Laboratory Technician

Profile

Cadia D’Ottavi is a Laboratory Technician (Level D4) at the University of Rome “Tor Vergata”, Department of Chemical Sciences and Technologies.

In service since 1991, she is responsible for monitoring, managing, maintaining, and supporting all research activities within the group. She supervises laboratories and scientific instrumentation, including:

Thermogravimetric Analysis (TGA); Differential Thermal Analysis (DTA); Differential Scanning Calorimetry (DSC); Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM); X-ray Diffraction (XRD).

She is the technical manager of both the X-ray Diffraction Laboratory and the Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) Laboratory.

She collaborated until 2010 on the development of new synthetic strategies for organic and organometallic substrates used in the synthesis of porphyrins and corroles. She was involved in the preparation of all substrates and transition metal complexes with tetrapyrrolic and biomimetic macrocyclic compounds, managing purification processes and quality control of synthesized products, optimizing synthetic procedures and analytical aspects for applications of pharmaceutical and industrial interest.

For the past 15 years, she has focused her research activities and projects on innovative ceramic materials, dealing with the synthesis of precursors and final materials, and actively contributing to their design and characterization.

The research lines developed in the field of materials primarily concern the development of preparative methodologies, the design, synthesis, and characterization of new gas sensors based on perovskite and non-perovskite nanostructured oxide films, also doped with transition metals, for the monitoring of pollutant gases; the study of new hydrolytic and non-hydrolytic sol-gel synthesis strategies for precursors of electroceramic materials for chemical sensors; and the study synthesis, and characterization of mixed oxides with spinel structures.

Since 2013, she has collaborated with the ENEA Research Center in Casaccia on the study of innovative methods for storing chemical substances at medium temperatures for heat transfer (HTF) and thermal storage (HSM) systems in concentrated solar power (CSP) plants. Her work includes developing theoretical models to complete the physico-chemical data on binary and ternary mixtures and on the kinetics of the reactions involved in the thermal degradation of solar salts, as well as studying catalysts supported on SiSiC (Silicon Carbide) and Alumina for sulfuric acid decomposition systems for hydrogen production. She is involved in characterization via XRD and SEM, as well as in stability and activity testing using a laboratory pilot plant.

Since 2005, she has provided support for the Organic Chemistry course in the Master’s Degree in Chemistry and Applied Chemistry, and since 2017 for the Materials Science course, specifically the laboratory of Materials Physics – X-ray Diffraction.

She is co-author of 27 publications in international journals and approximately 40 oral or poster contributions to international conferences.

Publications

Scopus

ORCID