Design and development of materials based on cocrystals for environmental applications

Abstract

In the recent years we are all witness of the climate changes that influence negatively the life of human beings. For this reason it is our responsibility to find routes that less impact to the increase of earth temperature. The project of this PhD was to find solutions to principally two global issues. The first problem concerns the accumulation of toxic residues in the soil and in the environment due to the repeated chemical treatments of plants and weed to control their disease. These treatments may lead to serious pathologies. The second problem is an emerging, urgent and global problem: food waste. A recent study has highlighted that in Europe that 20% of total born food is wasted or lost. The global waste has important and problematic impacts to the global warming. Then it is important to find alternative to standard pesticides and food preservative that are natural and no toxic. A possible solution can be the Essential Oils (EOs). This are a class of compound produced from plants as protections to the insects and fungi. They are well-known for their antimicrobial, antiviral and antifungal proprieties but they presents some limitations. Indeed they are often liquid at room temperature and they present poor solubility in water so their handling and storage present several impediments. As all know liquid compounds are generally less stable than solid ones thus it is essential discover a method to convert them into a solid state form. In this Ph.D thesis a new synthetic route to overwhelm this problem will be described: the cocrystallization. Thanks to this technique it is indeed possible to modulate and to tune the physical-chemical proprieties of the liquid active ingredients (EOs) and as consequence to stabilize them in a solid-state form.