Department of Chemistry, FCT-UNL

LAQV-REQUIMTE - Associate Laboratory for Green Chemistry

office 130, ext. 10981

email: al.pinto@campus.fct.unl.pt

Short CV / research interests:

I started my graduation in Biochemistry in 2010, in Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia – Universidade Nova de Lisboa.As my final graduation project, I worked for a semester, with Prof.Dr. Miguel Castanho from Instituto de Medicina Molecular, in a project entitled ‘Investigando um novo papel para a proteína da cápside do vírus do Dengue - oportunidadesbiomédicas.’.In 2013 I began my Master in Biotechnology in FCT-UNL. My master thesis entitled ‘Light Harvesting in Solar Cells using Natural Pigments from Red Fruits Adsorbed to Mesoporous TiO₂’ had as supervisors Dr. César Laia and Prof. Jorge Parola from the Photochemistry and Supramolecular Chemistry group, FCT-UNL. During that year I started my work with anthocyanins and its synthetic derivatives, flavylium cations, studying their photochemical properties and applying them as dye-sensitizers in Dye-Sensitized Solar Cells (DSSCs). When in 2015 I ended my master, I was invited to remain in the Photochemistry group as a fellow researcher, and I started to work in the SACS (Self-Assembly in Confined Space) project NMP4-SL2012-310651, where my work focused in the synthesis and characterization of mesoporous oxide materials for encapsulation of polymer dyes for application in electrochromic cells.

Currently I am a PhD student in Sustainable Chemistry, and I am working in a project entitled ‘Triplet States of Flavylium Dyes in Photovoltaics’ in which the flavylium multistate system will be testedin order to increase the light-to-electricity conversion efficiency in Dye-Sensitized Solar Cells.