Researchers

Antonio de la Hoz is Professor in Organic Chemistry in the University of Castilla-La Mancha. He obtained his Ph. D. from the Universidad Complutense in Madrid in 1986 under the supervision of Prof. José Elguero and Carmen Pardo. After postdoctoral research in 1987 with Prof. Mikael Begtrup at the Danmarks Tekniske Høskole he joined the Faculty of Chemistry of the Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha in Ciudad Real in 1988 as an Assistant Professor. In 1993 he worked under the supervision Prof. André Loupy in the Université de Paris-Sud in Microwave Assisted Organic Chemistry. Prof. de la Hoz has authored over 200 scientific publications 120 of them related to Microwaves in Organic Synthesis. Dr. de la Hoz has been a foundation member of the Spanish Green Chemistry Network. His current research interests focus on Green methodologies, microwave activation, mechanochemistry, flow methodologies and solvent-free reactions, and the applications of heterocyclic compounds in material and supramolecular chemistry.

Research activities and interests

Contact: Antonio.Hoz@uclm.es 

Facultad de Ciencias y Tecnologías Químicas, Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha, 13071 Ciudad Real, Spain. 

Researcher ID Google Scholar  Scopus ID ORCID iD

José Ramón Carrillo Muñoz was born on June 15th 1960 in Ciudad Real (Spain). In June 1982 she obtained his degree in Chemistry at the Universidad Complutense of Madrid, He obtained his Ph. D. from the Universidad of Castilla-La Mancha in 1993 under the supervision of Prof. Enrique Díez-Barra. He completed a predoctoral stay in 1992 and a postdoctoral stay during the 1993-94 academic year at the Université the Paris-Sud, both under the supervision of Professor André Loupy.

Since 1983 he is Assistant Professor in the School of Agricultural Engineers of  Castilla-La Mancha.

His current investigation is mainly focused in Development of new materials under microwave together with the employed environmentally friendly chemical process and Computational Chemistry.

Contact:

JoseRamon.Carrillo@uclm.es

Pilar Prieto Núñez-Polo was born on March 6^th 1966 in Ciudad Real (Spain). In Juny 1989 she obtained her degree in Chemistry at the Universidad Complutense of Madrid. During this time she spend 6 months in the BASF Industry (Mannheim). In 1990 she worked in the Medicinal Institut of CSIC in Madrid. Then,  she moved at the University of Castilla-La Mancha (UCLM) in 1991, where she obtained her Ph. D. from the UCLM under the supervision of Prof. Ángel Díaz Ortiz in 1995. The main focus of her thesis was  the application of Microwave Irradiation as alternative and environmentally friendly energy sourced in the development of chemical process. During the development of her Ph. D. thesis, she also performed in 1994 a pre-doctoral stay in the Université the Paris–Sud under the supervision of Prof. André Loupy. At this time she worked with a prototype monomode microwave reactor.

Afterwards, she realized two post-doctoral stays. One of them in the Technische Hochshule of Darmstadt under the supervision of Prof. Hans Neunhoeffer and the other one was in the University of Basque Country under the supervision of Prof. Fernando Cossío. It was the latter wich gave her a wider vision of the Computational Chemistry. To gain a deeper insight into that field, she performed two additional short stays in the Medical Chemistry Institute of CSIC in Madrid under the supervision of Ibon Alkorta, and another one with Prof. Fernando Cossío.

She is currently a professor at the Faculty of Chemical Sciences and Technologies of Castilla-La Mancha. Prof. Prieto has authored 70 scientific publication and 8 book chapters. She has supervised 3 DEAs, 7 masters, and 5 PhD projects (Abel de Cozar Ruano, Cristina Cebrián Ávila, Antonio Manuel Rodriguez, Iván Torres Moya and Raúl Martín Lozano). She is currently supervising 2 PhD projects (Beatriz Donoso Jurado and Jesús Herrera Herreros).

Her current investigation is mainly focused in two fields:

-          Development of new materials under microwave together with the employed environmentally friendly chemical process, with applicability as Organic Field Effect Transistors (OFETs) and mainly as Organic Optical waveguide

Organic multifunctional semiconducting derivatives have attracted a great deal of attention in the last decade due to their potential applications in organic electronics, such as organic field-effect transistors (OFETs), sensors, photodetectors and optical waveguide devices. However, in the vast majority of these applications, a high degree of organization at the mesoscale is required. To achieve organized materials, the operation of non-covalent forces between organic molecules is known to afford self-assembled, functional microstructures. Photonics are at the forefront of the potential applications of these materials. Thus, the ability to control the light propagation properties of self-assembled structures has led to significant advances in organic waveguides, color conversion and light amplification. These micro-/nanoscale optical elements can serve as fundamental components in miniaturized photonic integrations with applications in optical communication, information processing, optical sensing or optical logic circuits. One of the main challenges in the future for miniaturized optoelectronic devices is the use of nano- to micron-sized waveguides that propagate light efficiently. Hence, the fabrication of nanowaveguides by the self-assembly of organic molecules is a subject of significant interest. On the other hand, crystalline organic materials inherently have a perfect molecular arrangement, e.g., the elimination of crystal boundaries, and this leads to a high carrier mobility and good thermal stability.

