ARC Discovery Project
Research Team: Prof. Charles Sorrell, A/Prof. Pramod Koshy, A/Prof. Judy Hart, HDR Students (Sajjad Mofarah, Rashid Mehmood, Zhao Liu, Hongyang Ma, Yuwen Xu, Xiaoran Zheng, Ayda Khosravanihaghigh, Kochurani Johnson, Newton Amaldoss), Honours (Vienna Wong, Zijun Meng, Ewing Chen, Jacqualine Huynh, Yu-Fu Tseng, Amber Liu, Madi Moar, Zile Ye, Alan Cen, Weiyu Guo, Naomi Ho, Chantelle Malacco, Andrew Ham, Gita Naidu, Jason Irawan)
Timeframe: 2017-2020
Objectives
Synthesis-Related Outcomes
Energy / Environmental-Related Outcomes
Biomedical-Related Outcomes
Modelling-Related Outcomes
Objectives
- The aim is to design and engineer ceria of systematically controlled grain sizes and morphologies, using doping methods and processing conditions to achieve optimal characteristics
- The outcomes of the computation, fabrication, and validation approach are intended to be a fundamental knowledge of the processing – performance matrix and the ability to engineer reproducible nano-sized materials of optimised performance
Synthesis-Related Outcomes
- Novel approach of directed assembly presented that offers a template-free, controllable, and cost-effective approach to achieve engineered CeO2−x architectures, which are impossible through existing approaches
- Efficient approach presented to tailor the architecture of nanostructures through control of the kinetics of rapid disassembly/reassembly of an unstable metal-based coordination polymer (MCP)
- Redox/photocatalytic performance depends on the concentration of the active sites on each plane in the form of subsurface-unfilled oxygen vacancies
- Synthesis temperature was found to affect the morphology but elevated [NaOH] and temperature both increase the nanoparticle size
Energy / Environmental-Related Outcomes
- New electrodeposition technique was developed to produce ultrathin CeO2−x films with controllable volumetric oxygen vacancy concentrations with high defect concentrations and excellent volumetric capacitance
- Design of Mo-ion implanted CeO2 nanoflakes to maximize the capacitance performance by achieving accumulative surface redox and intercalation-based redox reactions during the charge/discharge process.
- Mo-based heterojunction on CeO2−x holey nanosheets facilitates intervalence charge transfer and significant decrease in overpotential for HER
- Mo-ion implanted CeO2 nanoflakes showed excellent electrochemical sensing properties for H2O2 sensing
- Cr-doped CeO2 nanostructures showed the formation of heterojunctions which enhanced the photocatalytic performance of unique 3d-2d nanostructures
- Ru-doped CeO2 nanoflakes were fabricated with excellent electrochemical performance
Biomedical-Related Outcomes
- CeO2 nanoparticles showed significant enhancement in cellular ROS while mitochondrial ROS was absent in 2D cellular models. In contrast, significant elevations in both ROS types were observed for the 3D models,
- Exploration of multiple chemistry-driven mechanisms in nanoceria, which are ROS-dependent and ROS-independent, in cancer therapy
- Read more: https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2012/yp/d2bm00334a/unauth
- Ce-based nanoparticles induced intracellular ROS in sarcoma cells.
- Anti-microbial activity of ceria derives directly from the Ce3+ concentration, resulting from solid solubility (substitutional and interstitial) and charge compensation and redox.
- Engineering strategy provides lifetime retention of nanoceria’s surface-active-sites, thereby optimising the catalytic redox activity in the physiological environment and tumour microenvironment for neuroblastoma treatment
- Nanoceria provided cytoprotection to normal cells while cytotoxicity was observed in fibrosarcoma cells.
Modelling-Related Outcomes
- Strategy is presented to design catalysts with high activity is to maximize exposure of surfaces on which the ions have a high degree of undercoordination and a strong tendency to donate/accept electrons
- Application of density functional theory (DFT) calculations to interpret, at the atomic scale, the pH-induced behavior of the stable {111} surface of CeO2 containing oxygen vacancies.
- DFT modelling to understand the silanization of tetraethyl orthosilicate (TEOS) on the surface of ceria (CeO2) as a part of functioanlisation mechanisms in biomedical nanoceria