sophiecarenco

January 19, 2026: Podcast interview

The Fédération Gay-Lussac of Chemistry engineering schools in France hosts a series of podcasts presenting chemists accross the country.

I was interviewed in the last episode, and we discussed about the role of nanosciences (in particular, nanochemistry) in research and in society.

November 28, 2025: Invited conference at GdR Nino

I was glad to participate to this exciting workshop "Reactivities", about nanoparticles, their design and their applications, as an invited speaker. It was also a nice opportunity to spend a few days in Paris and catch up with colleagues.

October 28, 2025: Award from the Académie des Sciences

I am very honored to be the recipient of the Fédération Gay-Lussac/Académie des Sciences award. This award recognizes "Chemistry at the heart of society challenges". (c) Académie des sciences – Mathieu Baumer.

October 3, 2025: Best oral presentation award: Congrats to Kaltoum!

Kaltoum presented her work about low-temperature nickel phosphide at the Meeting on Nanosciences Advances, organized by the C'Nano network. She received the Best Oral Presentation award. Congrats!

July 9, 2025: Invited conference at SPSSM meeting

Very glad to meet and discuss with the international community on solid-state chemistry, in particular related to mixed-anion compounds and their properties. I presented our journey about lanthanide oxysulfide nanoparticles and received highly valuable feedback. Cheers to the organizers!

Article: Nickel phosphides as low temperature hydrogenation catalysts

In the framework of NanoFLPs, we develop here a new synthesis for nickel phosphide nanoparticles, assisted by H₂. We show that these are active catalysts, when paired with tributylphosphine, down to 0°C. Read the article.

With: Kaltoum, Sophie

Article out: a nice mechanistic study about the formation of Cu nanoparticles

This work, with contributions for computational and experimental chemistry, provides an interesting insight on the reduction path that leads to the nucleation of colloidal copper nanoparticles. Read the article.

With: Alexy, Sophie

More News | Back to top

Refining the NanoFLP Concept

Still fighting to unveil an authentic NanoFLP, we uncovered an interesting low-temperature behavior of Ni nanoparticles in the presence of well-selected phosphine. This could be interpreted as the formation of a surface frustrated Lewis pair for H-H cleavage... but also as a consequence of phenylacetylene activation. What do you make of this?

Carbon is our friend!

Nickel fame for catalysis now extends to a new guy: nickel carbide. In this work, we show that this phase can be used as a catalyst for the hydrgenation of a number of moieties, coming along a greater robustness than the metallic counter-part. Check out our nickel carbide buddy.

Make them safer

It's a small step for the world of nanoparticles, but a big step for our beloved oxysulfides nanoplates: in this work, we propose to evaluate, in a very preliminary approach, some of the interactions of the nanoparticles with macrophage cells. We turned on the lamp (visible light) and monitored the impact in the production of radicals. Read for yourself.

Did you say NanoFLP?

We have been proposing for a while to use metal nanoparticles as partners in Frustrated Lewis Pairs. Now, we found that nickel-cobalt nanoparticles associated to well-chosen phosphines likely form such a pair, based on the correlation between Si-H bond activation and the Tolman cone angle of the phosphine: only a tiny range of steric hindrance is suitable, and it is related to the silane bulkiness. We believe we nailed it. Make your own opinion.

Molybdenum mapped out

Molybdenum is a key element of the energy transition. X-ray absortion spectroscopy at the L-edge is an amazing way to analyze it in solids, liquids, composites, etc. Here, we wrote some simple guidelines to interpret the data and we provided a consistent series of spectra for well-known, and less-know, Mo compounds. Read our map.

More Featured Results | Back to top