-          Computational Chemistry. In this area she is interested in the study of some reaction mechanisms which are claimed to be improved under microwave irradiation. Theoretical calculations can be used as a tool to model those mechanisms and evaluate the real influence of the microwave irradiation on them.

It is also a powerful tool for calculating molecular properties, such as geometry, polarity, topology and energy of frontier molecular orbital, energy of rearrangement, absorption and emission spectra, RAMAN spectra, aggregation, etc.

Ph. D. Students: Beatriz Donosoand Jesús Herrera Herreros.

Post-doctoral Student: Iván Torres Moya.

Contact info:

MaríaPilar.Prieto@uclm.es  / Edificio Marie Curie – Avda. Camilo José Cela s/n – 13071 Ciudad Real /

Phone. 926295300 Ext. 3487

ORCID

Mª Victoria Gómez Almagro (1978) is currently Associate Professor at the Faculty of Sciences and Chemical Technologies (UCLM). She obtained her degree in Chemistry (2001) with an honour additional at the University of Castilla-La Mancha (UCLM). In 2006 she got her PhD (title of Chemistry European Doctor (cum Laude)). She carried out her PhD (Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia fellowship, FPU) at UCLM with a titled “Use of microwave irradiation and heterogeneous catalysis in environmentally friendly chemistry” under the supervision of Dr. Andres Moreno and Prof. Antonio de la Hoz. During her PhD, she joined to the group of Prof. George Fleet from Oxford University (UK) under the supervision of Dr. Tim Claridge, and to the group of Dr. Avelino Corma from Instituto de Tecnologia Química de Valencia (Spain) as two brief predoctoral stays.

She spent more than two years (August 2006-November 2008) at the Supramolecular Chemistry and Technology group of Prof. David Reinhoudt (University of Twente, The Netherlands) as postdoc researcher- Marie Curie Intraeuropean Fellowship (EIF) -, at the NMR & MS department under the supervision of Dr. Aldrik Velders. The Project involved the research, design and development of NMR probes with microfluidic and nanofluidic components. In February 2009, she continued her research at the Instituto Regional de Investigación Cientifica Aplicada (IRICA) (UCLM) ,  starting with the development of a project awarded by the European Commission -Marie Curie Reintegration program (ERG) – what allowed her to start a new research line within the group of “Microwave and Suistanable Organic Chemistry” (UCLM) which still continues nowadays.

In 2019, she was awarded with the Young Researcher Prize from the Spanish Royal Society (RSEQ), Castilla-La Mancha section.

Her main research interest is the development of technology with the use of reduced-diameter microcoils, mainly solenoidal (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-017-02575-0) and planar spiral (https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms4025), focused on enhancing the sensitivity of NMR spectroscopy. Radiofrequency microcoils represent an efficient and cheap alternative to enhance the sensitivity of NMR for mass-limited samples. In addition, the use of hyperpolarization schemes as photo-Chemically Induced Dynamic Nuclear Polarization (photo-CIDNP) combined to microcoils has enabled to increase the NMR sensitivity to unprecedented limits (see Figure) opening the window for new applications. This research topic is developed in collaboration to the group of Prof. Dr. Aldrik Velders (BioNanotechnology group) from University of Wageningen (the Netherlands).

Figure: photo-CIDNP in microcoils for signal enhancement enabling the detection of sub-picomole of material by NMR spectroscopy (Nat. Commun. 9, Article number: 108 (2018))

She is also focused on using NMR as a powerful tool to provide structural information about different phenomena, not only within the group but also in collaboration with other universities or companies. Her research in this field is related to four main different fields: (photo)-Flow Chemistry, photo-illuminated in-situ NMR monitoring, Diffusion NMR and Metabolomics.

