 As I brief to the students earlier and also to all the members, the visitors present here, the purpose of Olympia program in general is to expose students to the challenges and excitement which lies ahead in a subject if you choose to pursue it. And one part of it is giving them problems, giving experimental tasks which help you feel what it means to do it. And the other facet is to connect students to some of the leading experts in the subject so that you can also feel what kind of what lies ahead. For example, I mean till you have entered college what lies ahead is just the competitive exams and the parameter of success is getting a good ranking in the exam. But the life starts there that is not the end of life and there lies much more ahead and there are lot many things to be done. And in the keeping in the same spirit we have this component a guest lecture by an eminent personality who can share who has led who has gone through the journey with the subject and can share with you what it means to do it at the leading edge of the area. Today, in fact, it is a great pleasure to have with us Dr. Vivek Pol Shettyvar who is a faculty at Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, our parent institute. Well, I want to share that when I first talked to him he said that I do not feel fit in this role because I am too young and usually guest lectures are supposed to be from people who are very senior who are on the eminent position. But as I said our criteria is not the age or a senior position but also you know the excitement which you can convey. And Dr. Pol Shettyvar has been a very unique individual in many respects a little bit I would like to tell briefly about his background. He came from a educationally from a humble background he started his journey from Amravati he did his masters in Amravati University and then went on to do his doctorate in organic chemistry from DRD it is a defense research establishment in Gwalior. After he did his PhD he decided to go for a postdoc abroad in France. He stayed for a one-year postdoc when he entered the area of material science. He just communicated to me that he deliberately made the choice because he wanted to see what it means to do something else. And after that he got a job in Jubilant Kemsis in Noida he came back to India he worked there for one year as a research scientist and then he went to US EPA US environmental protection and agency in USA he worked there again as a researcher for two years a quite a different field from a typical research area. Then again he went back to France in Leon the chemistry institute in Leon he worked there as a for one year as a researcher then he got an appointment at in Saudi Arabia in King Abdullah University of Science and Technology where he worked as a faculty member in nano catalysis nano materials for four years and since 2013 he has been with TIFR as a faculty member and I mean I think his journey itself shows you that there is no I mean even though when we say chemistry is just this there is so much breadth what one can do and still it is not the end and you will feel while talking to him that it just the starting of a big journey of you know open-ended exploration. And still with this when you take this interdisciplinary approach this lot more you can do and he is going to talk briefly about what nano technology can do towards climate change towards combating the concerns of climate change because climate change seems to be a very global phenomena and when you seek of nano technology we see it as things which are at a very small scale so small scale to large scale is there any relationship and he is going to connect that through chemistry so I invite Dr. Paul Shettywar to conduct this session. Thank you very much. Thank you thank you for the invitation I am feeling bit nervous you said so many things so I will try to explain what we do in the lab and before I explain the research that we do I will try to tell you why we do that what are the issues that we are facing and how my research as a research in this field will help to resolve the societal issues I guess everybody heard about the global warming climate change but I generally feel that we have lots of misunderstanding about the fundamentals of the climate change why there is a global warming why there is a change in the climate so I will try to explain what is global warming why there is a global warming is it only the CO2 excess of CO2 in the environment that is causing the global warming or there is something else and afterwards I will explain whether the nano technology can help to tackle this really serious issue of the climate change or the global warming so there is lots of chemistry when I say nano technology it is full of chemistry ideally I should say it is a nano chemistry so chemistry is the fundamental to prepare any materials and when you make a nano materials it is more important so before I explain the the the climate change let me briefly explain what we do in the lab so we make a nano materials and and explore them for different catalysis so when I say a nano materials everybody thinks it's the it's a very small materials right you have meter centimeter and then nanometer so very small materials so they will have a different activity I will explain what is that afterwards but it's not only about the size that decides the property of these materials which is also about the shape and morphology of these materials whether I have one nanometer sphere or a rectangular thing or a triangle or some other other morphology of the material that plays very important role in their properties I will explain that afterwards but this is what we do in the lab so rather only focusing on decreasing the size of the particle size of the material we also try to change their shapes and morphology and that helps us in in developing a better material to tackle these some of these issues so this is one of the material that that we have prepared in the lab we call it dendritic fibrous nano silica dendritic fibrous because they have a fibrous nature some sort of a dendritic fibrous nature it's a silica material SiO2 with a nano size size is from 50 nanometer to 1200 nanometer and then we can tune the surface area see this is around it has around 1200 meters per gram surface area it's like one football ground in one gram of a material so that way you can imagine the these values right it's really high surface area material and it has excellent stability thermally hydro thermally as well as mechanical stability and uniqueness is is is the is the fibrous nature I will explain what are the advantage of these afterwards once I finish the the fundamentals of climate change and another thing is easy to synthesize so we we we don't use any fancy techniques we use a green chemistry principle to make these materials right so that so that if someone really wants to use it they can upscale it and and it will be more sustainable process and we don't only make the materials we try to then ask the question that why why I got that particular morphology that particular shape so we try to understand the formation mechanism of these materials we start from the molecules and you get the materials of different shapes and size so we ask the question that why this molecule particular molecule converted into particular materials with size and shape so that's the question that we ask here then we take these materials in this case it's a silica right silica is like everywhere it's in on beaches the sands so it's a purified