Welcome to my personal website!

My name is Mahmut Ruzi, a chemist. I am currently working as a research fellow at Erciyes University’s Nanotechnology Research and Application Center (ERNAM) in the lab of Prof. M. Serdar Onses.

The side view of ERNAM building. Taken by Mahmut Ruzi on a typical summer day of 2021.

I am currently working on the fabrication, simulation, and characterization of plasmonic nanostructures for surface enhanced vibrational spectroscopy. Before coming to Turkey, I studied the formation of molecular clusters and ices relevant to Earth’s and other planets atmosphere using infrastructures at the Australian Synchrotron, under the supervision of Dr. Evan Robertson from La Trobe University. My Ph.D thesis can be accessed from La Trobe University’s library here. Before that, I studied molecules by trapping them in molecular solid hydrogen at very low temperatures (2 K) at the University of Wyoming under the supervision of Prof. David Anderson.

The general theme of my research is physical chemistry and over the years I have accumulated over 10 years of experience in researching and studying vibrational spectroscopy, specifically Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy.

In addition to working on plasmonic nanostructures, I also supervise students on other projects in Prof. Onses’ group. One of these projects is the development of super water-repellent coatings and surfaces, also known as superhydrophobic surfaces. These surfaces have very low surface energy and repel water and other liquids with high surface energy. They have many potential uses, and I am excited to accompany students in their journey of researching and exploring them.

News

November 20th, 2023

• New paper about solvent-free preparation of antifouling liquid-like slippery surfaces exploiting mechanochemical degradation of PDMS is published in ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces.
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  August 10th, 2023

• Latest work just published in ACS Applied Nano Materials. Is solvent necessary in chemical reactions ? No necessarily! In this paper, we demonstrated hydrophobic modification of silica nanoparticles without using any solvents! The key is mechanochemistry. Read more for details.

  July 15th, 2023

• I attended the 19th Asian Chemical Congress in Istanbul and presentted my work on the optimization of plasmonic nanostructures for surface enhanced IR absorption.

  May 19th, 2023

• a new paper about structural determination of propynal using THz and microwave spectroscopy, aided by theoretical calculations, has just been published in Journal of Molecular Spectroscopy