Thiruvananthapuram: There are scientists who work on the borderland between physics and chemistry. They may be referred to as physical chemists or chemical physicists. R.S. Swathi, who recently won the INSA Young Scientist Award, tells her students at Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) that the difference is only in the name. The award citation said that the recognition was for her ‘theoretical understanding of carbon-based and metal-based nanostructures.’
She has published 12 articles in international science journals and two in Indian journals over the last five-and-a-half years at IISER. Her papers in ‘Journal of Physical Chemistry’ and ‘Journal of Chemical Physics’ prove that it is good to be working in the overlap of physics and chemistry. Here, she gets to think about interesting things – like say storage spaces so small that a molecule would snugly fit into it.
Chemists all over the world have been working on using carbon nanotubes as storage spaces to hold drug molecules, so that they can be delivered at suitable locations. “The hollow spaces in carbon nanotubes could be used for storage. Here, we have been studying encapsulation of noble gases and carbon clusters into carbon nanotubes,” says Swathi.
She has been studying the properties of carbon-based nanostructures like graphynes and graphenes as sensors. Her team was the first to report the selective ion passage through graphynes. In a collaborative project with IISER professor K. George Thomas, she has also been studying the applications of metal-based nanostructures in surface-enhanced spectroscopy.
