THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Nanoscience has achieved remarkable developments to serve the evolving needs of society including green energy, reducing pollution, new electronic and magnetic devices, said Shiv Khanna, commonwealth professor at Virginia Commonwealth University. “It has also facilitated medial break throughs for deadly diseases and production of novel drugs by effective catalysts,” he said while addressing an international symposium on “clusters, cluster assemblies and nanomaterials (ISCAN) here the other day. Khanna said cluster assemblies that offer attractive proposition of forming materials with desirable combination of properties was the next frontier in the field of nanoscience. “ Since the properties of clusters change with size and composition, cluster assemblies facilitates forming materials with desirbale combination of properties,” he said. “An exciting development in nanoscience is the formation of materials whereby nanoscale clusters serve as building blocks,” Khanna added. Prof Richard Palmer, head, Nanoscale Physics Research Laboratory and professor of experimental physics, University of Birmingham, Denis Salahub, University of Calgary, Canada, Stefan Vajda of Argonne National Laboratory, USA and IISER faculty member Sukhendu Mandal presented papers. Conference fruitful IISER director V Ramakrishnan said that conference was unique for it focused on physics and chemistry of clusters and electronic structure and energetics of crystals where the clusters form building blocks. “A very great deal of exploration on understanding the cluster-assembled materials and methods developed to control their design and function was made by delegates,” he told reporters.

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