MARIA CHIARA DI GREGORIO, "RITA LEVI MONTALCINI" research programme
Maria Chiara Di Gregorio chose the Department of Chemistry to perform her Rita Levi Montalcini programme. Its funded by MIUR to allow young researchers working abroad to come to Italy called by a state university to carry out their research.
The Department Head, Luciano Galantini, is pleased to invite you to the Maria Chiara Di Gregorio's seminar:
Metal-organic crystal: shaping, uniformity and symmetry breaking
Maria Chiara Di Gregorio
Department of Molecular Chemistry and Materials Science - Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot (Israel)
Abstract
The relationship between crystallization conditions, crystal structure and properties is a pivotal point in chemistry both for the investigation of fundamental aspects and for applications. The interest spans from the macro- to the nanoscale and the gamut of natural, laboratory-made, organic and inorganic systems.1
In our study, we investigate the factors affecting the dimension and morphology of metal-organic crystals. Typically, micro-nano crystals grown by additive-free synthesis are polydispersed in size, exhibit non-homogeneous shape or common polyhedral morphologies. We have developed a new additive-free synthesis that results in the formation of monodispersed crystals with a large variability of morphologies, while keeping the crystallographic structure nearly identical.2 The set of crystals generated include rare polyhedral shapes, hollow structures and paradoxical morphologies that are not classifiable according to conventional rules.2,3 Metal-coordination chemistry was also exploited for the formation of superstructures assembled from organic tubular crystals.4
Our work provides new fundamental insights in the growth of chiral crystals and aggregates, opening up opportunities for their use as 3D objects for nanotechnological applications.
The seminar will be held on Tuesday 23 November from 11.00 on Google Meet: https://meet.google.com/evx-vvne-seh