version of the sand that's a silica SiO2 but SiO2 itself won't do most any any any catalysis or any other applications so what we do we take these material and we functionalize these with with with different active sites active sites is like some organic molecule let us say I have to do acid catalyzed reaction right then I make this surface acidic I create some acidic groups on the surface if you have to do a base catalyzed reaction then I make this surface basic so that's what we do we can also make we can also put or decorate these particles with metal nanoparticles or metal oxide nanoparticles and that will help you to to design different different catalyst in addition to that we also make a photocatalyst so difference in here between these so called thermal catalysis over the photocatallysis here is that you can use the solar light to to catalyze you need for a reaction to to move from say A to B you need some energy right so one way of giving the energy is you heat but the other way is you just just provide the the solar energy which is which is freely available right and that will make that process more sustainable so we we develop a photocatalyst which which which harvests the the solar light UV visible and other even IR lights and that helps in catalyzing different reaction and the the last component that we do is we use the same material functionalize these in such a way that they capture the CO2 and that reduces the CO2 in the environment and that will help in climate change so I will I will go in more details afterwards once I explain the the the climate change now in order to understand so these are the the material that we discovered in our lab is now we use not only in catalysis but it can be used in in energy harvesting energy storage sensors in drug delivery and CO2 mitigation so once you make one unique material that it has lots of application in various fields so what is climate change so in order to understand the climate change we should ask two question so why there is a life on the planet earth right that's if you know that then I think it should be easy to understand the the the issue of the climate change other thing that we all say jelly heezy one hand but this is true for drinking water what about the seawater do we will you see the same thing for the seawater no right but I think that is also the same I will try to explain how the seawater plays a very important role in keeping our climate greenery on on the earth right so so why there's a life on the earth because of the because of the environment because of the so we have a the temperature oxygen the water that is required to for life to grow right so if you see the temperature in in other planet and on earth you see there's huge difference and that is only due to the the atmosphere around the planet that that really decides in addition to the distance between the sun and the planet the the other thing that is more more important is the atmosphere so atmosphere decides the the temperature on the surface in the environment right and so what decides the temperature so what this what is the atmosphere that we should ask so what happens so someone one can say about what is the how the how does the once the energy or the solar light reaches to the to the to the planet earth what happens so ideally you have lots of energy coming from the solar solar solar energy and say this is the rough calculation 340 watt per meter square out of that 102 gets reflected and the remaining one get adsorbed by different gases right the co2 water methane these are the gases which absorbs and then that that that heat energy get transferred to other molecule and that's how we have that that unique warm temperature that is required for our life so now what will happen if we increase the concentration of these gases so you will have some more amount of solar energy right you will start heating right and that that is the cause of the there's a very simple way of understanding this is the as soon as you increase the concentration of these gases you have some more and more solar energy right which supposed to go back and you disturb the balance right now and there are other things that we can so these are the these are the gases we call a greenhouse gases nitrous oxide water vapor methane carbon dioxide so there's always one confusion we call it a greenhouse gases and we try to correlate that with the greenhouse that we see everywhere in in the city but that's completely wrong those that greenhouse works very differently okay before that let me let me say why these are the greenhouse gases so what are the greenhouse gases though gases which captures not captures which which harvests the the infrared radiation which which heats the environment right so any molecule which absorbs the infrared radiation can be considered as a as a see the greenhouse gases so you can see the spectrum the carbon dioxide this is the the IR region and you can see carbon dioxide captures most of the infrared radiation other gas also captures the methane also captures our harvest lots of the infrared radiation so the if you increase the concentration of these gases what will happen more and more infrared radiation will get harvested will stay at on on planet earth and you will increase the increase the overall temperature of the of the environment whereas when i see a greenhouse the greenhouse that you see in in gardens and other things though there the the the temp the the warm temperature is not due to the due to the harvesting of the infrared radiation by the gases this is just due to the you stop the those heat going out of the out of that room right that's how the greenhouse gas work but in our case it's it's nothing about trapping the heat it's about trapping the solar energy by the by these gases but then the question one can ask that why we are calling it a greenhouse gases we're calling it a greenhouse gases because these are the gases the CO2 methane these are the one which captures the solar energy maintains the temperature and that's why you have the greenery on the planet so ideally you need these gases to to have the life on the planet right but then if you have too much of them what will happen you will start warming the warming the planet and and that's actually that's absolutely the the crux of the the climate change so why all gases are not greenhouse gases ideally any gas which capture any molecule which can harvest or which can absorb the infrared radiation will can be considered as a greenhouse gases but then you need to worry about the the the intensity of the infrared radiation that can be captured by different gases and that's why these are the important gases carbon dioxide methane nitroxide these are the one which which which absorbs more infrared radiation and and a real reason for the for the global warming okay so water also absorbs lots of infrared radiation and so one can also say water as a greenhouse gas but ideally it is not considered as a greenhouse gas because you are increasing the water vapors in the environment because of the global warming because of the warming so water is not really playing the role to start the warming right it's all other gases which is capturing the harvesting the infrared radiation increasing the the overall temperature and that's why then you you evaporate more and more water and you produce more water vapor which then start absorbing more and more infrared radiation they do create a trouble they do contribute in the global warming but that is actually