Friday, March 31st, 2023. Time: 12 noon

Hybrid / O.C. Zienkiewicz Conference Room, C1 Building, UPC Campus Nord, Barcelona

Link for online session

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ABSTRACT

Green and Innovative Technologies for Food, Environment and Bioengineering Research Group (FEnBeT), Faculty of Pharmacy and Nutrition, UCAM-Universidad Católica San Antonio de Murcia, 30107 Murcia, Spain

The development of novel and bio-friendly materials with enhanced properties is currently an interesting research topic. Indeed, an ideal eco-friendly composite must exhibit an adequate balance between its physical-chemical properties, functionality and its associated biological response. A bunch of natural/synthetic sources to produce such materials have been investigated so far. Likewise different fabrication routes have been investigated including but not limited to Spin Coating, Dip Coating, Fusion Deposition Method, Sol-Gel, Electrospinning among others.

The latter technique deserves special attention due to its versatility. In fact, this technique has allowed the fabrication of tailored fibrous membranes from organic and inorganic precursors such as polymers and ceramics. Current applications of electro-spinning cover various industrial sectors, with special emphasis on the area Food, Environment (specifically in water decontamination process) and Bioengineering. Thus, in this lecture we will first introduce the use of natural/synthetic polymer precursor for electrospinning. Then, we will focus on fabrication and the physico-chemical, biological and functional characterization of eco-friendly electrospun materials based on PVP, PVA, and silk fibroin, which exhibit intrinsically easy processability accompanied by their unique biocompatibility, biodegradability and biofunctionality. We also present the use of density functional theory (DFT) calculations to explain the solvent’s effect on PVP crystallization and dispersion of nanoparticles in polymeric/nanoparticles suspensions.

Finally, the main ongoing and future challenges/projects that can be addressed numerically in the framework of electrospinning will be discussed.

*Author to whom correspondence should be addressed: czamora9@ucam.edu (C.Z.-L.)

SPEAKER CV

Dr. C. Zamora-Ledezma is an experimental Physicist with a PhD prepared in the framework of a cotutelle with the Université de Montpellier (France) and the Universidad Central de Venezuela. He has taught at the Universidad Central de Venezuela, at the Instituto Venezolano de Investigaciones Científicas, at Polytech in Montpellier and at Yachay Tech University in Ecuador. He has 3 post-doctoral experiences at the Instituto Venezolano de Investigaciones Cientificas-Venezuela, at the Université de Bordeaux-France, and at the Université de Montpellier-France and passionate about research, graduate and undergraduate teaching.

To date, he has more than 13 years of experience and have held various academic/administrative positions as postdoctoral researcher, manager, researcher and teacher. Since 2018, he has been invited professor/researcher at University of Sevilla, Spain. Since 2021, he joined the Green and Innovative Technologies for Food, Environment and Bioengineering Research Group (FEnBeT), Faculty of Pharmacy and Nutrition, Universidad Católica de Murcia (UCAM), Murcia, Spain, as full-time Researcher/Teaching and Research Staff (PDI). His research activities are mainly focused on the synthesis of tailored organic/inorganic nanomaterials/biomaterials based on nanocarbon and nanoparticles (metal, magnetic) and bioactive molecules for potential applications in in Food, Environment and Bioengineering.

Seminar Programme 2023