Venegas Yazigi Diego A.

Email: 
diego.venegas@usach.cl
Teléfono: 
227 183 415

Abstract

Diego Venegas-Yazigi graduated in chemistry from the University of Chile’s Science Faculty, where he went on to obtain his PhD from the same university in 2001. He spent nearly two years with Prof. A.B.P. Lever at York University in Toronto, Canada, where he carried out much of his thesis work during his doctoral studies. He held a postdoctoral position for three years at the Chilean Centre for Multidisciplinary Materials Research (CIMAT), and then accepted an assistant professorship at the University of Chile from 2003 to 2007. Since 2008 he has held a full professorship at the University of Santiago, Chile. He is currently the leader of the Molecular Magnetism and Molecular Materials Laboratory (LM4). In this research group several different lines are developed. Our interest is centered on studying different Inorganic Materials and their magnetic, optical, and catalytic properties.

Initially, the area of molecular magnetism was focused on discrete systems (dimers, trimers) which were used as models to understand the magnetic exchange interactions. Then, chemists became more and more interested in designing systems with higher complexity, showing cooperative phenomena such as ferro- and ferrimagnetism. Other systems of interest were provided by discrete molecular entities exhibiting unusual behavior, such as the so-called Single Molecule Magnets (SMM). Due to their reduced size, these molecular entities show magnetic hysteresis at low temperature and quantum effects.  They are now becoming one of the most essential objects in applied molecular magnetism as they can, in principle, store information at a molecular level. They can be, therefore, of interest in Molecular Nanomagnetism. Other exciting systems being designed and studied in our group are mixed-valence polyoxidometalates. These molecular entities can be functionalized to build hybrid organic-inorganic mixed-valence ligands to coordinate lanthanoid ions. These assemblies are of interest in magnetism and luminescence because the degree of mixed-valence in the polyoxidometalate fragment, plays a role in the observed magnetic and luminescent properties. Inorganic materials with catalytic properties are also studied, being the photocatalytic processes using inorganic nanocomposites the main object of our attention.

Línea(s) de investigación: 
Inorganic multifunctional materials
Jerarquía: 
Titular
Grados académicos /educación: 
Doctor en Química, Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad de Chile..
Licenciado en Ciencias c/m Química, Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad de Chile