Bárbara Rodríguez García, PhD student under the supervision of Prof. José Ramón Galán-Mascarós (ICIQ), has defended her PhD Thesis entitled
“Prussian Blue Derivatives as Smart Materials for Technological Applications” (assigned to the Physical and Inorganic Chemistry Department of the Universitat Rovira i Virgili) publicly on July 21st at the ICIQ Library.
The members of the evaluation committee were: Prof. Catalina Ruiz Pérez (Universidad de la Laguna), Prof. Laure Catala (Université Paris Sud) and Prof. Tanja Kallio (Aalto University).
Dr. Rodríguez with her supervisor, Prof. José Ramón Galán-Mascarós, and the evaluation committee
Abstract
The doctoral thesis of Bárbara Rodríguez focuses in the development of new materials with combination of chemical and physical properties based on Prussian blue analogues towards new technological applications. Her first project was to synthesize, in a rational approach, a high temperature chiral magnet by adding the natural aminoacid proline, in vanadium chromium coordination polymers.
Afterwards, she has studied the feasibility of cobalt-iron Prussian blue nanoparticles for oxygen evolution reaction in acid media and in seawater, as a robust and inexpensive catalyst. Furthermore, she investigated those nanoparticles as a non-precious anode catalyst in proton exchange membrane electrolyzers, a commercial technology for hydrogen production. The last part of her PhD work was to explore the viability of introducing alkali atoms in manganese-iron Prussian blue analogues to get a multimodal contrast agent.