Basudeb Basu
Visiting Professor, Department of Chemistry, Raiganj University, Raiganj 733134, India
Title: Functionalized Graphene Nanomaterials in Catalysis
Biography
Biography: Basudeb Basu
Abstract
Catalysis plays an integral part of industrial chemical processes and about 90% are catalytic processes. Heterogeneous catalysts enjoy some privileges over homogeneous counterparts because of advantages like low loadings, easy separation, recyclability etc. Intrinsically, catalysis is a surface phenomenon and several insoluble organic and inorganic nanomaterials with high surface area exhibit better catalytic performances.
Graphene is an infinite two-dimensional carbon monolayer made entirely of sp2 carbon atoms arrayed in a honeycomb fashion. Graphene and other chemically modified graphene (CMGs) have been used in catalysis over the last decade. While CMGs are often used in organic catalytic processes utilizing the advantages of different functional groups and high surface area, reduced graphene oxides (considered as equivalent to graphene), having rich p-electron networks and high surface area are often decorated with metal nanoparticles (NPs) and the resulting nanocomposites could serve as potential heterogeneous nanocatalysts in diverse metal-catalyzed organic reactions.
With a brief background on the process of making different carbon nanomaterials, judicious functionalization and fabrications with metal/metal oxide NPs along with some of our research findings in graphene-based catalytic applications will be discussed in this presentations.