Congratulations to our Ph.D. student Simona Braccini for her scientific publication entitled “Levulinic acid-based bioplasticizers: a facile approach to enhance the thermal and mechanical properties of polyhydroxyalkanoates” in the journal “Materials Advances”. Plasticizers are the most used polymer additives world-wide. Nowadays, conventional plasticizers (e.g. phthalates) do not meet the requirements in terms of renewability, biodegradability and cytotoxicity that have become necessary, especially if they are compounded with biopolymers.
Chiroptical properties, including Circular Dichroism (CD) and Circularly Polarized Luminescence (CPL), of two sets of Yb, Tm and Er complexes were measured. The lanthanides studied gave access to three discrete energy domains within the NIR region, ranging from 900 to 1600 nm. Exceptionally high discrimination between left and right circularly polarized light was observed in both absorption (gabs) and emission (glum for Yb complexes), with gabs values up to almost the theoretical maximum (±2).
Congratulations to our Ph.D. student Valerio Zullo for the publication of the paper: "Tunable excimer circularly polarized luminescence in isohexide derivatives from renewable resources". In this study, in collaboration with Prof. Anna Iuliano, Prof. Gennaro Pescitelli, and Ph.D. Francesco Zinna, the authors showed the synthesis and chiroptical properties of pyrene and perylene derivatives of inexpensive chiral scaffolds: isomannide and isosorbide. Low-intensity ECD spectra were obtained, suggesting the absence of chromophore interaction in the ground state, except in the case of isomannide bis-perylenecarboxylate, whose ECD spectrum showed a positive exciton couplet.
A new sustainable and accessible solution to overcome marine landfilling employing seashell waste as a bio-filler in polymer composites. Here is the abstract of the last publication of a group of Italian researchers in collaboration with the Consorzio Molluschicoltori Veneti: Jacopo Cangiotti, Marco Scatto, Esteban Araya-Hermosilla, Cosimo Micheletti, Diego Crivellari, Alice Balloni, Andrea Pucci, Alvise Benedetti.
