Tommaso FRANCESE

Working Experiences

• Adjuct Professor at the School for the International Education (SIE) - Università Cà Foscari of Venice (27/02/2023 - 12/06/2023)

Teaching of General Chemistry (FOY15 - 6 CFU) and General Physics (FOY14 - 6 CFU) to SIE students with the aim of introducing fundamental concepts of the two subjects, such as, for example, the concept of atom, atomic structure, chemical bonding, etc., as well as uniform motion, Newton's laws, work and energy, etc., in order to develop their critical thinking and problem-solving skills.

• Project Manager in UniSMART – Foundation of the Università degli Studi di Padova (05/2022 - Current)

I am currently working in the Tech Transfer (TT) unit of Foundation of the University of Padua. In my role as Key Account Manager (KAM) I am interfacing with companies enabling the collaborations with the University labs. Moreover, I am coordinating the project called "UNITI-EC" whose goal is to provide a hot-spot for create collaborations between the University, Territory and companies around the Circular Economy, with impact on education, society and research. 

• Postdoctoral Scholar at the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering at the University of Chicago (14/05/2019 – 30/09/2021)

The research I pursued in the Galli group @UChicago was a joint effort of both theoreticians and experimentalists to design new and more efficient donor-acceptor molecular emitters, as defined in the MURI project supported by the Office of Naval Research (ONR) under Award N00014-19-1-2453. coordinated by Prof. Enrique Gomez at Pennsylvania State University. In this context, I was employing state-of-the-art computational tools to unveil the delicate nature of the electronic structure of a series of purely organic donor-acceptor systems, a series of promising materials for light emission via thermally activated delayed fluorescence (TADF).

Academic Education

• M.Sc in Science and Technologies of Bio- and Nanomaterials – 107/110 (15/09/2021 – 28/03/2022)- LM-53 (Materials Engineering Class)
               Università Cà Foscari di Venezia – Dipartimento di Scienze Molecolari e Nanosistemi, Via Torino 155, Mestre, Italia

Title: "First-principles Investigation of a Doped BaTiO3-based Perovskite System” - The intriguing nature of the BaTiO3 perovskite system has been largely debated and investigated in recent years thanks to its intrinsic properties like high visible-light absorption coefficients, high photoluminescence quantum yield, long charge carrier diffusion length, colossal magnetoresistance, superconductivity, and many other interesting and valuable solid-state properties. The general application of the perovskite systems covers a wide range of technological devices and solutions that are foreseen to be part of the next future general technological advancement. In this perspective, our work focuses on the ab initio prediction of the basic properties of a subset of BaTiO3-based perovskite models which display different doping rates ranging from 25 to 50%. These doping are performed by replacing Titanium (Ti) with Tin (Sn) (50% substitution) and Barium (Ba) with Strontium (Sr) (25 and 50% substitution), paving the way for more complex modifications required to engineer the intrinsic properties of the studied systems, such as band structure, density of states, bulk modules etc.

• Double Ph.D in Theoretical Chemistry and Computational Modelling (ITN-EJD-TCCM under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions) – (15/09/2015 – 25/03/2019)

             University of Groningen – Zernike Institute per Advanced Materials, Nijenborgh 4, NL-9700, The Netherlands

             Universitat de Barcelona – Institute of Theoretical and Computational Chemistry, Martì I Franqués 1, Barcelona, Spain
 

Title: "Rationalization of the Mechanism of Bistability in Dithiazolyl-based Molecular Magnets". Theoretical predictions of magnetic properties of bistable purely organic molecule-based magnets have experienced an incredible development during the last years. Nevertheless, some of these compounds present peculiarities that cannot yet be explained with the state-of-the-art theoretical models. Our attention is devoted to dithiazolyl-based compounds, namely TTTA, PDTA, TDPDTA, and 4NCBDTA, because they are among the best candidates for potential technological applications, like storage devices, sensors, and quantum computers. The four selected DTA compounds present a common trend in the solid state: the planar DTA radicals pile up forming stacks. Our first goal is to evaluate by means of the so-called First Principles Bottom Up working strategy which pairs of radicals are magnetically non-negligible in order to identify the magnetic topology of the molecule-based crystals. Next, our objective is to assess whether structural (geometrical), as well as the electronic (DTA-ring, substituent interactions) factors, affect the magnitude of the overall radical···radical JAB magnetic coupling. Finally, we aim at providing a magnetostructural map as a function of the substituents of the DTA-moiety to highlight which is the static ferromagnetic fingerprint region. At this point, we would like to stress that this magneto-structural map could be used as a practical tool to help experimentalists to design more stable and efficient purely organic radicals with ferromagnetic properties in the solid state. The static analysis is also complemented by the corresponding dynamical properties. 

Link: https://research.rug.nl/files/77247926/Complete_thesis.pdf

Link: http://diposit.ub.edu/dspace/handle/2445/131247

• M.Sc in Science and Technologies of Bio- and Nanomaterials – 109/110 (15/09/2021 – 13/03/2022) - LM-54 (Chemistry Class)

             Università Cà Foscari di Venezia – Dipartimento di Scienze Molecolari e Nanosistemi, Via Torino 155, Mestre, Italia

Title: "Ab Initio Simulation and Investigation of a Novel Ta-doped Zirconia Material” – Ab-initio materials modelling based on the Density Functional Theory is used to investigate the structural and electronic properties of a novel oxide material obtained by doping zirconium oxide (ZrO2 - zirconia) with Ta atoms. The material may have interesting applications in medical and electronic technologies. The work is motivated and driven by X-Ray Diffraction experiments (XRD), which measure the lattice parameters, atomic positions and space groups of these zirconia-based materials. The actual composition and structure of the powders are not known precisely. The Rietveld fit applied to the XRD data, taken at room temperature and pressure, shows that, by increasing the Ta doping from 0 to 12%, the main structures found in the powder are Monoclinic (P21/c), Orthorhombic (Pca21), and Monoclinic(C2/c) at higher Ta concentration. The calculations are focused on the orthorhombic phase. They provide insight into the thermodynamic and structural stability of the pure and Ta-doped oxides and provide a prediction of the minimum-energy crystal structure of the orthorhombic phase. Moreover the results allow for the characterization of the electronic bands structure of the material and on the effects of the point defects on the electronic properties. In particular, when Ta substitute for a Zr ion forming a point defect, there is the appearance of gap states, which may be of interest for technological electronic applications. The computed results will be useful for interpreting the existing measurements and for prompting new experiments that, on the basis of this new fundamental understanding, may better exploit the most interesting features of this new material. The work was based on the experimental data collected at the Kyoto Institute of Technology (Kyoto - Japan) throughout the Raman spectroscopic technique), while the computational modelling was performed under the supervision of Prof. Stefano Fabris at the Democritos center (CNR - Democritos) at the Scuola Internazionale di Studi Avanzati (SISSA) in Trieste. 

Link: http://dspace.unive.it/handle/10579/5685

• B.Sc in Material Science – 101/110 (01/19/2007 – 11/11/2011) - LM-54 (Chemistry Class)

             Università Cà Foscari di Venezia – Dipartimento di Scienze Molecolari e Nanosistemi, Via Torino 155, Mestre, Italia

Title: "Hydrophilicity Enhancement of a Polypropylene Functionalized Substrate"