ICGM - UMR5253- Equipe AIME
Université Montpellier II
2 Place Eugène Bataillon - CC 1502
34095 Montpellier CEDEX 5
Tel: +33 (0)4 67 14 90 98
Fax: +33 (0)4 67 14 33 04
sara.cavaliere@univ-montp2.fr]

RESEARCH AREAS

- synthesis of nanomaterials of different nature and morphology
- elaboration of polymer and composite nanofibres by electrospinning
- elaboration of nanofibre based fuel cell electrodes and membranes

BACKGROUND

From 2009 Sara Cavaliere is assistant professor at the Laboratory for Aggregates, Interfaces and Materials for Energy, Charles Gerhardt Institute for Molecular Chemistry and Materials in Montpellier.
After a Master degree in Chemistry from the University of Milan (Italy), she obtained her PhD in Chemistry and Materials Science from the University of Versailles in 2006. She worked on Langmuir-Blodgett films based on platinum nanoparticles for electrocatalysis. Her research was performed at Lavoisier Institute of University of Versailles and the CEA at Saclay.
In 2006 she started working as post-doctoral fellow at the FMF (Materials Research Centre) of Freiburg (Germany), where she focused on quantum dots synthesis, silica encapsulation, metal nanoshells preparation and sensor applications.
Afterwards, she worked for two years as research and teaching assistant in the LMI (Multimaterials and Interfaces Laboratory) of University of Lyon 1. She had the opportunity to work on different synthesis strategies to produce magnetic and oxide nanoparticles of different shapes, on catalytic materials for hydrogen storage and on the electrospinning technique to elaborate polymer and composite nanofibres.
Current research directions in the group include the development of new electrolyte and electrode materials for medium and high temperature proton exchange membrane fuel cells and electrolysers. In particular, the group is dealing with the preparation and the design of nanostructured and nanofibrous materials e.g. obtained by electrospinning and new membrane-electrode assembly architectures. Sara Cavaliere is currenly involved in two FP7 projects from EC (Maestro and QuasiDry).

In January 2013 has started the 5 year project SPINAM (Electrospinning: a method to elaborate membrane-electrode materials for energy devices) funded by an ERC Starting Grant.

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS

 S. Subianto, S. Cavaliere, D.J. Jones, J. Rozière,
Effect of side chain length on the electrospinning of perfluorosulfonic acid ionomers, J. Polymer Science Part A: Polym. Chem. 2013, 51, 118-128.
 A. Bauer, L. Chevallier, R. Hui, S. Cavaliere, J. Zhang, D.J. Jones, J. Rozière,
Synthesis and characterization of Nb-TiO2 mesoporous microsphere and nanofiber supported Pt catalysts for high temperature PEM fuel cells, Electrochim. Acta. 2012, 77, 1-7.
 L. Chevallier, A. Bauer, S. Cavaliere, R. Hui, J. Rozière,
Mesoporous nanostructured Nb-doped titanium dioxide microsphere catalyst supports for PEM fuel cell electrodes, ACS Appl. Mater. Interf. 2012, 4, 1752-1759.
 S. Cavaliere, S. Subianto, I. Savych, D.J. Jones, J. Rozière,
Electrospinning: designed architectures for energy conversion and storage devices, Energy Environ. Sci. 2011, 4, 4761-4785.
 S. Cavaliere, S. Subianto, L. Chevallier, D.J. Jones, J. Rozière,
Single step elaboration of size-tuned Pt loaded titania nanofibres, Chem. Commun. 2011, 47, 6834-6836.