- Professor, Chemistry
Research Interests
- Nanotechnology and Material Science and Physical Chemistry
Education
- Post-Doc, Institute of Molecular Biophysics at Florida State University
- Ph.D., University of California at Berkeley
Dr. Akins principal research focus involves quantum properties of molecular nanostructures and the exploitation of such properties for formulating new nanomaterials with uses in molecular photonic devices (MPDs) and/or chemical sensors. Small groupings of molecules (principally, in our case, so-called molecular aggregates) serve as the active agents. For MPDs the same types of photonic/optoelectronic applications as systems derived from epitaxially prepared inorganic semiconductor superlattices or conjugated organic polymers are anticipated. For chemical sensor applications, the aim is to form robust and highly manipulable new nanomaterials with unique spectral properties for analyses purposes.
Selected Publications
- (124) "Synthesis of hollow ellipsoidal silica nanostructures using a wet-chemical etching approach," ChemComm. Submitted July 2011, Manuscript #: CC-COM-07-2011-014607.
- (123) "Methanol Oxidation on Carbon-Supported Pt-Ru-Ni Ternary Nanoparticle Electrocatalysts," Juanying Liua, Jianyu Cao, Chong Du, Xigui Zhang, Hui Yang and Daniel L. Akins. In revision, J. Electrochem. Soc., 2008.
- (122) "Synthesis of Hollow and Solid Silica Spheres Using a "Local Chemical Etching" Strategy," Henan Zhang, Yu Zhao and Daniel L. Akins, submitted to Journal of Colloid and Interface Science, February 2011.
- (121) "An Efficient reduction route for Pd-Pt nanoparticles anchored on graphene nanosheets as durable oxygen reduction electrocatalysts," Wei He, Huijun Jiang, Zhiqing Zou, Daniel L. Akins and Hui Yang, Carbon, 50, 265-274 (2012).