Assistant Professor
Department of Chemistry and Industrial Chemistry - University of Pisa
I am a chemist working at the Department of Chemistry and Industrial Chemistry at the University of Pisa.
I am affiliated with the General and Inorganic Chemistry section and my research involves the design, synthesis and structural characterisation of new porous solid sorbents for carbon dioxide capture.
My main scientific interests lie in the fields of inorganic chemistry, materials chemistry, solid-state chemistry, crystallography (mainly powder X-Ray diffraction) and gas adsorption. Secondary fields of expertise include organic chemistry, microwave chemistry and flow chemistry.
I am co-founder and scientific advisor of novoMOF, a Swiss-based company manufacturing and commercialising metal-organic frameworks.
15/05/2020: New paper out in Inorganic Chemistry: "Influence of Water in the Synthesis of the Zirconium-Based Metal–Organic Framework UiO-66: Isolation and Reactivity of [ZrCl(OH)2(DMF)2]Cl". This is based on work I did during the last stretch of my experience at Paul Scherrer Institut, which dates back to 2016. It took quite some time to get it out, but now I am very happy to finally have it published. Read it here. Preprint available here.
12/03/2020: The paper entitled "Recycling Carbon: An Outreach Activity Designed to Introduce the General Public to Carbon Capture, Utilisation and Storage", has been uploaded to ChemRxiv and is freely accessible. The paper reports our experience with the outreach project Recycling Carbon (for more info see the Outreach section). Read it here.
05/09/2019: Our contribution to the Special Issue Functional Coordination Polymers and Metal–Organic Frameworks in Inorganics of the journal Inorganics has been published: "An Optimised Compaction Process for Zr-Fumarate (MOF-801)". This paper stems from the results obtained during a group project that involved six Master students. Read it here.
19/08/2019: New paper, entitled "Band gap modulation of zirconium-based metal-organic frameworks by defect engineering" is just accepted in the Journal of Materials Chemistry A! It is the result of a successful collaboration with other ESRI members, Imperial College London and University College Cork. I am especially proud of this paper, as it is going to be featured in the "2019 Emerging Investigators" Themed Issue. Read it here. Preprint available here.
15/08/2019: Latest paper, entitled "Investigating the effect of positional isomerism on the assembly of zirconium phosphonates based on tritopic linkers", is out in Dalton Transactions. PhD student Stephen from ESRI contributed to the synthesis and characterisation of the linker. The paper will be part of a Special Issue in honour of Prof Abraham Clearfield, pioneer of metal phosphonate chemistry. Read it here. Preprint available here.
08/06/2019: Louise's paper, entitled "Epoxy-cross-linked Polyamine CO2 Sorbents Enhanced via Hydrophobic Functionalization" has been accepted in the journal Chemistry of Materials. I am very glad to have been involved in this brilliant work, contributing with some gas sorption analysis and discussion. Read it here.
Phone: +39 050 2219602
Address: Via Giuseppe Moruzzi, 13 - 56124 - Pisa (Italy)