorganic nanoParticles

To control material properties, different architectures can be considered, and inorganic building blocks can be used as a core around which branches with specific properties can be grafted. The core can be the above mentionned nPs as well as inorganic and symmetric materials. For the time being and mainly as a model structure, we have recently focused on polyhedral oligomeric silsesquioxane (POSS) with eight silicon corners, which has been found to display versatile chemistry and allow the formation of dendrimers.

Dendrimers have indeed recently received considerable attention as specific properties are expected to arise from their highly branched and symmetric architecture. In addition to the development of different synthetic approaches which lead to ever more complex dendrimers, various applications are currently under investigation which include catalysis, encapsulation and drug delivery, nano- / ultra-filtration and phase transfer, as well as nanomaterial preparation. Over the past few years, dendritic molecules have also been successfully designed to create a new class of materials for organic light harvesting systems as well as light emitting diodes and photoactive devices. For instance, successful syntheses and characterizations of a few red, green and blue emitting dendritic molecules have recently been reported in the literature, using independent alterations of the core, the branches (dendrons) and the external surface groups. This has been shown to allow tuning of the emission spectra as well as favoring energy transfer between the core and the periphery, while preventing both dye molecule aggregation and excimer formation, and preserving simple solution processing for future applications. Other dendrimer architectures with, for instance, chromophores located both on the dendrons and in the core have also been extensively investigated, revealing, for instance, intramolecular energy and electron transfer, along with intramolecular interactions leading to excimer formation and either enhancement or quenching of the photoluminescence, depending upon the system under investigation.

POSS-vb-N expended
POSS-vb-N cigar

Again our strategy is to "cherry pick" among these exciting potential, those we think we can have a contribution to as illustrated by some of our interdisciplinary activities which are described in the Research  and Achievements  sections.