Apparao Rao | Enhanced Performance in Imperfect Materials

Nanoscience, which propelled many game changing technologies, now relies on public acceptance. Nanotechnology is changing our energy landscape and healthcare, and nanotech can prevent another asbestos debacle.

About Apparao

Apparao Rao is currently the R. A. Bowen Professor of Physics and a Fellow of the American Physical Society and AAAS. He received his PhD in physics from University of Kentucky in 1989 and subsequently served as a post-doctoral research associate at MIT until 1991. Later, he joined University of Kentucky as a research assistant professor before coming to Clemson in 2000.

His laboratory is dedicated to understanding the atomic, magnetic, electrical, optical, and biophysical/biochemical properties of micro- and nano-structured materials. Apparao’s research interests include the characterization and applications of carbon nanotubes, semiconducting nanobelts, nanowires and thermoelectric materials.

His group’s strength lies in the ability to synthesize several nano-structured materials (using various growth techniques such as electrical arc, chemical vapor deposition and pulsed laser vaporization) and explore the fundamental physics in nanostructured systems (using a wide range of characterization techniques such as Raman scattering, infrared, UV-visible, fluorescence, non-linear optical spectroscopy, harmonic detection of resonance method, atomic force microscopy, electron microscopy and electrical transport measurements).

In addition to two grants from NSF and one grant from DOE/SCUREF, he is presently serving as the principal investigator on NIH/NIEHS R15 grant to understand the interactions of nanomaterials with biomolecules.