a secondary reaction right I hope you understand what I'm saying so this is the typical cartoon to explain the the global warming so we all are producing the CO2 right the industries cars and the burning fuels and then you you create these gas environment of the gas right the the gas clouds and now the solar energy is coming it's supposed to go out but now more and more of that solar energy is getting harvested right getting getting captured and that increases the increases the temperature so what we have to do now there are two ways one you reduce these gases but I don't think we can live without AC without car and without burning the fuel until we find other way right the other way is then you need to increase the number of trees in the on the planet that is also now it is not possible right we have a limited space so then how does the science can help so you think of creating a artificial trees which you can plant everywhere don't need lots of space don't need water and which will capture the CO2 something like this so this is a typical life cycle right you produce lots of CO2 and then the trees try to take care the seawater try to take care of the CO2 it captures in fact most of the CO2 is is taken care by the by the the sea that's what I said if there is no seawater you cannot really control the global warming now we have less number of trees and more and more industries and cars and other thing that creates lots of CO2 so what I what we need now is some sort of artificial trees which can do the same thing with with a limited space and when I say artificial trees that's a fancy word but what it means you make on nano materials or you make a materials which will have ability to capture the CO2 which will have ability to capture the the solar light how is the solar light which also should have the ability to capture the water and then some sort of a catalytic reaction where you split water H2O into hydrogen and oxygen and use that hydrogen to reduce the CO2 to methanol or some some some fuel right and then you you burn methanol you have a CO2 you again capture right it's very dream project lots of people are working on some sort of artificial photosynthesis that's the that's the only way I see to solve the issue of the climate change so it's the chemistry and and an nanochemistry which will play a which are which is already playing a very important role in in tackling the problem of the climate change and I will I will show you some of the example how we make these materials and whether they are capturing the CO2 whether they are whether they are splitting the water and can you really convert the CO2 into useful chemicals yeah so this is another cartoon which shows the another animation which shows the increase in the CO2 so this is the you can see the concentration the more red it will be more CO2 and the NASA monitors the CO2 concentration and now this is this is our country and you can see with time the CO2 concentration is increasing so this is a global problem rather than one country problem and this is very recent report so we right now we have 410 ppm CO2 level which is first time in the human history so you can see now we are somewhere here now one can ask so this is the data about the carbon dioxide parts per million and this is 0 means 1950 and then you have 15,000 50,000 years before 100,000 years before this is the CO2 levels now one can ask the question how do I know the CO2 levels on those days right it's really really early right so there is a way to quantify the CO2 concentration in those days so this is called some sort of a ice core technology where you drill the what is that okay I will come back to this I lost the word so there is a way to quantify the CO2 capture based on the ice core technology that I will explain so another thing that you will see here if there is always increase in the CO2 level so this is the 180 and with time it's around 300 it's always the sudden increase in the CO2 it's not really a gradual increase there's a sudden increase in the CO2 level but for the first time you we cross the 300 level and now we are around 410 so earth climate has changed throughout the history but now we really really cross the limit so you can see the increase in the overall temperature during this year 1880 to 2020 but there are those who don't believe in the global warming they said no no this is not because of the CO2 because of all these things that I'm talking it's just because the position of the earth with the sun is changing and somehow it is coming closer and you are getting more and more solar energy and that's why you have the warming but then there is a data which shows the the solar energy that that is reached to the planet earth and it's nearly the same it's nearly constant maybe there's some increase here but now you can see it's really the same but still there is increase in the in the temperature which clearly scientifically proves that there is a global warming and that is due to those those gases this is another animation to show the same thing so how the how the temperature is increasing with with years now you can see here some slices so we are here and there is a sudden increase in in in last 30 40 years and you can see now almost everything is is hot right and and so this is a this is the data from the NASA so I think you guys will leave on that so what happens in addition to the global warming what what else can happen if you feed the sea see what will happen it will rise right there will be melting up the ice so that will also increase the the water level and now we can see the sea levels are increasing from 1998 to 2016 so there are recent scientific reports which says that rate now increase so the sea level so rate of the sea level increase is now really fast fastest in 2000 years so the prediction is based on the scientific data that in by 2100 the sea will rise to 1 to 4 feet so think about what will happen to Mumbai if that is that is going to be true and I guess everyone is experiencing the the heat and and and the crazy weather so it's really happening so in addition to that since now there is a lots of co2 in the environment see try to balance that see try to capture more and more co2 and then the the the ph of the sea changes the acidity of the sea increases and you know there is a life in inside inside the ocean and that also get disturbed when you have more and more co2 right so I will skip this yeah so you can see the the situation of these coral reefs when we have more acidic so this is again the prediction right now the ph is 8.179 so it was in 1751 now it is 8.069 although you see a difference is really small but at that huge level that is really a significant difference and in in such a scenario there will be no coral reefs right everything everything will get damaged because of the because of the change in the ph so obviously the water the ice is shrinking and and you can see that's why the sea level is increasing I will I will quickly go to that I'll go to go through these things right so in addition to the heat because of the global warming you now you have you have unbalanced the total environment total cycle of the the maintaining the temperature on on the planet right the the incoming of the solar light some amount of that light is reflecting and some it getting captured that's a typical natural cycle but now we are capturing we're harvesting more and more light and that affects several other parameter one is the extreme events that we see now we see the flood I don't