Abstract
Nanotechnology drives modern science and economy, where nanoparticles (NPs) play a crucial role in energy conversion, catalysis, photonics, sensing, and theranostics. Their versatility depends on the ability to tailor -with precision - NP morphology (size, shape) and surface properties, using a large amount of synthetic protocols. These protocols are time demanding and difficult to optimise due to the large number of chemical and physical variables involved. Unfortunately, the cross-correlation between key variables, experimental conditions and characterization results is often poorly understood, limiting the development of new synthetic protocols. The combination of these factors impacts the quality of research with consequent loss of reproducibility of the synthetic procedures reported in the literature. These limitations increase when the NPs architectures become more complex. Design of Experiments (DOE) - a powerful chemometric approach - is one of the few scientific tools able to deal with these limitations. In this project - using DOE optimization protocols - we will tackle the fabrication of NPs having complex and challenging architectures, such as Ag-core silica-shell NPs for ECL applications and bimetallic NPs for applications on catalysis. DOE defines in advance the minimum number of experiments necessary to create multivariate statistical models and can also predict responses under unknown conditions - allowing optimization of all factors to obtain the best responses. Our proposal focuses on the development of DOE protocols to optimize syntheses of NPs with complex architectures combining user-friendly, flexible and free software tools (CAT, by the Group of Chemometrics of the Italian Chemical Society, based on platform “R” and distributed under General Public License), to disseminate a wider use of DOE for NPs fabrication through user-guides easily usable even by scientists inexperienced in chemometrics. Our approach will contribute to disseminating DOE within nano-chemistry, with positive results for the efficiency, sustainability, and quality of the scientific research.
Scientific responsible for the Department
Enrico Rampazzo (PA) – Principal investigator
Partnership
Università di Pavia (Italy)