Dr. Santanu Kumar Pal
Professor, Chemical Sciences

Major Research Projects:

Design, Synthesis and Characterization of Soft Materials:   The approaches of our laboratory towards functionalized soft materials involve design, synthesis, characterization and functionalization of Liquid Crystals (LCs), search for new cores that form LCs, hybridization of different types of LCs that may form new LC phases and so on. An emphasis on LC polymers having electrical and optical properties will be studied for potential applications to molecular nano-devices.

Metal Ion-Based Chemical Sensing: The goal of this research is to develop principles based on surface-driven orientational ordering transitions in thermotropic LCs that will enable design of chemically-responsive soft-materials. The ultimate goal will focus on development of science and technology that may, in the long term, enable the design of materials capable of responding to their chemical environment.

Nanoparticles in liquid crystals and liquid crystalline nanoparticles:   The main scientific objective in this project is to study and understand the soft self-assembly behaviour of nanomaterials functionalized with organic groups (here LC molecules) to provide a new resource of materials for applications in nanosciences.

Liquid Crystal based Biosensors: Development of new principles which offer the basis of general and facile approaches to the building of new sensing platforms that can report on the presence/organization of biological species at aqueous-LC interfaces.

Nano-channels for efficient Proton Conduction:   Synthesis of new LC phases having a balance between the required supramolecular organization of proton-conducting groups and the flexibility for molecular reorientation. These systems will provide a viable platform for developing efficient proton transporting materials.

Selected Publications

• High Hole Mobility and Efficient Ambipolar Charge Transport in Heterocoronene-Based Ordered Columnar Discotics. De, J., Bala, I., Gupta, S. P., Pandey, U. K., Pal, S. K.*Journal of American Chemical Society (2019), 141 (47), 18799-18805.
• Natural Sunlight Driven Oxidative Homocoupling of Amines by a Truxene-Based Conjugated Microporous Polymer. Battula, V. R., Singh, H., Kumar, S., Bala, I., Pal, S. K.*, Kailasam, K.* ACS Catalysis (2018), 8 (8), 6751-6759.
• High Hole Mobility in Room Temperature Discotic Liquid Crystalline Tetrathienoanthracenes. Bala, I., De, J., Gupta, S.P., Singh, H., Pandey, U. K., Pal, S. K.* Chemical Communications (2020), 56 (42), 5629-5632.
• Observation of polar order and thermochromic behaviour in a chiral bent-core system exhibiting exotic mesophases due to superstructural frustration. Punjani, V., Mohiuddin, G., Kaur, S., Khan, R. K., Ghosh, S., Pal, S. K.* Chemical Communications (2018), 54 (28), 3452-3455.
• A new strategy towards the synthesis of a room-temperature discotic nematic liquid crystal employing triphenylene and pentaalkynylbenzene units. Gupta, M., Gupta, S. P., Rasna, M. V., Adhikari, D., Dhara, S., Pal, S. K.* Chemical Communications (2017), 53 (21), 3014-3017.
• Proton-Triggered Fluorescence Switching in Self-Exfoliated Ionic Covalent Organic Nanosheets for Applications in Selective Detection of Anions. Singh, H., Devi, M., Jena, N., Iqbal, M. M., Nailwal, Y., De Sarkar, A., Pal, S. K.* ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces (2020), 12 (11), 13248-13255.    
• Room-Temperature Columnar Liquid Crystals as Efficient Pure Deep-Blue Emitters in Organic Light-Emitting Diodes with an External Quantum Efficiency of 4.0%. De, J., Yang, W.-Y., Bala, I., Gupta, S. P., Yadav, R. A. K., Dubey, D. K., Chowdhury, A., Jou, J.-H., Pal, S. K.* ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces (2019), 11 (8), 8291-8300.
• A porous, crystalline truxene-based covalent organic framework and its application in humidity sensing. Singh, H., Tomer, V. K., Jena, N., Bala, I., Sharma, N., Nepak, D., De Sarkar, A., Kailasam, K.*, Pal, S. K.* Journal of Materials Chemistry A (2017), 5 (41), 21820-21827.
• Room temperature perylene based columnar liquid crystals as solid-state fluorescent emitters in solution-processable organic light-emitting diodes. Bala, I., Singh, N., Yadav, R. A. K., De, J., Gupta, S. P., Singh, D. P., Dubey, D. K., Jou, J.-H., Douali, R., Pal, S. K.* Journal of Materials Chemistry C (2020), Advance Article.
• Room temperature discotic liquid crystalline triphenylene-pentaalkynylbenzene dyads as an emitter in blue OLEDs and their charge transfer complexes with ambipolar charge transport behaviour. Bala, I., Yang, W.-Y., Gupta, S. P., De, J., Yadav, R. A. K., Singh, D. P., Dubey, D. K., Jou, J.-H., Douali, R., Pal, S. K.* Journal of Materials Chemistry C (2019), 7 (19), 5724-5738.
• Supramolecular self-assembly of thiol functionalized pentaalkynylbenzene-decorated gold nanoparticles exhibiting a room temperature discotic nematic liquid crystal phase. Gupta, M., Mohapatra, S. S., Dhara, S., Pal, S. K.* Journal of Materials Chemistry C (2018), 6 (9), 2303-2310.
• Surfactin Laden Aqueous-Liquid Crystal Interface Enabled Identification of Secondary Structure of Proteins. Verma, I., Valsala Selvakumar, S. L., Pal, S. K.* Journal of Physical Chemistry C (2020), 124 (1), 780-788.
• Liquid Crystal- Based Detection of Pb(II) Ions Using Spinach RNA as Recognition Probe. Verma, I., Devi, M., Sharma, D., Nandi, R., Pal, S. K.* Langmuir (2019), 35 (24), 7816-7823.
• Hydrogen-bond mediated columnar liquid crystalline assemblies of C3-symmetric heptazine derivatives at ambient temperature. Bala, I., Gupta, S. P., Kumar, S., Singh, H., De, J., Sharma, N., Kailasam, K*, Pal, S. K.* Soft Matter (2018), 14 (30), 6342-6352.