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A brief overview of the nanostructures seen in nature and their features will be discussed as an introduction to the meeting. We then discuss our results on the control of shape and size of nanostructures using microemulsionsand related methods[1,2]. The morphology of nanomaterials can be controlled by variation of different parameters like surfactant, co-surfactant and the W0 parameter, which in turn control the reaction.We have investigated the detailed mechanism of nanorod formation by studying the growth kinetics by light scattering , electron microscopy and fluorescence correlation spectroscopy[3]. The nanostructures have been chosen for applications in water splitting, photocatalysis and photovoltaics. Metallic nanoparticles (e.g. Cu, Co etc) and binary alloy/composite nanoparticles (e.g. Fe-Co, Co-Ni, Cu-Co etc) are shown to be very efficient as electro-catalysts for hydrogen and oxygen generation [4 ,5].We have also been working on control of organic pollutants through photocatalysis using efficient nano-TiO2[6,7] and 1-dimensional core-shell nanostructures [8,9]. |