Decontaminating Agents for Chemical Warfare

Knowledge of and the ability to manipulate matter at the nanoscale offers the materials designer an independent degree of freedom and the ability to express new properties not exhibited by bulk materials. The new chemical or physical properties expressed is a result of a disproportion number of atoms or ions residing at the surface or grain boundary as compared to materials lacking a nanoscale feature. High surface area metal oxides have been known to exhibit chemical properties of interest in particular with respect to absorption and their bioactivity. By controlling the structure at nanoscale we propose to create materials that can be integrated into a bioinorganic composite capable of destroying and detecting biological warfare agents.