Associate Professors

Riccardo Polini is Associate Professor of General and Inorganic Chemistry at Dipartimento di Scienze e Tecnologie Chimiche, Università di Roma “Tor Vergata”. On July 2020 he got the National Scientific Qualification (Abilitazione Scientifica Nazionale, ASN) as Full Professor of Chemistry.

As of 2021, his name in included in the Top 2% Most Influential Scientists’ List, published by Stanford University.

Prof. Polini is the author of more than 130 papers published in International scientific journals, 3 Italian patents, 2 International patents, and tens of Conference papers; he has been Invited or Keynote speaker at numerous International Conferences.

As a chemist, Prof. Polini is interested in searching answers to fundamental questions of the nature, especially in the area of materials chemistry. He was the first scientist to prove in 1992 that cleavage surfaces provide suitable sites for the heterogeneous nucleation of diamonds grown from the gas phase by Chemical Vapour Deposition (CVD).

He has been involved in several international collaborations with prestigious academic and research institutions, namely Tohoku University (Japan), CNRS and CEA (France), Manchester Metropolitan University (UK), Fraunhofer Institute (Germany) and University of Aveiro (Portugal).

During his 30+ years of scientific activity, Prof. Polini has spent research periods abroad (UK & Portugal), and was mainly involved in the following research areas:

1. kinetics of nucleation and growth of diamond films obtained by Chemical Vapour Deposition (CVD);
2. improving adhesion of diamond films onto cemented carbides and steels for demanding wear applications;
3. synthesis and characterization of advanced electro-ceramics for Intermediate Temperature Solid Oxide Fuel Cells (SOFCs);
4. development of novel ionomers for Polymeric Electrolyte Membrane Fuel Cells (PEMFCs);
5. synthesis of micro- and nano-structured tungsten carbide (WC) powders from tungsten minerals;
6. black diamond preparation and characterization for solar energy conversion;
7. development of low work-function films for thermoionic-photovoltaic (TIPV) and photon-enhanced thermionic (PETE) converters.

Prof. Riccardo Polini has been the Principal Investigator (PI) of the Galileo Project “Nucleazione e crescita mediante CVD di film di diamante su substrati di interesse tecnologico” (in collaboration with the Institut de Physique et Chimie des Materiaux de Strasbourg of CNRS, France), of the national project TECHPRO (PRIN 2022) and of many R&D projects funded by Italian companies.

• Pubblicazioni (Scopus) | Pubblicazioni (ART)