Inorganic Materials

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Program Leader: Professor Ray Frost

The Inorganic Materials Research Program (IMRP) focuses on winning fundamental understanding and knowledge of systems involving inorganic materials. Emphasis is placed upon nanostructured, one of the four priority areas of research of The Australian Research Council (ARC). The program aims to develop novel materials through direct synthesis, assembling nanostructures into functional materials and post-synthesis modification using various techniques.

It is believed that the strengths of inorganic chemists in synthesis and reactions can generate functional structures, construct nanostructured devices through tailoring material structure at the molecular level. The developed materials and devices can be used in fields of environmental protection, industrial separation and solar energy.

The Program has active research projects in three main areas:

Clay based materials

The program gathers the largest group of academics with background of clay science in Australia. The current projects include:

• The synthesis of novel materials for the removal of oils from road and waterways
• The synthesis and characterization of minerals such as hydrotalcites as anion exchangers
• The molecular assembly of secondary minerals and the environmental ramifications
• Novel low temperature synthesis of clays and related minerals
• Modification of mineral surfaces through treatments such as mechanochemical activation, intercalation and adsorption
• Synthesis of nano-technological devices and their measurement
• Development of hydrophobic membranes for specialist separations

Photocatalysts

The program is one of the largest research groups working on photocatalysts in Australia, in terms of academic staff involved, publications and patents, projects funded by ARC and industry. It also has close collaboration with leading scientists in this field in Belgium, China and Japan.

• The use of anatase as photovoltaic devices, modified with surface reactants to enable the use of the full electromagnetic solar spectrum
• The development of wet catalytic and photocatalytic inorganic materials such as copper doped anatase pillared clays for the removal of recalcitrant organics from potable water
• One-dimensional catalysts from titanate nanofibres and nanotubes for the removal of organic contaminates from water under sunlight
• Photocatalysts for decomposing of volatile organic contaminates in air under sunlight

One-dimensional inorganic nanostructures

This is a fast growing area of the program

• Synthesis of nanofibres and nanorods of various metal oxides
• Synthesis of composite nanorods of metal oxides
• Functionalize the nanostructure into novel materials of important applications such as efficient adsorbents for immobilizing radioactive cations from nuclear industry and mining
• Fabricating ceramic separation membranes of high efficiency with nanofibres of metal oxides