News:
2025
Loredana was invited to present the results of our metal boride nanomaterials at the most established conference on coatings: ICMCTF 2025. Numerous opportunities exist in B chemistry and solution-processable hard coatings.
Our patent got granted and it is now published. Congratulations to our inventors!
L. Protesescu, S. Mutalik, J. Hong, WO2025063847,
Title: Hard coatings from metal boride nanocrystals ink, Priority date: 22.09.2023.
Suhas Graduated!!! Congratulation dr. Mutalik!
Jennifer successfully defended her PhD in March and I couldn't be more proud. Congratulation Dr. Hong.
2024
Kush Graduated!!! Our first PhD student successfully defended his thesis.
Congratulation dr. Gahlot!
Congratulation to Wouter for succesfully defending his Master thesis on infrared 3-5 Quantum Dots!
Julia received the best poster prize at CHAINS 2024! Congratulation!
Our group at chains 2024!
Kush represented us at MATSUS fall 2024 in Lausanne! Well done, Kush!
New Master students in the group: we would like to welcome Julius, Kamila and Darius! We wish you very productive projects and a fun time in our group!
Loredana is taking the role of a programme director of Nanoscience Master, an excellent program research oriented for students passionate about nanoscience.
https://www.rug.nl/topmasternanoscience
Our group summer outing was very engaging this year!!
Loredana is now an associate professor (with tenure and ius promovendi). A nice and sweet surprise from the group to celebrate it!
We celebrated the end of school year for primary school in NL. We did a chemistry representation in one of the schools in Groningen. What a success, what a joy to see the kids being fascinated! Many thanks to my team for the help and especially to Wouter!
Congratulation Kush for the best poster prize in the Next Generation PV Materials 2024 conference!
The Next Generation PV Materials 2024 conference was a success! We, the organizers (Maria, Jan Anton, Remco, Giuseppe and I) tank you all for your great contributions.
We were well represented at Colloidal Semiconductor Nanocrystals (GRS) this year in the beautiful Les Diablerets. Kush presented his poster about the tin halide perovskite nanostructures chemistry. Well done, Kush!
Memorable moments for our group in Vlieland, the Zernike Institute for Advanced Materials biannual conference and retreat!
Together with my collaborator Shuxia Tao, from Eindhoven University of Technology, we were awarded an M2 (NWO (Dutch Research Council)) research grant to explore these novel optoelectronic materials. We will discover, study, and synthesize nanoNAPs (nitride antiperovskites nanostructures). Many thanks to NWO (Dutch Research Council), Eindhoven University of Technology and Zernike Institute for Advanced Materials University of Groningen for their support!
We are very proud of our work on colloidal InP QDs surface chemistry, showing that metal salts of group III (Al, In Ga) form complexes with the structure M(Solvent)6]3+, which will cover the surface in polar solvents.
Congrats, Yun for your JACS publications.
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/jacs.4c03325
Our group was represented at @QD2024 conference by Yun, our expert in 3-5 QDs and their surface chemistry! Well done Yun! Very proud!
Our group was well represented in the Dutch NCCC XXV conference! Very proud of our girls! Jennifer, Bianca and Marianna discussed the catalytic systems in electrochemistry and heterogenous chemistry where the stars are metal boride nanocrystals and nano-MOFs! Congratulations to all!
Maria Antonietta Loi and Loredana Protesescu will receive a EUR 1 million grant from the NWO (Dutch Research Council) Open Technology Program (OTP) for research into better image sensors. With an interdisciplinary team, they will develop a type of image sensor for smartphones that can be used for important new tasks such as health monitoring, night vision and assisted autonomous driving.
https://www.rug.nl/fse/news/nwo-funding-for-inproved-image-sensors?lang=en
Jennifer and Suhas did an amazing work and compiled our view on Metal Boride Nanocrystals. Congratulations!
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/acs.chemmater.3c03029
Xavier started his master project on 3-5 semiconductor nanocrystals. He is a master student at EPFL , Switzerland. Good luck Xavier!
Our latest research demonstrating the versatility of ion-exchange processes in Sn-halide perovskite nanostructures is now published open access in RSC Nanoscale!
