Dr. Sumit Mehan

During the present position, I worked on SAXS study of very low scattering polymers for the applications in Redox flow battery. Precise solvent subtraction through density measurements are utilized to obtain the polymer scattering. I have also been involved with X ray tube exchange and beam alignment for our Kartky camera based Saxess Anton Paar instrument.

In this project, the structural study of Non-equilibrium assembly of magnetic nanoparticles with oppositely charged polyelectrolytes is examined for the fabrication of advanced functional materials. I have been extensively working in laboratory for the formation of non-equilibrium nanoparticle-polyelectrolyte assemblies and analyzing their kinetic evolution using time dependent SAXS and DLS measurements. I was also among the first users to be trained on new Xenocs-Xeuss 2,0 SAXS instrument.

Multi-component systems provide synergistic effects which cannot be achieved through individual components. The present thesis provides an understanding of such a three-component nanoparticle-protein-surfactant system to study the nanoparticle effect on protein-surfactant complexes. In the presence of nanoparticles, the competition of different two-component interactions (nanoparticle−protein, nanoparticle−surfactant, and protein−surfactant) govern the system properties [Langmuir 2013, Langmuir 2014].