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Assistant Professor, Chemistry Department

Sara Skrabalak received her B.A. in chemistry from Washington University in St. Louis in 2002. She then attended the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, joining Professor Ken Suslick's laboratory. She received her Ph.D. in chemistry, with an emphasis on materials, from UIUC in the fall of 2006 and was the recipient of the T. S. Piper Thesis Research Award for her dissertation entitled: Porous Materials Prepared by Ultrasonic Spray Pyrolysis. She then did postdoctoral work at the University of Washington – Seattle beginning in 2007 with Professors Younan Xia and Xingde Li. She is currently an Assistant Professor of Chemistry at Indiana University Bloomington.

Her research group is developing new synthetic methods to shape- and architecturally-controlled solids then studying the structure-function relationships of prepared materials as they are applied to energy applications.

Research

Research in the Skrabalak laboratory draws inspiration from many areas of chemical study, with the overall goal being the synthesis and/or construction of multi-functional, hierarchically complex materials that address problems in the fields of catalysis, biotechnology, energy, and environmental remediation.

Current research interests include:

• the development of new photocatalytic materials for solar water splitting and environmental remediation,
• new directions in aerosol chemistry for the synthesis of shape- and architecturally-controlled solids, and
• the synthesis and application of catalytic and plasmonic nanocrystals.

A collection of skrablab electron microscopy images. From left to right, porous SiO₂, concave core@shell Au@Pd nanocrystals, Au nanostars, Bi₂WO₆ nanoplates, and Au/Pd octopods.

For more information visit the skrablab website

Selected Publications

Ortiz, N.; Skrabalak, S. E.* "Controlling the Growth Kinetics of Nanocrystals via Galvanic Replacement: Synthesis of Au Tetrapods and Star-shaped Decahedra" Crystal Growth & Design, 2011, Accepted.

DeSantis, C. J.; Peverly, A. A.; Peters, D. G.; Skrabalak, S. E.* "Octopods versus Concave Nanocrystals: Control of Morphology by Manipulating the Kinetics of Seeded Growth via Co-Reduction" Nano Letters, 2011, 2164-2168.

Mann, A. K. P.; Skrabalak, S. E.* "Synthesis of Single-Crystalline Nanoplates by Spray Pyrolysis: A Metathesis Route to Bi₂WO₆" Chemistry of Materials, 2011, 23, 1017-1022.

Peterson, A. K.; Morgan, D. G.; Skrabalak, S. E.* "Aerosol Synthesis of Porous Particles Using Simple Salts as a Pore Template" Langmuir, 2010, 26, 8804-8809.

Skrabalak, S. E.* "Ultrasound-Assisted Synthesis of Carbon Materials" Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics, 2009, 11, 4930-4942.

Skrabalak, S. E.;* Xia, Y. "Pushing Nanocrystal Synthesis toward Nanomanufacturing" ACS Nano, 2009, 3, 10-15.

Xia, Y.; Xiong, Y.; Lim, B.; Skrabalak, S. E. "Metal Nanocrystals: Simple Chemistry meets Complex Physics?" Angewandte Chemie, 2009, 48, 60-103.

Skrabalak, S. E.; Wiley, B. J.; Kim, M.; Formo, E. V.; Xia, Y. "On the Polyol Synthesis of Silver Nanostructures: Glycolaldehyde as a Reducing Agent" Nano Letters, 2008, 8, 2077-2081.

Skrabalak, S. E.; Au, L.; Li, X.; Xia, Y. "Facile Synthesis of Ag Nanocubes and Au Nanocages" Nature Protocols, 2007, 2, 2182-2190.

Awards

• 2010 National Science Foundation CAREER Award
• 2006 T. S. Piper Thesis Research Award, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
• 2005 Walter Brown Fellowship, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
• 2002 Sowden Award for Undergraduate Research, Washington University in St. Louis
• 2002 Phi Beta Kappa Honorary Society
• 2002 Sigma Xi Scientific Honorary Society

Highlights