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Venkata Suresh Mothika
Ph.D. (JNCASR Bangalore)
Assistant Professor, Department of Chemistry
Research Interest
Porous Organic Materials, Photocatalysis, Supramolecular Chemistry
Office
Old core extension 101H
Department of Chemistry
IIT Kanpur
Kanpur 208016, India
Specialization
Organic materials, Photocatalysis, Supramolecular chemistry
Education
Ph.D. (2016): Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research (JNCASR), Bangalore, India
JRF Assistant (2011): IIT-Madras
M.Sc. (2009): NIT-Trichy
B.Sc. (2007): Andhra Loyola College, Acharya Nagarjuna University (ANU), Andhra Pradesh,
Selected Publications
S. K. Rajput, V. S. Mothika*. Powders to Thin Films: Advances in Conjugated Microporous Polymer Chemical Sensors. Macromol. Rapid Commun. 2024, 2300730.
S. K. Rajput, R. Kaur, M. Yadav, A. Sahoo, V. Chechik, P. K. Samanta, P. C. Mondal and V. S. Mothika.* pi-Conjugated Blatter radicals: Molecular structure driven modulation of optoelectronic properties and electrical conducitivity. ChemRxiv. 2025
A.K. Kapoor, N. Sahoo, S. K. Rajput, P. K. Samanta and V. S. Mothika*. Dual Function: Practical Nanomolar Antibiotic Detection and Photocatalytic Micropollutant Degradation Using Thiazolothiazole Conjugated Microporous Polymer. ACS Appl. Polym. Mater. 2025, 7, 7672-7685
*Mothika, V.S., Baumgarten, M., Scherf, U. Neutral, π-radical-conjugated microporous polymer films of nanoscale thickness for potential use in magnetoelectronics and sensor devices. ACS Appl. Nano Mater., 2019, 2, 4832-4841. (Cover Art)
*Mothika, V.S., Räupke, A., Brinkmann, K. O., Riedl, T., Brunklaus, G., Scherf, U. Nanometer-thick conjugated microporous polymer films for selective and sensitive vapor-phase TNT detection. ACS Appl. Nano Mater., 2018, 1, 6483-6492.
#Sutar, P., #Mothika, V.S., Jayaramulu, K., Hazra, A., Maji, T. K. Binder driven self-assembly of metal-organic cubes towards functional hydrogels. Nat. Commun., 2018, 9, 1-12.
Mothika, V.S., Bonakala, S., Atreya, H. S., Balasubramanian, S., Maji, T. K. Amide functionalized microporous organic polymer (AM-MOP) for selective CO2 sorption and catalysis. ACS Appl. Mater. Interfaces., 2014, 6, 4630-4637.
Mothika, V.S., George, S. J., Maji, T. K. MOF nano-vesicles and toroids: self-assembled porous soft-hybrids for light-harvesting. Adv. Funct. Mater., 2013, 23, 5585-5590. (Cover Art)
Awards & Fellowships
2020 Member of Royal Society of Chemistry (MRSC), UK
2019 The Royal Society Newton International Fellowship
2019 PBC Postdoctoral Fellowship, Israel
2017 AvH Foundation nomination for 67th Lindau Nobel Laureates Meeting
2016 Alexander von Humboldt (AvH) Foundation Research Fellowship
2016 Irish Research Council (IRC) Research Fellowship (declined to accept AvH Fellowship)
2014 Council of Scientific & Industrial Research (CSIR, India) Travel Grant (Declined to accept DST grant)
2010 All India CSIR-NET (JRF), GATE (IIT-Guwahati)
Professional Experience
2020-2022 The Royal Society Newton International fellow, University of York, United Kingdom
2019 PBC research fellow, Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel
2016-2018 Alexander von Humboldt (AvH) research fellow, Bergische Universität Wuppertal, Germany
Current Research
One of the major research focuses is on the development of porous organic polymer materials for chemical sensing and photocatalysis applications. Particularly interested in design aspects of conjugated microporous polymers (CMPs) based optical and electrochemical sensors for sensing of explosives, antibiotics and metal ions including uranyl ions etc. Further, we put efforts into understanding the structure-property relationship of photoactive CMPs and exploring their applications in photocatalytic reactions, including H2O2 production, uranium capture from seawater, etc.
On the other hand, we are also interested in development of open shell organic molecular materials based on air-stable organic radicals for applications in organic electronics. Current focus is mainly on the design and development of new conjugated Blatter organic radicals and understand their functional properties including redox-activity, optical properties, magnetic and electronic properties. Read through our publications for more details.
Together, our group members will be well expertized in organic synthesis and materials chemistry knowledge during their research tenure. Gain significant training on handling and analyzing various techniques such as NMR, UV-Vis/NIR, Cyclic voltammetry, Fluorimeter, SEM/TEM/AFM, TGA, XPS etc.