Detail:

It is envisioned that the field of nanomaterials and nanotechnology will go through a tremendous expansion and will hold immense potential for providing advanced scientific and technological solutions that will have significant societal impact. The discovery of graphene (a 2D single atom layer of carbon) opens up the possibility of creating other layered materials and structures, which upon reduction to single/few atomic layers will offer functional flexibility that is far reaching than graphene. For example, single- and few-layers of atomically thin Transition Metal Dichalcogenides (TMDCs) such as Molybdenum Disulphide (MoS2), Tungsten Disulphide (WS2), etc. possess fascinating and lucrative physicochemical properties, such as the presence of inherent band gap, is a major advantage over Graphene, a zero band gap material. This opens up huge possibilities in utilizing these materials for several optoelectronics applications. Nevertheless, for nanotechnologies to impact human life through innovative energy storage/generation technologies, such nano-materials having properties and functionalities compatible with present day structural elements of energy utilization processes and future energy technology concepts are needed. Achieving this will require renewed synthesis and characterization efforts in order to have complete control over their structure, properties, and arrangement. Keeping this as the central theme, this talk will focus on synthesis, properties and characterization of a variety of functional 2D materials that are/will be key components in energy and opto-electronics applications.
　 
ST would like to acknowledge funding support from: NSF-ECCS 0925682, NSF-ECCS 1137113, NSF-PIRE OISE-0968405, NSF-DMR (REU)-1157058, DoD-AROW911NF-11-1-0362.