MariaVictoria.Gomez@uclm.es/ Edificio Marie Curie – Avda. Camilo José Cela s/n – 13071 Ciudad Real / ORCID iD

Aldrik Velders (1970) studied Chemistry at the University of Utrecht (NL) with Prof. Blasse and Prof. Andries Meijerink, and at the Universityof Pavia(I) with Prof. Luigi Fabbrizzi. In 1995 he started as graduate student at the University of Leiden (NL) on antitumor chemistry with Prof. Jan Reedijk, was visiting scientist in the group of Prof. Enzo Alessio in Trieste(I), and obtained his PhD degree in 2000 with the thesis Ruthenium Complexes with Heterocyclic Nitrogen Ligands. He spent his post-doc years at the Centre for Magnetic Resonance under guidance of Prof. Bertini and Prof. Luchinat (Florence, I) and as Marie Curie Fellow at Molteni Farmaceutici (Scandicci, I). In 2004 he started as assistant professor in the SupraMolecular Chemistry and Technology group of prof. David Reinhoudt at theUniversity of Twente, also heading the NMR & MS department. Since 2009 he is associate professor and currently in the BioMedical Chemistry group. His research interests go from (dynamic) supramolecular chemistry in solution and on (flat, fluidic and functional nanoparticle) surfaces, to (bio)nanotechnological applications of microfluidics, fluorescence and NMR spectroscopy. He recently moved to Wageningen University where he is the chair of BioNanoTechnology group and  has a major research line focused on further continuing to develop microfluidic NMR hardware and Nano-NMR spectroscopy. In July 2011, the management board of the University of Castilla-La Mancha approved the entitlement of “profesor colaborador honorifico”, allowing him to become member of the Microwave and Sustainable Organic Chemistry group. Since July 2013 he is the director of the Wageningen Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Centre (WNMRC).

 Research interests as a member of the MSOC group.

One of my major areas of interests regards “Nano NMR Spectroscopy”. NMR  spectroscopy is among the most powerful analytical tools developed in the last century, but it has, yet, only played a minor role in the emerging fields of micro- and nanotechnology. NMR spectroscopy is nevertheless a powerful tool also in these new research areas, which for example we have exploited for the analysis of nanoparticles and nanoliter sample volumes.

Non-functionalized nanoparticles are notoriously hard to characterize, but in collaboration with prof. Richard Crooks from the University of Texas at Austin (TX, USA) some useful strategies have been developed. In particular, we have used high-resolution solution-state NMR spectroscopy to characterize the structure of non-functionalized Pd dendrimer-encapsulated nanoparticles (DENs). Hereto, first, a full analysis was done of the homo- and heteronuclear 1D and 2D NMR data of the fourth-generation hydroxyl-terminated poly(amidoamine), PAMAM, dendrimer (G4‑OH), which is a 15 kDa macromolecule containing over a 1000 protons that show severely overlapping signals due to the high (pseudo-)symmetry. Analyzing G4‑OH(Pd55) DENs by 1H and diffusion-ordered NMR spectroscopy then unambiguously demonstrates that single nanoparticles are encapsulated within individual dendrimers.[1] Consecutively, simple 1D 1H‑NMR data of Pd nanoparticles encapsulated within sixth-generation hydroxyl-terminated PAMAM (a 60 kDa dendrimer) allows determination of the size of Pd DENs (G6-OH(Pdx)) ranging from 55, 147, 200 to 250 atoms. Solution-state 1H NMR spectroscopy thus provides a straightforward tool to characterize nanometer-size nanoparticles,[2] where otherwise advanced and less accessible techniques, e.g. TEM, have to be used, that moreover only provide sampled and ex-situ data.

Analysis of mass-limited samples with NMR spectroscopy remains a major challenge, which has triggered the development of expensive and technologically demanding solutions as cryogenically cooled coils in so-called cryoprobes and hyperpolarization strategies.  A relatively cheap alternative approach regards the use of miniaturized coils and, over the past two decades, microcoils of different geometries have in fact proven to be a successful sensitivity enhancement strategy.[3] We are particularly interested in microfluidic chip designs with planar spiral coils and detection volumes in the lower nanoliter range. These NMR chips have proven to be very efficient for on-flow reaction monitoring studies by 1H NMR spectroscopy, optimizing reaction conditions utilizing only minute amounts of starting material and solvents.[4] Alternatively, under static conditions also supramolecular interactions can be investigated as proven by a 19F NMR study on the interaction of hexafluorophosphate anions with cyclodextrin host molecules.[5] We are currently exploring the use of the microcoil-on-a-chip concept for low-gamma nuclides as well, and integrate the chips in more complicated hyphenated microfluidic set ups.

Selected References:

[1] M.V. Gomez, J. Guerra, A.H. Velders, R.M. Crooks, J. Am. Chem. Soc., 341–350 (2009). [2] M.V. Gomez, J. Guerra, V.S. Myers, R.M. Crooks, A.H. Velders, J. Am. Chem. Soc., 14634–14635 (2009). [3] R. M. Fratila, A. H. Velders, Annu. Rev. Anal. Chem. 2011, 227-249 [4] M.V. Gomez, H.J.J. Verputten, A. Díaz-Ortíz, A. Moreno, A. de la Hoz, A.H. Velders, Chem. Commun. 2010, 4514-4516 [5] M. V. Gómez, D. N. Reinhoudt, A. H. Velders, Small 2008, 4, 1293-1295.

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