know whether that is due to the climate change or not but we saw that in Chennai this is another issue that you see all over India especially in in Vithabh region in Maasra so these are scientific reports which which explains that in addition to the warming of the environment there are some several other issues that we are facing now so these are so fresh water stress because of these change in the the environment we know this one there was a fighting for the for the water you so that's happening right ideally it's happening so now the question is is it too late to really prevent the climate change or it's it's already the reaction is already started and can you can you stop that can we really stop the climate change so there's already lots of CO2 in the environment even I make a material which will have some ability to capture the CO2 I personally don't think that you can really reduce that 410 ppm to some 200 ppm or something like that it's it looks very impossible as a scientist the material we make capture the CO2 is like 5 millimole per gram it's that's the best value that you have now and the amount of CO2 that is already there in the environment is really really high so I really don't know whether we can really prevent the thing but can we at least minimize yes I think we we can at least make our attempts to minimize so if we can reduce the the the production of the CO2 and other greenhouse gases into the environment I think there is there is a chance and other thing is we change our lifestyle so it's not only a scientific problem I guess it's also a social problem so although I will I will only talk about the science so what what I what we need to do to to prevent or minimize the the climate change is now what I what I talk about it's the the development of artificial trees that is nothing but development of materials which will have the ability to capture the CO2 capture the water capture the solar light and now whether I make a material then I need to have a control on these materials so I need to I need to decide the properties of material such a way that it will have it can capture more and more CO2 it can capture more and more solar light and there the use of nanotechnology can help because by using the nanotechnology you can change the size of the particles you can change the shape of those particles of the material I guess everybody understand when I say materials right any anything is material right silica or the stable is everything is material what you see is a bulk material I can't really control the the properties chemical as well as the physical properties of these materials but when I go at a nanoscale you can change the properties of that material and that helps you to really develop a better better material for capturing and converting the CO2 so what we can do scientifically is is trying to develop a material which will which will do the thing that plants are doing some sort of artificial photosynthesis and as well as developing alternative energy source if we stop burning the fuel there is other way right if you can use solar energy directly to to run most of our thing then the problem of CO2 is resolved so the nanotechnology solutions to the climate change so before that I will explain what is nanotechnology so the the the bookish definition is the the particles which are the material with the particle size between 1 nanometer to 100 nanometer are called a nanomaterials right but then you should ask me the question why only 100 why not 101 be a nanomaterial is there why there is such a magical thing after 101 so this is very early definition I personally don't believe right now one cannot define the nanotechnology or nanomaterial based on the scale because we have materials now which are say 1000 nanometer still show a very different properties than the bulk material so the best way to to understand or define the nanomaterials or nanotechnology are is like nanomaterials whose properties are dramatically different than the than their bulk counterpart and that difference in the properties are due to the size something like that will define more in a better way the the nanotechnology right so this is another way to understand the scale so if you have to measure the length of the man it's billions of nanometers so they are really really small now why why the nanomaterials will have unusual properties because they are so small right in a bulk if you if I see the bulk material you have only one surface layer and almost all other things are inside right and and you can only interact with the surface they are not the other layers now if I and you can see one drop of water contains around 100000 a bulk molecules per one surface molecule so the number of molecules on the surface is are really less when you use the bulk material now if somehow I increase the the surface I increase more number of molecules on the surface then the when I say a catalysis or capture is all about the surface activity so you you you have so this is let us say this is my material and I want to capture the CO2 so if I increase the surface more and more the surface will interact with with CO2 more and more right and you can capture more and more CO2 but how do I increase the surface one way is to just just have a huge space but then it's really impossible to really increase the surface other way is you you have a very small amount of material say one gram of a material what I showed you and it should have very high surface area say 1000 meters per gram which is around one football ground in one gram so if I take a one gram of a powder in my hand it will have very high surface area and then it will capture lots of CO2 and that is possible using the using the nano nanotechnology so this is other way to explain that when you when you change the size from 2 millimeter to 1 millimeter you can see now you are starting increasing the number of surface layer and when you go to the nano nano nano nano scale you can see now you have two surface layers versus two bulk layers so 50 percent of that material is now accessible for for other activities for CO2 capture or light harvesting so when you change the power when you change the size they also change their properties we all know gold is ideally golden but when you change the power particle size of these gold nanoparticles now you can see you can have a different colors of the gold effect of melting point I think everyone understand the melting point what is melting point you you're trying to just separate these atoms little bit away right and that convert the solid into liquid so what will happen if you go to the to the nano scale melting point will decrease what can anyone think about why will the melting point decrease okay will not go into the teaching mode but see this this is here so if I have to separate this atom from the other atom I need more energy because it's coordinated with several different atoms around right but if I have to move the surface atom I need a lower energy because it's now coordinated only with three neighboring atoms right now if I reduce the size of the particle then I have more and more of these surface atom which has a less coordination and then I need a less energy to separate them that's the that's the lowering of the melting point so there are several other properties that changes when you when you go to the nano scale now how do you build these things they those are so small you can't really see them then how do I build it so there are two ways to build it one is called top