Improving nutrient-use efficiency in agriculture is an urgent global challenge, as a substantial fraction of conventional fertilizers is lost through leaching, runoff, or chemical fixation before plant uptake. These losses not only reduce agricultural efficiency but also contribute to environmental issues such as eutrophication and soil degradation. While controlled-release and coated fertilizer technologies have been introduced to mitigate these problems, many current approaches rely on non-degradable materials, exhibit limited responsiveness to dynamic soil conditions, or remain economically impractical for large-scale deployment.
A fundamental limitation of existing fertilizer systems is their inability to adapt nutrient retention and release to local soil chemistry, particularly pH, which plays a central role in governing nutrient availability and mobility. Addressing this challenge requires new materials concepts that couple environmental responsiveness with scalability and sustainability.
At a foundational level, our research is interested in developing design principles for pH-responsive nanofertilizers based on economically viable materials. We focus on leveraging abundant biomass resources and exploring novel functional-group chemistry to understand how molecular interactions between nutrients, carrier materials, and soil environments can be harnessed to achieve selective, condition-dependent nutrient behavior. These studies aim to establish fundamental insights that can guide the rational development of next-generation nanofertilizers with improved efficiency and reduced environmental impact.