Smart Rubber Nanocomposites: Opportunities, Innovations and Roadblocks

Dr. Saritha Appukuttan was awarded her PhD from Mahatma Gandhi University in 2012 working in the field of polymer nanocomposites. She has also been worked for two years on the development of gas barrier membranes on an ISRO (Indian Space Research Organization) project. She has published around 25 book chapters with highly reputed publishers and several research papers in high impact international journals such as Composites Part A, Composites Part B, and Materials Chemistry and Physics and has edited two books on “Fibre Reinforced Composites: Constituents, compatibility, perspectives and applications (Elsevier) and on “Luminescent Metal Nanoclusters (Elsevier). Currently, she is editing two more books on “Lignin and its Composites: A sustainable tool for health care and medical applications and “Zero-Dimensional Carbon Nanostructures to be published by RSC and Elsevier, respectively.

Dr. Mayank Pandey completed his Ph.D. in materials science from VIT University, Vellore, India, on the topic “Preparation and characterization of polymer electrolyte for electrochemical device applications. He then went on to complete his postdoctoral studies in electrical and thermal degradation of graphene-based polymer composite for electronic device applications from CHRIST (Deemed To Be University) Bangalore, India. He is an experienced material physicist with an experimental background in synthesizing graphene quantum dot- (GQDs) based polymer nanocomposites. His research areas also include fabrication of polymer blends and composite electrolytes, organic semiconductor/organic solar cells, and their impedance spectroscopy analysis. Besides investigating the structural, optical, and electronic properties of GQDs based materials, he has also contributed towards the development of new approaches in the field of nanocarbon derivatives.

Dr. Kalim Deshmukh is a Senior Researcher at the New Technologies-Research Centre, University of West Bohemia, Pilsen, Czech Republic. He has over 15 years of research experience in the field of synthesis, characterization and structure-property relationships in a wide variety of polymeric materials, polymer blends and nanocomposites for various technological applications. His research interest is mainly focused on the synthesis, characterization and property investigations of polymer nanocomposites reinforced with different nanofillers including nanoparticles and carbon allotropes such as carbon black, carbon nanotubes, graphene and its derivatives for potential electronic applications.