Skrabalak

The area of nanoscience concerns itself with materials that are on the scale of one billionth of a meter. When an inorganic material is confined to this size regime in the form of nanocrystals, new and size-dependent properties often emerge. These properties can be used in new technologies with the potential to address critical social needs such as better tools for disease diagnosis and treatment and platforms for sustainable energy. Central to these new technologies is the ability to synthesize high-quality nanomaterials, where the composition, size, shape, and architecture of the nanocrystals are precisely controlled. Our research program provides general guidelines for nanomaterial synthesis by demonstrating new strategies that are connected to fundamental chemical and physical principles. These efforts are directed toward materials that are compositionally complex (and thus traditionally more challenging to achieve as high-quality samples) and toward the development of scalable routes to nanomaterials.