down method so this is a bulk material and I want to convert this into a nano material so I will just keep cutting it until you reach the nano scale size and that is possible there are some instrument which allow you to really cut them into very small nano particles but you can then imagine this will be really uncontrolled where you can't really control the shape and other morphology of that material if you start from the bulk and other ways the bottom up approach you start with the atoms you start with the molecules and you force those molecules to react in search away that you get particular material with with specific size and the shape and that's what most of us do in in in in the field of nano materials research that we start with simple molecules say I have to make a silica SiO2 so I will start with some silica precursor Si with say four ethoxy group the simple organic molecules and I will I will I will force these molecules to react and and assemble in search away that I get a particular material with with specific size and shape then other thing is how do I see them they are so small right you can't really use the the light which has any any light because these are really small than the wavelength of uv or visible light so you can't really use this typical optical microscope to see them then how do I see them we to see anything you need some sort of a light source and then the detector in our case now light this visible light is the light source and your eyes are detector but in this case what we do then we use the electron beam as your some sort of a light and there are some detectors which will which will detect the the the scattering or the diffraction of the electrons and that way you can then image the nano material so there are two ways to image the nano is called transmission electron microscopy and scattering scattering scanning electron microscopy so in transmission electron microscopy you take the material your light source is here which is the electron beam you just put that on your material and you just take the image here so that you are transmitting in in in scanning one you have the material here like the electron beam is here but now your detector is this side you try to see the surface properties of that material I think that is enough for for understanding this part so there are there are several other materials which will also help you to understand the mechanical forces and mechanical strength of that material and several other parameters now how do we really take on the challenges of the climate change which is energy and environment if I can if I can find out the way to to develop a non-condition energy source like I split the water and produce the hydrogen and I can just use hydrogen hydrogen gas to to run your car do something else or I can I can convert solar energy into electrical energy and then that will so I think everyone is using the solar panels and other one is if I can take care of the the environment in addition to the pollutant if I can take care of the CO2 that will be great and the best way is if I can have these two combined like like you have a material which will split the water which will capture the CO2 and then you react that hydrogen with CO2 convert that into methanol so that's what we we do in the in the lab so I already explained when you go to the nano scale so nano catalyst is again a nano material which do some sort of a cat which shows some sort of a catalytic activity I guess everyone knows the catalysis right a goes to be you need lots of energy to convert a into b so you add the catalyst you reduce the activation energy and that that will make that process more sustainable and when you have a nano catalyst you have a nano scale size small size very high surface area large number of dangling bonds on the surface which will have very high surface energy and whenever you have a particle with very high surface area and surface energy then your reactant will react more easily more efficiently and you need a lower energy to really catalyze the reaction in addition to that you control the size shape and morphology in general typical catalyst what you do you make these fancy organic molecules put some metal and some ligand and then you play with the ligand and then try to change the selectivity and activity of that material so what we do in in the field of nano catalysis we just changing the shape and morphology of these materials you can you can play with the catalytic activity and there are other other parameters that can be tuned so this I already showed you so we we make these materials and try to develop different catalysts okay so this is the SCM image I already explained you the what is the TEM and SCM if I want to see what what what is the material what is the size what is the the surface how the surface looks like it looks like a solid spears with holes inside right but if I go close then you can see these are not really holes but these are these fibers dendritic fibers which is coming out and this is more like a fiber spears rather than the sphere with the holes and the TEM gives you the 2d projection of the same material and you can see now these these fibers surface which it looks like some solid core in the center now we also ask the question in the lab that why why I got such a such a material why not why not a solid sphere or why not a hollow sphere or why not some some others why why sphere why not a rectangular box something like that so we ask that question and and you that that's this is a bit maybe at the higher end but I just want to give some feeling what we try to do in the lab so in this particular case we started with the one simple molecule you know the SI with 4O etoxy group you guys understand organic chemistry right and then we try to we we make these particular materials how how we go with that so if you just take these SI with 4 etoxy and and ask them to hydrolyze and condense and form the silica they will they will do it randomly and that's where you get a bulk silica the sand that you see on the beaches but what we do what we do is we force them to to meet and condense in a in a proper fashion so what and in order to do that what we what we do we create some sort of a template some sort of a artificial reaction environment where the molecules can only organize and condense in in one specific way so in order to create a template we take these C-tab molecules I guess you must have heard about this so this is like a C-16 long carbon chain a non-polar carbon chain and then you have a quaternary nitrogen which is now a polar head so whenever you have a molecule with such a polar head and a non-polar chain they try to sell resemble to minimize the repulsion and attraction between them so it's it's a mice error behavior of those those molecules so when you add these molecules in in a particular solvent it could be water or water oil mixture then they try to sell resemble to minimize their energy and that's what we we use we use that that particular property to create some sort of a microemotion here maybe I will show you the the animation which will be easy to understand okay here so this is your polar head and non-polar tail these are the molecules that I took it and added into a solvent in this case the solvent is water cyclohexane mixture there's a water and oil and then they try to sell resemble that's a natural phenomena of these molecules there they're sell resembling to minimize the minimize the energy and we it's called a lamellar phase or lamellar mice