Prashant V. Kamat

  • Professor, Dept. of Chemistry & Biochemistry
  • Senior Scientist, Radiation Laboratory
  • Concurrent Professor, Dept. Chemical & Biomol. Eng.
  • (574) 631-5411
  • FAX (574) 631-8068
  • Email: pkamat@nd.edu
  • Website
  • 2008 research activities
  • B.S. Chemistry, Karnatak University, India, 6/72
  • M.S., Physical Chemistry, Bombay University, India, 6/74
  • Ph.D., Physical Chemistry, Bombay University, India, 8/79

For more than two decades, Dr. Kamat's group has excelled in research areas that interface basic scientific concepts and engineering aspects of advanced nanomaterials. The bottom-up approach of designing nanostructured assemblies developed in their laboratory not only includes synthesis and characterization, but also involves studying their effectiveness for solar cells and photocatalytic processes. Of particular interest is the design of hybrid nanoassemblies consisting of semiconductor quantum dots, metals, carbon nanotubes and molecular clusters that can be tuned to obtain desired properties for harvesting light energy. A major thrust of research makes use of these materials for photochemical solar cells and photocatalytic hydrogen production. In collaboration with researchers from Notre Dame and international institutions, a strong multidisciplinary research program has been implemented to develop new and effective light harvesting assemblies.

Current Energy Related Research Grants

  • Department of Energy, "Function and reactivity of nanostructure Architectures, 1/1/04-12/31/06, $381K/year.
  • Toyota Central R&D Labs, Inc. Photochemical Solar Cells, 08/20/05 -08/19/07, $40 K

Selected Publications

  1. Robel, I., Subramanian, V., Kuno, M. and Kamat, P. V., Quantum Dot Solar Cells. Harvesting Light Energy with CdSe Nanocrystals Molecularly Linked to Mesoscopic TiO2 Films. J. Am. Chem. Soc., 2006, in Press
  2. Hasobe, T., Fukuzumi, S. and Kamat, P. V., Stacked-Cup Carbon Nanotubes for Photoelectrochemical Solar Cells. Angew. Chem. (Int. Ed.), 2006, in press. (published on the web)
  3. Hasobe, T., Imahori, H., Kamat, P. V. and Fukuzumi, S., Photovoltaic Cells using composite nanoclusters of porphyrins and fullerenes with gold nanoparticles. J. Am. Chem. Soc, 2005, 127, 1216-1228.
  4. Hirakawa, T. and Kamat, P. V., Charge Separation and Catalytic Activity of Ag@TiO2 Core-Shell Composite Clusters under UV-Irradiation. J. Am. Chem. Soc., 2005, 127, 3928-3934.
  5. Hasobe, T., Kamat, P. V., Troiani, V., Solladie, N., Ahn, T. K., Kim, S. K., Kim, D., Kongkanand, A., Kuwabata, S. and Fukuzumi, S., Enhancement of Light-Energy Conversion Efficiency by Multi-Porphyrin Arrays of Porphyrin-Peptide Oligomers with Fullerene Clusters. J. Phys. Chem. B, 2005, 109, 19-23.
  6. Robel, I., Bunker, B. and Kamat, P. V., SWCNT-CdS nanocomposite as light harvesting assembly. Photoinduced charge transfer interactions. Adv. Mater., 2005, 17, 2458-2463.