My general research is on the synthesis and the structural characterisation of novel carbon based compounds, namely intercalated fullerenes and graphene-related materias, for applications in the field of energy conversion and storage.
My current topics range from the study of new carbon based hydrogen-storage systems, to the search of novel active materials for Li-/Na-/Mg-ion batteries, to the investigation of carbon nanostructured materials as highly-porous electrodes for supercapacitors. I am also involved in the study of unusual electronic and magnetic properties of carbon nanostructures, such as high-Tc superconductivity and long-range magnetic order. I experienced with the ab-initio structure determination of carbon-based nanostructures by means of X-ray/neutron powder diffraction technique combined with several computational approaches, such as Rietveld method, Montecarlo simulated annealing, crystal structure prediction and PDF analysis.
I have been involved in the research activity of the Carbon Nanostructures Laboratory (CNL) at the University of Parma, headed by Prof. Mauro Riccò, since 2003. From 2016 on, I coordinate the Energy-Storage Laboratory, joined to CNL, which deals with the study of new carbon-based devices for the energy conversion and storage, in particular ionic batteries and supercapacitors.