Nucleation and growth processes play a key role in controlling the structure, microstructure and chemistry and consequently every conceivable property in advanced functional materials. I will present some of our recent work on mechanistic understanding of morphological evolution and interfaces in a variety of material systems for different applications. Recent results on understanding morphology control during wet-chemical synthesis of nanostructures and hybrids will be presented.
One of the intriguing issues in nanostructure synthesis is the formation of anisotropic structures (for instance, nanowires or plates) of high-symmetry crystals. I shall present examples of formation of nanowires and plate-shaped structures of cubic metals and describe the symmetry-breaking necessary for the formation of such structures. This fundamental understanding answers several long-standing questions on the morphology of synthetic crystals as well as some naturally grown ones like the apatite phase in the bone. Our approach to extend this understanding for producing nanoporous/hybrid structures will be presented. I will also discuss our recent results on the mechanism for formation of supported catalysts using microwave-assisted reduction methods.