The group works on nanomaterials, especially hybrid nanocomposites, nanostructured and nanoporous materials, particularly in the designing and synthesis, as well as modification and characterizations of hybrid nanocomposites, clays, zeolites, metal oxides, carbon materials and their applications.
This project provides understanding of the important fundamental considerations necessary for the designing and formation of new hybrid nanomaterials. The host-guest type of materials can be used to store beneficial agent in the nanolayered interlamellae, transports it to the target and ultimately controlled release. These opening avenues to a new class of nanomaterials with physical and chemical properties that can be tailor made.
Their efforts have been targeted to learn to control materials properties at the atomic scale using wet chemistry method, especially in the area of inorganic hybrid materials containing beneficial agents such as organic or biological materials to syntheses host-guest-type of hybrid nanocomposite materials with length scale of 1-1000 nm, as well as processing and characterization of porous materials produced by self-assembly methods. This is because the hybrid materials of this type exhibited physico-chemical properties different from their counterparts and the properties can be tailor-made by choosing the right combination of the host-guest species.
The group has been successfully designed and synthesised various organic molecules inside inorganic layered solid structures, especially anionic clays for various purposes and applications. For example, NAA was hosted in anionic clay matrices of Zn-Al layered double hydroxide (LDH) and the resulting material was exploited to better control the release property of NAA in aqueous media at various pHs. This is particularly useful for drug delivery with controlled release capability. Such an application is now extended to 2.4-dichlorophenoxy acetic acid and similar promising results were obtained.
Work on the formation of organic inorganic hybrid nanocomposites was also extended to several organic dyes such as Naphthol Blue Black, Evan's Blue, anthraquinone-2, 6-disulfonate, Congo Red and Acid Fuchsin; surfactants such as sodium dodecyl sulphate and dioctyl sulphosuccinate, and other moieties such as 2-acrylamido-2-methylpropane sulfonate, indole-2-carboxylate and tungstate. As a result of these works, an expansion of basal spacing of the resulting nanocomposites compared to the host, layered double hydroxides were observed. This together with FTIR study confirmed the formation of the hybrid organic-inorganic nanocomposite materials.
Intercalation of anionic surfactant of branched-chain, dioctyl sulphosuccinate (DSS) into Zn-Al LDH to form nanocomposite material was also investigated. Such a property can be exploited as a route for the formation of carbon nanoparticles in 2D layered structure.
Apart from hybrid nanocomposite materials, they have also dedicated research on meso and nanoporous materials such as zeolites, layered double hydroxides, metal oxides and carbon materials. This is particularly important as the host materials for the above works in addition to the work on environmental protection and ecomaterials. Research on nanocomposite, nanostructured and nanoporous materials has very promising future and has a great commercial potential for functional materials, especially for drug delivery with controlled release capability.
