Department of Chemistry, FCT-UNL

LAQV-REQUIMTE - Associate Laboratory for Green Chemistry

office 402-B, tel. +351212948300, ext. 10923

email: catl@fct.unl.pt

At REQUIMTE since 2006, I did my PhD thesis in Chemical Engineering at Instituto Superior Técnico, specialized in Photochemistry and Colloidal Chemistry. With a strong background in photochemical processes at soft interfaces such as in reversed micelles, at REQUIMTE my research interests are focused on chromogenic (photochromism, thermochromism and electrochromism) or luminescent materials:

1. As part of this group, I have contributed to current research on photochromic flavylium systems mainly applying photochromism knowledge and by introducing this chromogenic system heterogeneous systems such as reversed micelles.
2. In collaboration with YDreams/Ynvisible, world leading applied research in electrochromism is ongoing and from this collaboration several scientific papers and patents were published. These electrochromic systems are both organic (by using semiconductor polymers) or inorganic (using metal oxides), showing large color contrasts between on/off states, fast switching times and very high durability. This work is currently supported by the FP7 project SACS.
3. A collaboration with VICARTE, as leaded to development of photochromic/photoluminescent inorganic glasses and/or pigments. The main advantage of inorganic photochromic pigments is their resistance to photo-oxidative degradation, and therefore it is a major challenge to develop this type of materials. Currently research using silver hallides and sulfur clusters in glass or zeolite matrixes is being carried out.
4. The development of intrinsically luminescent ionic liquids is also a research interest, mainly due to their promissing applications across several areas (e.g., oLEDs, glass surface cleaning).

Major funding for research raised from FCT-MCE, QREN technological projects and FP7 projects (as participant).

5 selected publications:
(full publication list: RID ; RG ; SID)

“Photochromism of 4’,7-dihydroxyflavylium in a AOT reversed micelle system”, V. Petrov, C.A.T. Laia*, F. Pina*, Langmuir, 25 (2009) 594. DOI: 10.1021/la802587d

“Formation of Eu(III) Nanoparticles on Borosilicate Sol-Gel Studied with Time-Resolved Luminescence Techniques” M. Ventura, C.A.T. Laia*, A.J. Parola, J. Phys. Chem. C 114 (2010) 18414-18422. DOI: 10.1021/jp106844t

“Inkjet printing of sol-gel synthesized hydrated tungsten oxide nanoparticles for flexible electrochromic devices” C.B. Costa, C. Pinheiro, I. Henriques, C.A.T. Laia*, ACS Appl. Mater. Interfaces 4 (2012) 1330–1340. DOI: 10.1021/am201606m

“Electrochromic Properties of Inkjet Printed Vanadium Oxide Gel on Flexible Polyethylene Terephthalate/Indium Tin Oxide Electrodes” C.B. Costa, C. Pinheiro, I. Henriques, C.A.T. Laia*, ACS Appl. Mater. Interfaces 4 (2012) 5266-5275. DOI: 10.1021/am301213b

“Europium(III) tetrakis(β-diketonate) complex as an ionic liquid – a calorimetric and spectroscopic study”, C.C.L. Pereira, S. Dias, I. Coutinho, J.P. Leal, L.C. Branco, C.A.T. Laia*, Inorg. Chem. 52 (2013) 3755-3764. DOI: 10.1021/ic3023024