Available here: https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2024/nr/d3nr06075f
Julia started her PhD project she will work together with our colleagues from SOLAR NL Dutch consortia. Good luck, Julia!
https://www.rug.nl/research/zernike/news/newsitems/202402-solarnl?lang=en
Julia receives her Master degree at the graduation ceremony held at Aula, Academy building, RUG. Proud of you!!
2023
Dr. Quinten Akkerman delivered a guest lecture at the 2nd edition of our Nanokerst Symposium. We @protesesculab wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!!
Glimpse of our presentations from MRS Fall meeting 2023, Boston
Julia N. Kraft begins her Ph.D. journey from December 1st, 2023. Welcome back & all the best Julia!
Our representation at the Annual Zernike PhD Symposium 2023 with 3 poster presentations (Yun, Suhas & Kush) and a session chair (Jennifer)
Beilstein Symposium 2023 Rudesheim, Germany I Nanocrystal Surfaces and Defects - Loredana delivers a talk on our most results on the chemistry of Sn-halide based perovskites - 2D Vs. 3D.
Bianca and Marianna started their master projects on nano-MOFS and catalysis with metal boride nanocrystals. Good luck to both of you!
Aishwairya De and Julius Meijer receive their Master and Bachelor of Science diplomas in their respective graduation ceremonies. Their excitement is for sure unconcealable (especially Julius) !!
EUROPACAT 2023 - Jennifer delivers an oral presentation on the synthesis and application of Nickel boride nanocrystals.
Way to go Jennifer!
Prof. Maksym Yarema visits Zernike Institute, Groningen and delivers an exciting talk about the phase change binary and ternary telluride-based nanocrystals.
Thank you Maksym for your visit!
IUPAC | CHAINS 2023 - Loredana talks about the dimensionality aspect in Sn-halide perovskites nanostructures and Suhas presents an engaging poster on metal borides at nanoscale.
We go outdoors! A lab-outing at Hommes survival and outdoor camp at Zernike.
Our bachelor project student, Julius Meijer successfully finishes his final presentation on cation exchange processes in Sn-halide perovskite nanostructures. Well done Julius!
It's NANAX 2023 time! Protesescu group goes to IST, Austria with their research work on nano metal borides (an oral presentation by Loredana) and Sn-halide perovskites nanostructures (a poster presentation by Kush).
Our master project student, Julia Kraft finishes her final presentation talking about her research work on ssNMR of nano-metal borides conducted at EPFL, Lausanne under the guidance of Dr. Laura Piveteau.
All the very best to her for the future endeavours!
Protesescu group presents their research work in MRS spring meeting 2023 with Loredana discussing about the chemical design of the perovskites and Jennifer talking about the metal-rich borides at nanoscale.
We celebrated the woman's international day with Jennifer giving a very good presentation about her first PhD project, introducing metal borides as our new and exciting research line!
Her work was presented at MATSUS conference, NanoGe Spring 2023.
Well done, Jennifer!
Our first project on metal boride colloidal NCs for electro catalysis is now online. We report in this article how to synthesize highly covalent NixB NCs via solid state synthesis and how to form highly stable inks.
Boron chemistry is fascinating.
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.chemmater.2c03478
2022
We wish you Happy Holidays and a very successful New Year!(we keep the sound only for ourselves but we are very passionate carolers, trust me ;) )
This year, we started a tradition that I loved when I was a PhD student at ETH: the NanoKerst Symposium. We had a great invited speaker, Dr. Laura Piveteau (also ETH alumna), scientific presentation delivered by my team and, in the audience-the youngest members of our group:)
What a pleasure to have dr. Laura Piveteau from EPFL, CH as our guest for this event. She taught us how and why to use ssNMR for nanomaterials. I am so proud of her and fortunate to share research challenges with her!
Welcome to our new team member, Sheikh! Looking forward to working together!
Congratulation to Jennifer for receiving the best poster prize at CHAINS 2022!
Our team was present in CHAINS 2022. We cannot wait for CHAINS 2023!
Congratulation to Kush for receiving the best poster prize for PHD Symposium 2022!
Kush's first paper is now published. Congratulation!
Check it here: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/adma.202201353
