Imagine developing a specially designed particle that could use sunlight to react with raw oil and other pollutants in waste water to decompose the hazardous materials.

Clemens Burda, assistant professor of chemistry, has made just such a breakthrough over the past months and plans to create, study and characterize other nova nanomaterials that have the potential to lead to applications in industry and medicine and as alternative energy sources.

Burda has received a five-year, $600,000 National Science Foundation Early Career Development Award for his project, "Study and Control of the Optoelectronic Properties of Ternary Semiconductor Nano-Materials."

The grant enables Burda to add two graduate students to his research group and expand the Center for Chemical Dynamics and Nanomaterials Research, which he directs, in the chemistry department. They will work in the areas of developing nanomaterials for solar cells, photocatalysts that speed chemical reactions and medical markers that can be used as part of the imaging process in detecting cancerous tumors or other maladies.

Burda and his team of researchers will design and study the properties and characteristics and then develop practical applications for these nanoscale materials that range in size from a molecule to bulk size.

While most chemists concentrate on making nanomaterials out of binary compounds, Burda said his research groups already push the frontiers of this new science into the area of using more complex ternary compounds.

"Our experience is that we gain more degrees of freedom and more variability in our materials," he said.

The more complex materials exhibit a greater degree of varying properties that can be used in diverse ways, according to Burda.

While his recent nanomaterials have led to new ways to detect breast cancer tumors and clean up water, he plans to find other practical uses for the new materials under development in his lab.

Nanoscience is a diverse field that incorporates a wide range of disciplines from chemistry, medicine, engineering and biology.

Burda said he would like to use this form of chemistry to reach a diverse student body and train a next generation of scientists. Burda and Cather Simpson, CWRU assistant professor of chemistry, are co-directors of the year-old Center for Chemical Dynamics that focuses on the use of laser technologies. Simpson focuses on biophysical applications in her research, while Burda has directed his efforts in the area of nanomaterials with industrial and medical applications. Burda uses femtosecond-laser spectroscopy to elucidate the physical properties of his novel nanomaterials.

Because this is a new science, Burda said he wants to share this information not only with graduate and undergraduates on campus but with high school teachers and students. He teamed up with James Bader, director of CWRU's Center for Science and Mathematics, to assist teachers and work with them in conducting experiments around this evolving area and to develop new leadership in a new era of science.

Burda said he also sees the potential of working with scientists and students from Fisk University, which has a research group focused on nanomaterials. CWRU and Fisk University in Nashville, Tenn., recently signed an affiliation agreement to include student and faculty exchanges.