Thesis title: Evaluation of Sustainable-By-Design Organic Materials as Potential Tools for the Development of Green Smart Sensors
Growing environmental concerns and the need for responsible technological innovation have increasingly encouraged the scientific community to adopt more sustainable research practices.
In this context, Green Chemistry has emerged as a fundamental framework for designing chemical processes and materials that minimize environmental impact and risks to human health. Its principles promote a holistic perspective that considers the entire lifecycle of materials and technologies, from synthesis and device fabrication to operational use and end-of-life management.
Simultaneously, industrial growth, urbanization, and intensive agriculture have led to widespread contamination of air, water, and soil with pollutants such as heavy metals, pesticides, and pharmaceuticals, highlighting the need for reliable monitoring technologies.
Sensing technologies play a key role in addressing these challenges, enabling rapid, sensitive, and often real-time detection of environmental contaminants. However, conventional sensors frequently rely on hazardous reagents, energy-intensive fabrication, and scarce raw materials, while their limited reusability contributes to electronic and chemical waste. This underscores the urgent need for sustainable approaches that combine high analytical performance with environmental responsibility.
This doctoral thesis focuses on the development of eco-friendly functional organic materials and their integration into sensing devices with reduced environmental footprint. The work was conducted within the Rome Technopole - Innovation Ecosystem, funded by the Italian PNRR and supported by Next Generation EU, under Spoke 1.
A central aspect of the thesis concerns the sustainable synthesis of phthalocyanines, a class of macrocyclic organic compounds widely investigated for their optical, electronic, and sensing properties. Greener synthetic strategies were designed and developed with the aim of reducing environmental impact through the implementation of pot-economical reactions and the use of environmentally friendly reaction media, to minimize waste and energy demand while preserving functional performance.
These materials were subsequently employed to develop green sensing platforms through eco-friendly fabrication strategies. Drop-casting was used as effective and low-impact technique for immobilizing functional materials onto sensor surfaces. The resulting sensing platform was investigated through parameters such as sensitivity, stability, and reusability, and evaluated for its overall environmental footprint.
During a research period at the University of Edinburgh, the thesis extended these concepts to optical sensor development and sustainable catalysis. A sustainable optical sensor for metal detection was designed and investigated to work both in solution and on paper-based test strips, emphasizing environmentally friendly materials and fabrication processes and enabling simple sensing tools for environmental monitoring.
In addition, the sustainability framework was further extended to the field of sustainable catalysis, exploring catalytic systems based on Earth-abundant elements as alternatives to traditional and toxic precious-metal catalysts for the efficient C–H borylation of arene substrates.
Overall, this research contributes to advancing sustainable materials science and sensor technology by combining green synthesis, environmentally responsible sensor fabrication, and performance evaluation. Furthermore, the results obtained during this work contributed to the development of the European project “Mainstream,” which was successfully funded in Italy with a budget of €241,250 through the National Research Council of Italy (CNR), involving partners from Italy, Spain, Sweden, Germany, and Turkey.