Dear Sir/Madam,

            I am Vairaperumal Tharmaraj, Research Scholar from Madurai Kamaraj University, Madurai, India. My thesis entitled on “Selective sensing of metal ions and neutral analytes using metal nanoparticles/fluorescent probes”. I have submitted my Ph.D thesis 3^rd October-2012 and awaiting viva-voce. My entire research was focused for the development of simple, new fluorescent and colorimetric sensors that can selectively sense toxic metals like mercury and biologically important compounds like copper, zinc, silver ions and also neutral analytes such as glucose. These sensors are classified according to their receptors into several categories, silver nanoparticle based sensing systems, dansylchloride based sensing systems, pyrene based sensing system and which also includes small molecule based sensors. Additional support for sensor application will also be carried out using time dependent density functional theory (TD-DFT) studies using Gaussian 03 package. Practical applications were also carried out in real samples.

I have 7 research publications (selected publications are listed below) with a cumulative impact Factor of 25.49.

1) V. Tharmaraj and K. Pitchumani, Nanoscale, 2011, (3), 1166.

2) V. Tharmaraj and K. Pitchumani, Anal. Chim. Acta, 2012, (751), 171.

3) V. Tharmaraj, S. Devi and K. Pitchumani, Analyst, 2012, (137), 5320.

 Yours truly,

V. Tharmaraj