and then you add one more molecule which is also polar which is having polar head and non-polar tail and those molecules go in between these template molecules these are called co template or co surfactant that stabilizes the entire system and this is actually a part of a a by continuous micro immersion droplet so you form some sort of a droplet using these simple surfactant molecule so these are the micro immersion droplet we call the BMDs so these are not the silica these are my template these are my part where I'm doing the reaction now when I add my precursor SI with 4 ethoxy the precursor can only go into the cyclohexane phase which is see these these gaps in between and they can only react and condense and form the silica only in those those empty spaces so now if I play with these empty spaces I will play I will I can I can design the material based on that and if I if I change the thickness of these these rivers I will get a thin fibers of the silica if I increase I will get a thick fiber of the silica so based on that and in addition to that we also play with the size now if I I force these small micro immersion droplet to merge into bigger one then I can get a bigger size nanoparticles if I keep them away I can get a smaller size particle so that I just wanted to show how we do it in the lab how we tune the size shape and and other properties of that material by simply using a typical organic chemistry right and then we try to use that for different applications catalysis when we are using nanomaterial we call it a nano catalysis so this is one application hydrogenalysis of alkanes so you know in in a oil well once you take out the petrol there is lots of long chain alkanes still still there right say C5 C6 C8 which is not really useful so why not to break them into smaller alkanes again right see ethane or propane or butane so it's it's not easy to really because it needs really a lot of energy to break the cc bond in those long chain alkanes so there we showed that if I use our catalyst the kcc one is this silica material with very small dots that you see these are very small ruthenium nanoparticles nanoparticles of ruthenium metal with a 1 to 5 nanometer size and we showed that I skip that okay sorry and I we showed that this this works really well for for hydrogenalysis it's like lysis it's a breaking up the bond using the hydrogen gas so you break these longer chain into a smaller chain so this is how we we develop the catalyst in the lab and we also showed why this particular material is better than the other conventional material that is available in the market so when I say a catalysis catalysis is about the the accessibility of your reactant in this case alkanes with the active side now I said I we made a so the one way to increase the surface area I said how do I how do I make a material with a very high surface let us say I have a sphere so sphere surface area is only the external surface solid sphere now I want to increase the surface area of that sphere what what should I do without changing the size one way is to change the size to smaller and smaller but there is a limit so what what could be the other way of changing the what could be the other way of increasing the surface area what is it no but that's again in decreasing the size I don't want to decrease the size is fixed I still want to increase the surface area no change in the shape it's the same it should be same porous right you create holes inside now I can I can use this surface area right so you have the same size but you create a holes pores and that increases the size but now it comes with comes up with some problem so if I have a poor let us say this this is my poor so I can enter only from this side and I can exit from only this side so something like this here so this is a porous material say a sphere with I'm only showing this surface and these are the poor now I I loaded it and I I just showed the open open poor so now you can see the reactant can only go from the top right so I can only use this active site these ruthenium sites for catalysis rest of the active sites which are there which are there in the pores will not be accessible so even after having high surface area that will not help if you are not able to use that surface if you are not able to access that surface area so that's the problem with all the conventional materials that that they are there and that's where our material is different now because it is a fiberless material you can reach it from everywhere there is no pores now it is just taking out those pores out it's a fibrous material so now you can ideally reach obviously not 100% you still have some issue with the center particles but ideally as compared to this one you have more accessibility of those active sites because of non-porous but still high surface area property of that material and that helps in increasing the catalytic activity of that particular catalyst so by using the same principle we prepared other catalysts so these bright dots are now palladium nanoparticles and you can do this cc coupling reaction one of the well-known reaction for in a drug industry one can also not only the metal nanoparticle one can also functionalize this silica with other active sites in this case tantalum hydride which also helps you to break these in this particular case metathesis you make the cc bond and break some cc bond this is another way I said I have now silica silica don't do anything by itself I need to make convert them into something so let us have to do a base catalyzed reaction so one way is to use the base NaOH and KOL that you want but once you use that base it's gone right you can't really recycle that but think about a base which you can keep using one reaction another reaction third reactions recycling so that will make the process more sustainable so that can be done by converting by making a solid base so this is the silica when I say silica it's not SiO2 but it has some SiOH on the surface and now you can play with these SiOH and convert these SiOH into some basic basic functionality in this particular case we treated with ammonia gas and convert those SiOH into SiNH2 and now I have a solid base which do a base catalyzed reaction and I can keep using it for several cycles without any decrease in the activity so that will again make the process more sustainable and that helps in the in the environment then other one is the photo catalysis how do I build the photo catalysis to to to harvest the solar light or to to split the water so here what we did we so silica it's silica is an insulator I guess insulator semiconductor that you guys must have heard so it's insulator has a very wide band gap so it the the energy that you get from the solar is not enough to excite these electrons from ground state to higher state that is required to these photo catalysis so we need a semiconducting material so what we did we took this KCC1 and coated each of these fibers with well known well known semiconducting material called TiO2 and now I got a very high surface area semiconducting TiO2 and again the accessibility of the TiO2 will be better over the conventional material because this is more fibrous material over the porous material and and this is this is a typical data to show that when we coated this is the elemental mapping so wherever you see a silica there is a Ti indicates that the coating was was uniform and we showed that the over catalyst is far better than the catalyst that is reported in the literature so you