The Department of Chemistry is organising a Guest Lecture titled “A journey towards the development of sustainable energy materials: Bioinspired to hierarchical coordination molecules” on April 10, 2026. Prof. Bhaskar Biswas, Laboratory for Structural Engineering, Department of Chemistry, University of North Bengal will deliver the lecture.
Abstract
Bioinspired coordination compounds hold great promise for unveiling mechanistic insights into biological functions. Contextually, the active site of metalloproteins and metalloenzymes may provide a foundation for the rational design of sustainable energy materials. However, such bioinspired small coordination compounds impose a huge barrier for the pilot-scale production of green energy. This limitation triggers the aim to design hierarchical coordination compounds, specially metal-organic frameworks (MOFs). Nowadays, MOFs have marked their footprints as the “Holy Grail” in the design and development of advanced energy materials. Evidently, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2025 to Susumu Kitagawa, Richard Robson, and Omar M. Yaghi “for the development of metal–organic frameworks”, fueling the rigorous application of pristine MOFs, MOFs-based composites as well as electrochemically-triggered active species. 3 Additionally, the upsurging of cost-effective de novo electrocatalysts through the operando electro-oxidation approaches holds great promise for the scalable production of green energy in the pursuit of energy sustainability. This talk summarizes the journey of small coordination compounds to hierarchical molecules and an operando electro-oxidation reconstitution strategy in producing a smart electrocatalyst cobalt “oxyhydroxide “derived from a newly designed 2D cobalt (II) metal-organic framework, NBU-4, directly grown on nickel foam, NBU-4/NF@CoOOH.
The guest lecture is organised by Dr Sabyasachi Chakrabortty, Associate Professor & HoD, Department of Chemistry, Faculty Advisor, Energy, Centre for Interdisciplinary Research (CIDR).