Kishan Menghrajani

Welcome

Hello, and thank you for visiting. I am Kishan, a physicist by training and a Research Fellow in Chemical and Biological Engineering at Monash University. I work where physics, materials science, chemistry and chemical engineering meet. I focus light with metal nanoparticles, trap it in optical cavities and guide it through atomically thin crystals, and I use these tools to drive chemistry with light, to study single nanoparticles one at a time and to create quantum light. I enjoy explaining these ideas as much as exploring them, and I am always happy to talk science.

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Light meets molecules

I place molecules inside optical cavities, where light and matter share energy and form hybrid states called polaritons. This opens a fresh way to tune chemistry and sensing.

Chemistry driven by light

Metal nanoparticles act as tiny antennas that gather light and pass its energy to the molecules on their surface. I design silver–platinum and perovskite–plasmonic catalysts that turn CO₂ into useful fuels and chemicals under visible light, and I study single nanoparticles one at a time to link the shape and composition of each particle to how it drives chemistry. Part of the ARC Research Hub for Carbon Utilisation and Recycling (RECARB).

Quantum light in flat crystals

Atomically thin crystals host bright single-photon emitters and strong nonlinear optics. I explore them as compact building blocks for quantum technologies.

Dr Kishan S. Menghrajani

Research Fellow, Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering

Monash University, Melbourne, Australia

Physicist by training · Plasmonic photocatalysis · Single-particle spectroscopy · Light–matter interaction · Quantum light

Email: kishansmresearch@gmail.com

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About

Kishan Menghrajani is a physicist by training who now works across physics, materials science, chemistry and chemical engineering. His research asks how light confined to the nanoscale can be put to work: to drive chemical reactions with visible light, to reveal what single nanoparticles are made of, and to create bright sources of quantum light. His work combines nanofabrication, optical spectroscopy and mathematical modelling, and has produced 14 peer-reviewed journal articles and 2 conference papers, including Physical Review Letters and Nature Communications, cited more than 600 times.

He is a Research Fellow in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering at Monash University, where he works with Prof. Akshat Tanksale and Prof. Murali Sastry on plasmonic photocatalysis for visible-light CO₂ conversion within the ARC Research Hub for Carbon Utilisation and Recycling (RECARB) and the Woodside Monash Energy Partnership. From 2023 to 2025 he worked with Prof. Stefan Maier in the School of Physics and Astronomy on single-particle optical metrology, establishing a single-particle dark-field microscopy facility built around a supercontinuum laser and developing correlative optical and electron microscopy of single bimetallic nanoparticles. He received his PhD in physics from the University of Exeter, United Kingdom, in the EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Metamaterials, and was a postdoctoral research fellow there with Prof. Bill Barnes from 2020 to 2023.

Research interests

Plasmonic photocatalysis and visible-light CO₂ conversion
Single-particle spectroscopy and correlative optical and electron microscopy
Molecular strong coupling and polaritons, from mid-infrared vibrations to visible excitons
Mathematical modelling of waves and resonances in layered, periodic and open structures
Nanophotonic design of room-temperature quantum light sources

Recent highlights

2026 Lead investigator, Monash Engineering Early Career Researcher Support and Enabling Scheme
2026 Lead investigator, Monash Engineering Australia/Malaysia Travel Scheme, with A/Prof Lling-Lling Tan, Monash University Malaysia
2026 Australian Synchrotron (SAXS) and ANSTO neutron (SANS) beamtime awards, as co-proposer
2026 Talk at the Gordon Research Conference on Catalysis, USA
2025 Correlative optical and electron microscopy of single bimetallic nanoparticles, The Journal of Physical Chemistry C (first author)
2025 Visible-light CO₂ hydrogenation on plasmonic AgPt nanoprisms, EES Catalysis
2025 Co-taught CHE3172 Nanotechnology and Materials I at Monash University
2024 Invited article on molecular strong coupling and cavity finesse, The Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters

Selected publications

R. Arul, K. S. Menghrajani, M. S. Rider, R. Chikkaraddy, W. L. Barnes, J. J. Baumberg. Raman probing the local ultrastrong coupling of vibrational plasmon polaritons on metallic gratings. Physical Review Letters 131, 126902 (2023).
P. A. Thomas, K. S. Menghrajani, W. L. Barnes. All-optical control of phase singularities using strong light–matter coupling. Nature Communications 13, 1809 (2022).
K. S. Menghrajani, A. B. Vasista, W. J. Tan, P. A. Thomas, F. Herrera, W. L. Barnes. Molecular strong coupling and cavity finesse (invited). The Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters 15, 7449 (2024).
K. S. Menghrajani, F. McLaren, S. A. Maier, M. Sastry. Structure–property analysis of bimetallic plasmonic nanoparticles using correlative optical and electron microscopy. The Journal of Physical Chemistry C 129, 19100 (2025).
G. Bhardwaj, F. McLaren, K. S. Menghrajani, S. Mahasivam, S. A. Maier, M. Sastry, A. Tanksale. Visible-light photocatalytic CO₂ hydrogenation using surface-alloyed plasmonic AgPt nanoprisms. EES Catalysis 3, 811 (2025).
K. S. Menghrajani, W. L. Barnes. Strong coupling beyond the light-line. ACS Photonics 7, 2448 (2020).

Full list on the Publications page.

At a glance

14 peer-reviewed journal articles and 2 conference papers, cited more than 600 times
Principal Investigator, Royal Society International Exchanges grant (2022–2023)
Lead investigator on two 2026 Monash Engineering grants; co-proposer on two 2026 ANSTO beamtime awards
Co-supervisor of an IITB–Monash Research Academy PhD scholar
Reviewer for Advanced Materials, ACS Photonics and five other journals
Research supported by the ARC Research Hub for Carbon Utilisation and Recycling (RECARB), the Woodside Monash Energy Partnership, the Australia–India Strategic Research Fund (AISRF), the Monash Faculty of Engineering, the Royal Society (United Kingdom) and EPSRC (United Kingdom)

Download CV (PDF)