can see the rate of reaction rate of degradation in this particular case of a dye. Now what is the limit how do I increase the active catalytic activity I said we go to from bulk to the nano higher surface energy higher surface here you get a better activity what else we can so what what could be the limit I what should be the lowest possible size that will give me the highest catalytic activity so ideally it should be the atom then right you go to the atom that should show ideally that is not really a straightforward because some reaction need a two or three atoms nearby then only that that can get catalyzed but let us say you you are talking about a reaction which only need one one atom to catalyze the reaction then in that case it should be the atomic scale catalyst which should show highest catalytic activity but then the problem is why will that single atom will be stable right it will never be stable it will meet with someone and agglomerate or it will react with someone so the challenge is in in a single atom catalyst is you you stabilize those single atoms so what we try to do is we try to use this silica surface and you fix the single atom on the surface by some strong interaction of the silica si o with with these metal items and once you once you stabilize then they will act as a excellent catalytic excellent catalyst so that's what we did we we you can see here this is a TM image of the KCC one is again the silica we prepare a gold single atoms and you can see these these are so this is a two nanometer scale and this is these are the single atom of the gold so now you can even see the atoms in using the transmission electron microscopy and now I show you the difference so when I go to the single atom this is the turnover number and these are the best known catalyst in the literature this is our recent work where you see the huge difference in the catalytic activity what is turnover number is like one mole of a gold can convert this many moles of reactant to product so that's really huge this is half a million so one mole of a gold can convert half a million of a reactant into the product and that's what you want now you you are using less catalyst less energy and producing the same amount of the chemicals and that will help you to to protect the clamping so in chemistry in it's not only the converting A into B you want A to be converted only into B not a C you don't want any byproduct right you want to play with the selectivity of the reaction so in nano catalysis you can also play with the selectivity of the reaction by just changing the size of the particles one particular size give you one particular product another one gives you another another product and that helps you in tuning the catalytic activity as well as the selectivity we also showed that the same material if you functionalize in such a way that will capture the CO2 works well so this is like you have lots of CO2 coming from the industry you create some sort of a net to capture the CO2 and this net is nothing but your nano material this is a cartoonistic view of that so okay I skip I did not show it I showed it here so what we did we took this KCC1 and functionalize these with lots of amines and these amine basic amines try to react with the the little bit acidic CO2 and they capture the CO2 and we show that and you can see the overall materials as compared to the to the best known material MCM 41 you can see there is a difference between the CO2 capture capacity in millimoles per gram but obviously these are very small numbers as compared to the CO2 that we have in the environment so we are far far behind what is really needed and then once you have the material then you can have those this is the cartoon where you can have these trees artificial trees which is coated with these nano materials and then they will capture continuously keep capturing the CO2 and reduce the the CO2 in the environment so these are some of these that really happen in reality and it's not only the capture but what will you do once you capture the CO2 you keep it somewhere but the if it leaks or something happens then it's the same problem the best way is to capture that CO2 and convert it to useful chemicals but you know CO2 is a linear molecule very stable why will CO2 will react with anything and convert into any other organic molecules that's another challenge in the field of catalysis so what we do we we we adsorb these CO2 on the surface and once the CO2 get adsorbed on the surface they bend a little bit and that then you that that makes them more reactive and that that helps you to convert the CO2 into some useful chemicals so you need a now a catalyst which will allow the CO2 to bend as well as you need some catalytic active site which will allow you to convert the CO2 to some other useful chemicals so these so there's already known that there are several other ways of converting the CO2 into useful chemicals but the the challenge here is all of these are carried out at very high pressure 100 bars or something like that but that is again energy demanding system so you need a system which will which will capture and convert the CO2 at atmospheric pressure which is still a challenge and it's another thing artificially which will capture the CO2 harvest the solar light and then convert that CO2 to methanol that's what I'm saying everyone is trying to get into there but it's not easy to copy the nature so solar panels I think that is something that we all are using right so this is the best way currently we should use more and more solar energy this is another recent example of floating solar power plant in China and this is this is another one where this is a solar panel which which which follow the sun right because that's another drawback of the solar panel that's that sun is outside your planet the other side it won't harvest the light so this solar panel has that motion sensor which which follow the solar sun and more more energy harvesting right so this is the conclusion climate change can be tackled at least can be reduced by by developing a different noble nano materials so in addition to the the data that I showed in in addition to the my research data the other data that I took it from ACS climate change NASA climate change and this this other side so these are really good side if you want to learn more about the climate change and the chemistry behind the climate change you should use these side with that I like to thank that I instead of fundamental research and development of anatomy energy for for funding and this is my group Nisha, Kundu Singh, Rustam Singh, Baljeet Singh, Mahegh Dheeman, Ayan Maiti and Krishna Khan for for they are my group member Ayan Maiti and Krishna Khan are BSE we generally even higher BSE if they are really good it's the same TI for exam same interview but if you are good you directly get admission to BSE right with that I like to thank you very much for for listening to me thank you Dr. Paul Shettywar for a great amazing lecture and particularly something which I think almost all of us could follow yeah thank you for that and we have few time a few minutes so we can take a few questions from anyone in the audience okay no question anything you want to ask him about the lecture or even you know beyond the lecture you are most welcome yeah one reason I feel is anthropological reason human activity and another is geological reason yeah so do you have any data how what is the percentage of global warming due to anthropological reason and part of