Skrabalak Laboratory and Friends

08/15/2025

Here is a great video and news release on the NSF Center for Single-Entity Nanochemistry Design featuring Megan Knobeloch from the Skrabalak group, co-advised Nilotpal Kapuria from the Skrabalak group and Xingchen Ye's group as well as Guo from Xingchen Ye's group and Oscar Medrano from Ricardo Javier Vázquez's group. Collaborative science is fun and a great training environment for students. Thanks NSF Chemistry's Centers for Chemical Innovation Program!

08/14/2025

Sara is super excited to report that The Center for Single-Entity Nanochemistry and Nanocrystal Design, CSENND, is for Phase 2 through Chemistry's Centers for Chemical Innovation program. You can read more about this award and CSENND's research in the press release. I want to give a huge shout out to the amazing team that came together over the past 3 years to realize this outcome. To the student and postdoctoral researchers, you have been amazing to collaborate with. We have learned so much together and produced amazing science and technology! Thank you for making this possible. I am excited to continue this journey with Xingchen Ye, Ricardo Javier Vázquez (both Indiana University Bloomington), Lane Baker, Xin Yan (both Texas A&M University), Katherine Willets (Temple University), Graeme Henkelman (The University of Texas at Austin), Andrea Pickel (University of Rochester), Eric Stach (University of Pennsylvania), Paul Kenis (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign), Li (Purdue University), and David J. Masiello (University of Washington). Finally, I want to thank our friends, colleagues, reviewers, and NSF Program Officiers who gave us feedback over the years. You have made us stronger and we look forward to your continued honesty and support. So excited!!! We will be launching formal social media accounts to track our Phase 2 progress in the near future! https://news.iu.edu/college/live/news/46709-iu-led-multi-institutional-nanoscience-center

08/11/2025

Congrats to Nabojit Kar on his review on and analysis of high entropy alloy nanoparticle synthetic methods in Nature Reviews Materials! Way to go!

High-entropy nanomaterials are characterized by the incorporation of five or more principal elements in nearly equal proportions. This Review highlights how different synthetic methods for these nanomaterials can facilitate control of phase and particle size and shape for applications such as cataly...

08/08/2025

Big shout out to all the students organizing the Chemistry Department' Career Development Symposium, including Megan and Aditi from the group. Such important service. And it was so nice to catch up with alum Matt Gordon who spoke in the symposium about postdoctoral positions at national laboratories. Way to go, all!

07/30/2025

We celebrated Maha's contributions to the group tonight with a group dinner at Osteria Rago. Lovely time. And we finally were able to give Nayana her print too!

07/30/2025

On Monday, Karla finished her REU in our group, synthesizing very uniform gold nanoparticles for CLocK studies by the Willets group as part of the Center for Single-Entity Nanochemistry and Nanocrystal Design. She gave a fabulous exit presentation! We will miss you! Thank you Megan for the great mentorship.

07/27/2025

Congrats to postdoc Nil Kapuria! He was recently recognized by the ACS Graduate Student and Postdoctoral Scholars Recognition Program for his excellence in mentorship. As one group member shared, "Nil is extremely knowledgeable about many different topics, making him a very helpful resource for troubleshooting any problems that any of us may be experiencing in our research. More importantly though, Nil truly loves science and helping people, making him someone that people trust and are comfortable going to with questions or requests for help."

07/27/2025

Congrats to Rodger Russell! He completed his summer research experience in our group, learning lots about nanoparticle synthesis and moving forward our high entropy project! He presented a poster of his accomplishments Friday in the closing ceremony. Way to go!

07/23/2025

Yesterday we celebrated Sixie, Rodger, and Karla's contributions to the group with ice cream. It was a perfect treat given the humidity! They are amazing visiting undergrad researchers and their programs will be wrapping up over the next few weeks! Thanks all!

07/17/2025

We are excited to welcome Sixie Chen to the group for a research experience for undergraduates. He is a third-year undergraduate student from Tsinghua University, China. Before joining us, he conducted research in transmission electron microscopy under the supervision of Professor Lin Gu and in solid-state ionics under the supervision of Professor Di Chen. He is currently working with Nil on electrochemical syntheses of nanocrystals.

07/16/2025

Today we celebrated all of Nayana's contributions to the group and her completion of her PhD with a trip to Dave & Buster's. What fun!!!

07/16/2025

Megan Knobeloch took lead on the latest from the Center for Single-Entity Nanochemistry and Nanocrystal Design! A beautiful open-access, editor's choice Perspective written by students from every group in the center. Fusing expertise in analytical and physical chemistry, material synthesis and characterization, and theory to bring forward our vision that there needs to be continued emphasis on high-throughput and high-resolution single-particle techniques to achieve accurate structure property relationships and facilitate nanoparticle design. We hope you enjoy it! The students did an amazing job and special thanks to Megan for coordinating and integrating everyone's voices.

Metal nanocrystals (NCs) show utility in a variety of applications due to their unique structure-dependent properties. Isolating these structure–property relationships is crucial for NC design, but heterogeneities present in NC ensembles as well as limitations in NC characterization strategies com...