BioPoweredCL aims to develop an unprecedented strategy to enable molecular imaging by realizing near infrared luminophores that harvest energy from the cellular respiration chain, in order to emit light without being consumed themselves. BioPoweredCL takes advantage of the most recent progress in artificial light production to develop a novel imaging technique where the absence of an excitation source overcomes the current limitations of fluorescence imaging while the regeneration of the luminophore overcomes the limitations of bioluminescence imaging. Coordinator: Prof. Alessandro Aliprandi

Sustainability is the way of thinking and acting that nowadays we must put at the center of our lives to try to save the future of next generations. Following this way of thinking, in this project the organometallic chemistry of aluminum, one of the most abundant metals in the Earth crust, will be explored with the aim of preparing a novel class of homogeneous catalysts for CO₂ fixation into cyclic carbonates and polycarbonates. ReAlCat aims at pushing research well beyond the state of the art in this respect, by developing a new family of Al(III) catalysts for the reaction between epoxides and CO₂ bearing mixed NHC-phenolate tetradentate ligands. The novel catalysts will be tested in the synthesis of cyclic carbonates and of aliphatic polycarbonates. An optimization of the reaction will be carried out, always aiming in reaching milder conditions in terms of reaction temperature and CO₂ pressure compared to that present in the literature.

Coordinator: Dr. Marco Baron