geological reason which probably we cannot control yeah there is a geological reason also there must be a data I really don't know there must be a data but even after you have the data we can't control that's what you said yeah yeah so worry about our part and no but what is the major contribution is anthropological reason or major is due to geological reason because when the art was born certainly this was not the climate at the time of art or or a planet's born so thereafter over the years art has got sense of climate change that is not due to anthropological reason yeah it is geological reason yeah so that is the thing some curiosity comes to our mind I showed you one one one data where this is this is the reasoning lots of people give yeah one of the reason is the distance between the sun and the planet earth but and that's why the amount of energy that you receive from from sun to the people have people have monitored that and they said the amount of energy received is nearly the same but obviously there are other there are other reasons that but I I I don't know the numbers but what I can clearly say that whatever you see is because of the human activities and not not the other natural processes that is happening maybe our youngsters can induce you can ask some questions other questions okay sir I have one question you said that your material absorbs absorbs or absorbs okay that's very complicated question so when you say a co2 capture it has a two chemical processes one is a physics option it just sit on the surface no chem no chemical interaction another is chemisoption where the amines react with the co2 and there is some chemical reaction so co2 capture is a mixture of two processes it's a physics option plus the chemis and it is because wholly because of the material that you have developed on the surface like amines yeah so it will absorb absorb or adsorb whatever yeah it is only co2 and no other gas yeah so it's it has excellent selectivity over towards the co2 all other other gas like but anyway the nitrogen oxygen are less reactive so they're not really very acidic yeah right but if at all the industry is giving out some acidic fumes also yeah so that's also possible that it'll get absorbed acidic fumes yeah it will get sometimes if the scrubber is not working yeah so then you have to have a two material system right one material which captures the acidic fume and then you capture the co2 yeah this other issue is the water water vapors in the gas yes and most of these materials may not be stable in water water can break these Si NH bond and then there's no more NH2 on the surface but then this material is stable towards water vapors also thank you sir I want to extend ma'am's question that the co2 is means like comparatively less harmful than the other acid gases like SO2 or NO2 or something so instead of focusing on CO2 wouldn't it be better if you first try like reducing the NO and nitrogen oxides or the sulfur oxides or all that okay that's very very good question but what what is the objective the two objective you are thinking about the the the environmental pollution not about the global warming then yes you you want to capture the toxic gases and here what CO2 is like a non-toxic non-toxic obviously non-toxic but I'm not talking about the environmental control I'm talking about the decrease in the global warming where SO2 and NO2 contribute really negligible whereas CO2 contribute very significantly so obviously there are groups which make some material to to take care of the SO2 and NO2 and these toxic gases but here we really want to reduce the these greenhouse gases to reduce the the climate change okay so in at the research level at the lab level we tried up to 10 times if they are okay with the 10 times we say okay one can do it for more than 10 times yeah so these all of them are stable up to 10 times up to 10 at least 10 times that means you can go more you can recycle without any change in the activity sometime you have to activate right like let's say I'm using it for several hours and then these materials can capture some moisture so you have to heat at 100 degrees Celsius for for say 30 minutes or something yeah sometime in some catalysis very general term in some catalysis you don't need they work for months without without any change in the activity some do degrade right depends upon the catalysis sir you told that you will explain the when you showed the CO2 levels in previous years like 50,000 1 lakh years before you told you'll explain how I need to use one slide for that I'll somewhere I wrote I don't have the site but I can explain briefly you know about the carbon dating right and that by that you can get the age of the of the CO2 and then they drill the the ice core very deep and based on the distance of that ice core position from the surface they do the carbon dating and from they back calculate the the age of that that that CO2 and then quantify the CO2 right but if you do more details I think you go to that NASA climate change slide where they have a very detailed explanation for how they do it to oxygen no nothing would happen to because this is SI CS2 CS2 NS2 so these are very stable towards the oxygen even towards the water if you have SI NS2 SI N1 then these are stable to oxygen but not to the water as soon as you put the water then SI NS2 becomes SI OH right but when there are ways to play around and keep the water and oxygen away from these groups sir in that graph that you shown of CO2 levels in past some 1 lakh years in that also there was some sudden increase in CO2 and then sudden drop in CO2 yeah so what was the reason at that time of drop of sudden so that's what the you connect with heats question so there are natural processes which changes the CO2 constant is that's what he is trying to claim but now you can see those levels where at the limit was around 300 ppm but now suddenly we should up to 410 ppm so obviously that also confirms that it is not only the natural processes but also the artificial things that we are doing now mine is a sort of lay question I'm not sure if it's related to your talk but one of the problems we face in India may be in developing countries is of dust when particles in the air of various sizes and various kinds is there any solution possible using these nano particles or by designing I mean is it possible to capture the dust particles in fact that that really one should have asked that question about the safety of the nanomaterials about the toxicity of the nanomaterials what will happen if the nanomaterials will go into the environment that's a challenge ideally so dust particles are still bigger so if the nanoparticles goes in they will go in your lungs and everywhere so that is another challenge of use of nanomaterials so I don't really have the answer whether we can use the nanomaterials to capture these bigger dust particles but yeah that's the challenge of that's really a challenge so what we try to do now can I make a material which is really bigger nano size which will have a less toxicity less environmental cost and still the same activity so one should not only focus on decreasing the size but a bigger size but some of higher surface area any other questions okay then I thank Dr. Paul Shaktiwar for really giving a stimulating lecture and also stimulating many questions from our audience so we'll take a half an hour tea break tea is outside so I request all of you to join for tea and join back at 11 30 when we start with the valedictory function