Dr. Sankar Nair

The ScienceDaily article Nanotube Formation: Researchers Learn To Control The Dimensions Of Metal Oxide Nanotubes said

Moving beyond carbon nanotubes, researchers are developing insights into a remarkable class of tubular nanomaterials that can be produced in water with a high degree of control over their diameter and length. Based on metal oxides in combination with silicon and germanium, such single-walled inorganic nanotubes could be useful in a range of nanotechnology applications that require precise control over nanotube dimensions.
 
At the Georgia Institute of Technology, researchers are studying the formation of these metal oxide nanotubes to understand the key factors that drive the emergence of nanotubes with specific diameters and lengths from a “soup” of precursor chemicals dissolved in water. Their goal is to develop general guidelines for controlling nanotube diameter with sub-nanometer precision and nanotube length with precision of a few nanometers.
 
“We have shown that there is a clearly quantifiable molecular-level structural and thermodynamic basis for tuning the diameter of nanotubes,” said Sankar Nair, an assistant professor in Georgia Tech’s School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering. “We’re interested in developing the science of these materials to the point that we can manipulate their curvature, length and internal structure in a sophisticated way through inexpensive water-based chemistry under mild conditions.”

Sankar Nair, Ph.D. is Group Leader of the Sankar Nair Research Group at the Georgia Institute of Technology, and Assistant Professor, School of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology.
 
The research of his group has important potential applications in several areas including biomolecule sensing, energy management, and separations. Analytical chemical engineering fundamentals are carefully combined with synthetic chemistry, mechanistic experiments, theory, and simulation methods, to develop synthesis-structure-property relationships of technological and fundamental interest. He also teaches a unique course: Chemical Engineering in Nanoscale Systems, which explores the principles underlying the fabrication and analysis of nanotechnological materials and devices produced by chemical processing strategies.
 
Sankar coauthored Effects of Composition and Phonon Scattering Mechanisms on Thermal Transport in MFI Zeolite Films, Growth, microstructure, and permeation properties of supported zeolite (MFI) films and membranes prepared by secondary growth, Methyl rotational tunneling dynamics of p-xylene confined in a crystalline zeolite host, Structure of Strontium Ion-Exchanged ETS-4 Microporous Molecular Sieves, The Location of o- and m-Xylene in Silicalite by Powder X-ray Diffraction, A titanosilicate molecular sieve with adjustable pores for size-selective adsorption of molecules, and Phenomenology of the Growth of Single-Walled Aluminosilicate and Aluminogermanate Nanotubes of Precise Dimensions.
 
Sankar earned his B.Tech in Chemical Engineering at Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi in 1997, his M.S. in Physics at University of Massachusetts, Amherst in 2002, and his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering at University of Massachusetts Amherst in 2002.
 
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