The main scientific interests and expertises, started during the
Ph.D. period and matured further on, lie in the synthesis and
characterization of high-nuclearity transition metal clusters
stabilized by carbonyl ligands.
During her research activities Prof. Femoni has synthesised and
characterized numerous new cluster species, made of metals like Ni,
Pd, Pt, Co, Rh, Cu, Ag, Au, Fe. The synthesized species are both
homo- and bi-metallic, and some of them contain other heteroatoms
such as Sn, Sb, C, P and so on, whose role is to add additional
stability to the clusters. Species containing Ni, Pt and Rh are the
ones of highest nuclearity, owing to their high metal-metal bond
energy and to their ability to strongly coordinate the CO ligands.
This is the case, for example, of the
Ni32Pt24 and the latest Rh33
clusters. Mixed systems, however, can still originate clusters of
high dimensions, even entering the nanosize regime, as for the
Au28Fe14 and Au34Fe14
compounds.
The interest in the metal-clusters field is justified by the fact
that such compounds can be of potential interests in many areas.
First of all some of them, mainly the highest-nuclearity species
and/or the ones containing heteroatoms, can be multivalent and
exist in more than one oxidation state, thus they can behave as
molecular capacitors. They may also possess interesting magnetic
properties. Second of all, especially homometallic Pt clusters have
shown interesting self-assembly properties in the solid state,
giving rise to crystalline infinite wires with semi-conductor
properties. Third, metal clusters can represent valid precursors
for preparing catalysts with specific characteristics, especially
the ones containing more than one type of metal. Last but not
least, as cited above, high-nuclearity clusters can reach
nanometric dimensions and therefore, owing to the fact that their
structure is known at molecular level, they constitute precious
precursors and models for the preparation and study of metal
nanoparticles.
Beside her main scientific activity, Prof. Cristina Femoni has been
working with other research groups for the X-ray structural
characterizations of their compounds, thank to the competences
acquired during her post-doc studies and developed by working with
Dr. Steiner at Liverpool University (UK).
