DSCM NEWS
100 Years in Chemistry - DSCM students
Gli allievi del 1° anno di dottorato DSCM celebreranno l'anniversario del premio Nobel conferito a Niels Bohr con l'iniziativa "Niels Bohr and the atomic model: 100 years from the Nobel...
Al Dott. Gianluca Casotti il premio C.I.N.M.P.I.S. per la miglior Tesi di dottorato 2022
Il Dott. Gianluca Casotti, attualmente assegnista di ricerca presso i laboratori Molecolab/SoS&PePsy del nostro dipartimento DCCI, è stato premiato dal C.I.N.M.P.I.S., Consorzio Interuniversitario Nazionale di ricerca in Metodologie e Processi...
Bando per il 38° ciclo - Call for 38th cycle
Il bando per il 38° ciclo del Dottorato è stato pubblicato sul sito UNIPI https://dottorato.unipi.it/index.php/it/concorsi-d-ammissione-a-a-2022-2023/item/667.html con scadenza 8 Agosto.The call for the 38th cycle of the PhD has been published...
Congratulations to our Ph.D. student Andrea Taddeucci for winning one of the poster prizes at CD2022, an event organized by "New York University" (NYU) in New York. The title of his poster was "Circular Dichroism Imaging of Novel Chiral Organic Dyes in Thin Film using Diamond Light Source B23 highly collimated Synchrotron Radiation". Thin films of chiral dyes with semiconductive properties open the way to the fabrication of new generation optoelectronic devices with enhanced performances, thanks to the emission of circularly polarized light and the control of electrons' spin. Circular Dichroism (CD) Imaging technique provides preliminary information on the possibility to adopt them in the mentioned devices.
Congratulations to our Ph.D. student Alberto Gobbo for his scientific publication entitled “Hydrogen bonding-enabled gold catalysis: ligand effects in gold-catalyzed cycloisomerizations in hexafluoroisopropanol (HFIP)” in ChemComm. Gold catalysis has witnessed immense evolution in recent years, yet it still requires the use of activators to render the common AuCl(L)] complexes catalytically active. Herein, the H-bonding donor properties of hexafluoroisopropanol (HFIP) are utilized for Au–Cl bond activation and the ancillary ligand and counteranion effects on cycloisomerization reactions are showcased in HFIP as solvent. In addition, HFIP is not only a suitable solvent for gold catalysis with [AuCl(L)] complexes, but it also enables catalysis with Brønsted-basic complexes.
Congratulations to our Ph.D. student Francesca Niccolai for winning one of the best presentations at Macrogiovani 2022, an event organized by "Associazione Italiana di Scienze e Tecnologie delle Macromolecole" (AIM) in Florence. The title of her presentation was "Next-generation composite polymeric membranes for semi-organic redox flow batteries". Redox flow batteries (RFBs) are promising candidates for large-scale energy storage thanks to their long service lifetimes, relatively low capital costs, and independent scaling of energy and power density. The membrane is a pivotal component of RFBs as it determines the performance as well as the economic viability of the batteries.
Congratulations to our PhD student Edoardo Cignoni for his publication entitled "A fast method for electronic couplings in embedded multichromophoric systems". Electronic couplings are key to understanding exciton delocalization and transport in natural and artificial light harvesting processes. The authors develop a method to compute couplings in multichromophoric aggregates embedded in complex environments without running expensive quantum chemical calculations. They use a transition charge approximation to represent the quantum mechanical transition densities of the chromophores and an atomistic and polarizable classical model to describe the environment atoms.
Studio computazionale dei complessi LH2 dei batteri fotosintetici per spiegare l’adattamento delle forme di vita agli ambienti scarsamente illuminati.
Quinto appuntamento con il progetto DSCM di comunicazione della scienza nato dalla collaborazione con Microbiologia Italia. L’articolo divulgativo del mese di maggio è stato realizzato dal Dott. Felipe Cardoso Ramos e curato dal Dott. Nicola Di Fidio. “Il processo di fotosintesi, in piante, alghe o batteri, inizia con l’assorbimento della luce solare da parte dei complessi proteici di raccolta della luce (LH) contenenti diversi cromofori. Quest’ultimi sono molecole o sistemi di legami chimici in grado di assorbire radiazioni elettromagnetiche nel campo del visibile e dell’ultravioletto.
In this work we computationally investigate the reaction of carbon dioxide with [LAuX] (L =phosphine, N-heterocyclic carbene (NHC); X = Al(NON), B(o-tol)2) complexes to get insights into the Al/B anionic and gold ancillary ligand effects on the Au-Al/B bond nature, electronic structure, and reactivity of these compounds. The Au−Al and Au−B bonds have both an electron-sharing nature, with the diarylboryl gold complexes displaying a more polarized Auδ+−Bδ− bond. The gold ligand (phosphine or N-heterocyclic carbene) has a negligible electronic effect on the Au−X bond, consistently with a radical-like reactivity of the complexes with carbon dioxide, which favors the gold-aluminyl over the gold-diarylboryl complexes.