Research Summary
My group at Indian Institute of Technology Indore, India has evolved as a multidisciplinary research group performing innovative research in closed loop of Inorganic Chemistry, Organometallics, Nanomaterials and Biomaterials. Inorganic and organometallic complexes synthesized by us are employed as single source molecular precursors (SSMPs) for synthesis of novel metal / metal oxides nanoparticles. These metal / metal oxides nanoparticles prepared by SSMPs’ are employed in diverse areas ranging from catalysis for organic transformations, photocatalyst and to construct solar cell device with improved efficiency. Further, we involved in designing series of sensors viz. chemical sensors, biosensors and fluorescence sensors for detection of biomolecules like glucose and cholesterol, trace amounts of transition metal, heavy metals, noble metals and anion sensing (for more details click on the research area below).
Dr. Shaikh’s group has evolved very high within a short period of time his group has worked on several projects of urgent and deep importance to practical development of science and technology including flexible substrates for various applications (Chem. Commun., 2017,53,9870-9873) and facile synthesis of new metal organic frameworks (MOFs), solid-state structural reactivity as Single-Crystal-to-Single-Crystal (SCSC) transformation and their applications in energy generation and storage (J. Mater. Chem. A, 2019, 7, 1725–1736; ACS Appl. Mater. Interfaces 2019, DOI: 10.1021/acsami.9b01754; J. Mater. Chem. A, 2017, 5, 17998-18011; J. Mater. Chem. A 2016, 4, 16432‒16445), two such MOFs have been named after him (smm1:Shaikh M. Mobin; Cryst. Growth Des., 2018, 18, 1287–1292 and smm2:Shaikh M. Mobin; ACS Appl. Mater. Interfaces 2019, DOI: 10.1021/acsami.9b01754); small molecule based sub-cellular organelles target and multi-color cellular imaging (Chem. Commun., 2019, 55, 294-297; Chem. Commun., 2018, 54, 539-542; Scientific Reports, 2016,6,34807), as well as development of novel compounds with strategic implementations in optical and electrochemical sensors (Inorg. Chem. Front., 2019, 6, 736-745; Carbon, 2018,139, 393-403; Dalton Trans., 2016, 45, 5833; Dalton Trans., 2016, 45, 3927), one such publication on Bio-mimeic sensors by employing Cu(II) complex has seen a very rapid citations of over 200 article (Biosens. Bioelectron., 2013, 1, 124-132). Research in the nominee’s group emphasizes on practical applications of the synthesized organic ligands, metal complexes and MOFs. His group has linked chemistry with materials by synthesizing metal-oxides nanoparticles by employing simple metal complexes as single-source metal precursors (SSMPs) synthesized in his group and their applications in catalysis / photo catalysis. One such challenging work of transforming nitro-triptycene to amino triptycene was catalyzed by Co/CoO nanparticles derived from simple Co-complex which otherwise was not possible without expensive and sensitive catalyst like Raney Ni (Appl. Catal. B: Environmental, 2018, 226, 278-288; Inorg. Chem., 2017, 56, 10596-10608; RSC Adv., 2016, 6, 60602.). In addition, one of his research works has been included in a collection of most accessed manuscripts of Journal of Materials Chemistry B (J. Mater. Chem. B., 2016,4, 2466.) and was invited for writing review for the special issue of 2016 theme collection from J. Mather Chem B. Moreover, the group endeavors to venture into path-breaking research in the field of solar assisted water splitting (ACS Appl. Mater. Interfaces 2019, DOI: 10.1021/acsami.9b01754; Nanoscale, 2018, 10, 13250-13260; ACS Omega, 2017, 2, 3447-3456) and Pb Free Perovskite Solar Cells (ChemElectroChem., 2019, 6,1-8; ACS Appl. Energy Mater., 2018, 1, 2405-2409). .
However, the passion remains with X-ray crystallography where we are planning to work on applied X-ray crystallography areas such as laser or photon induced X-ray crystallography for determining intermediate structures in small as well as macro-molecule.