Catalogo dei Corsi di studio

After the final graduation in La Sapienza university with an experimental MSc thesis in the field of supramolecular surface science under the supervision of Prof. Maria Grazia Betti, Riccardo Frisenda was hired in November 2011 for a PhD position at the Technical University of Delft. RF earned his PhD title in 2016 under the supervision of Prof. Herre van der Zant with a thesis about electrical transport through single-molecules contacted by movable nano-electrodes. During his PhD RF published more than 15 articles on important scientific journals such as Nature Chemistry, Nano Letters or Accounts of Chemical Research, of which more than half as first author.
Among the major scientific achievements from this period there is the identification of OPE3 as a fruit fly system for single-molecule electronics. Another important achievement of this period is the experimental demonstration of space-dependent quantum interference effects in -stacked dimers made of two identical conjugated molecules, published in Nature Chemistry. Also, a second important contribution during the PhD of RF was the demonstration of Kondo effect in the transport through a stable radical molecule, which opened the route of the electrical detection of magnetic correlation effects in radical molecules, work published in Nano Letters. A final important contribution was the electrical detection of a spin crossover transition in a single-molecule junction. These works, made in a close collaboration with the Marcel Mayor chemistry group in Basel University, have been published in Angewandte Chemie and Nano Letters.
After earning his PhD, RF moved as a postdoc to the laboratory of Dr. Andres Castellanos-Gomez in IMDEA Nanoscience and later in the Instituto de Ciencia de Materiales de Madrid (ICMM) belonging to CSIC the Spanish Research Council. To finance his stay in Castellanos-Gomez laboratory, RF gained two competitive grants and fellowships, the Rubicon grant from NWO (2016-2018) and a Juan de la Cierva Formacion (2019-2021). Also, in 2020 RF won a permanent position as Cientifico Titular (permanent researcher) in ICMM.
During his stay in IMDEA Nanociencia and ICMM RF published more than 55 articles on prestigious scientific journals such as Chemical Society Reviews, Advanced Materials, Materials Today among others. In these years, RF moved the topic of his research to the field of 2D materials, with a special focus on optoelectronics devices based on 2D materials, the effects of strain and mechanical deformations in 2D materials and lately on the physics of 2D metal-2D semiconductor interfaces. Among the major scientific achievements there are several works on strain engineering of 2D semiconductors and the effects of deformations on the bandgap and excitonic properties of these materials and on the performances of 2D devices. One important aspect of part of this work was the development of techniques and setups to apply controlled uniaxial or biaxial deformations in these materials, which were then replicated in various laboratories around the world.
A second important research activity of RF has been the study of optoelectronic devices based on 2D semiconductors and van der Waals heterostructures. This research field paved the way for the current main research activity of RF, which is focused on the study of 2D metal-2D semiconductor interfaces and their role in the transport properties of 2D optoelectronic and electronic devices. This line of research, whose activities began in 2019, was planned and led completely by RF. Especially one article generated a large interest in the 2D materials community, which gained the publication the appearance in the exclusive list ESI Highly Cited Papers list of 2020 . Also, one project in this same topic has been financed by the Spain Ministry of Science, in the funding program Convocatoria 2020 - «Proyectos de I+D+i» . The financed project Unveileing the Nature And Role of Defects in 2D Semiconducting Devices , sees RF as only PI. Finally, another important scientific activity of RF has been the writing of various reviews in the field of 2D materials, both as first author and in collaboration with other important scientists in the field of 2D materials. These reviews already gathered more than 550 citations in 3 years, highlighting the large impact within the field.