cfaed Seminar Series
cfaed Seminar Series
Prof. Gianluca Farinola , Dipartimento di Chimica, Università degli Studi di Bari Aldo Moro, Bari, Italy
Smart architectures from photosynthetic microorganisms and functional organic molecules
21.01.2016 (Thursday)
, 13:00 - 14:00
TU Dresden, Hallwachsstraße 3, Seminar Room 115 , Hallwachsstraße 3 , 01069 Dresden
Photosynthetic microorganisms represent a plentiful source of functional micro/nano structures that can be used to build smart supramolecular architectures and nanomaterials. Combining such specialized structures optimized by billions of years of evolution with tailored molecules paves the way for intriguing new materials for photonics, electronics and biomedicine.
The lecture will present two examples of these nanohybrids.
i) Supramolecular photoconverters by chemical modification of photosynthetic bacterial enzymes. Chemical modifications are introduced to boost the performance of the resulting hybrids vis-à-vis the native protein and to assemble the enzyme molecules onto active surfaces for applications in bioelectronics.
ii) Nanostructures obtained by in vitro and/or in vivo functionalization of ornate biosilica shells of diatoms microalgae with functional organic molecules, for applications ranging from photonics to biomedicine.
The lecture will discuss the logic behind designing and synthesizing these micro/nano assemblies, highlighting the challenges raised by the controlled functionalization.
New concepts for materials’ design and synthesis can be envisaged by combining the biotechnological production and the tools of organic synthesis.
Gianluca M. Farinola (PhD in Chemical Sciences 1997) is Full Professor of Organic Chemistry at the University of Bari Aldo Moro. After holding a position as Researcher from 1996 to 2002, he was appointed Associate Professor of Organic Chemistry at the University of Bari in 2002 and promoted as Full Professor in 2015. In 2009 he was visiting researcher at the University of Muenster, in 2013/2014 Professeur Invitee at the University of Strasbourg and in 2015 invited visiting professor at the University of Angers. Gianluca Farinola’s research focuses on the synthesis of photo- and electro active molecular and nanostructured materials for applications ranging from photonics and electronics to biology. His recent research covers also biological and bio-inspired materials (e.g. melanines) and hybrid systems obtained by combination of photo/electroactive molecules and biological structures from micro-organisms (e.g. algae, bacteria). He has published more than 130 papers in peer-reviewed journals and he has presented about 70 invited lectures. For his research he was awarded the Ciamician Medal of the Italian Chemical Society in 2003 and the CINMPIS Award for Innovation in Organic Synthesis in 2008. He is presently coordinating a research group of about 20 people and he has been the head of national and international projects on organic semiconductors for OLEDs and photovoltaics. He is co-founder of Synchimia, a spin-off company of the University of Bari. Gianluca Farinola is member of the Organic Chemistry Committee of the Italian Chemical Society and Italian representative in the Organic Chemistry Division of EuCheMS.