Maria Grazia GRIMALDI

Maria Grazia Grimaldi is full professor of Experimental Physics since 2006, she has been Director of the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Catania (2019-2023).
After graduation in Physics with a mark of 110/110 cum laude from the University of Catania, in 1980 she went as post-doc researcher to the Electrical Engineering Department of the California Institute of Technology, in 1983 she worked as process engineer at the ST Microelectronics and in 1984 becomes a researcher of the University of Catania.
She has been awarded by the Prize of the Italian Physics Society for young graduates in 1981 and the prize for high scientific productivity by CNR (1981).
During her career she has held several courses and is currently responsible for the General Physics 1 course, and supervised about 30 master student and 25 PhD student.
She was the coordinator of the phD in Materials Science and Nanotechnology at the University of Catania from 2012 to 2019.
She is a member of numerous scientific and editorial committees including the scientific council of the IBMM conference series, the scientific council of the Micro and Nanosystems district, the editorial committee of the journal Nanomaterials and President of  the Micro and Nanosystems district. Since May 2020 she is Rector's delegate in the Board of Directors of the Giovan Pietro Grimaldi Foundation.
She was (2013-2019) disciplinary and system expert of ANVUR and member of the Commission of Expert Evaluators for the periodic accreditation of numerous universities.
Her research activity is experimental in the field of Matter Physics. Previous research topics have concerned the analysis of materials with ion beams, the study of the effect of ion irradiation in semiconductors, the doping of semiconductors, ultrafast phase transitions, the properties of amorphous Si, silicides for the production of contacts and for applications in optoelectronic devices, chalcogenides. The current research activity concerns the creation and characterization of nanostructures for catalysis, sensing and energy with particular attention to the study of eco-friendly techniques such as irradiation with powerful laser pulses both in air and in liquid or irradiation with ion beams for the creation of nanostructures. She has been principal investigator in numerous national and international projects. In the course of her activity she published about 300 papers that received approximately 5000 citations with a Hirsch index of 41 (SCOPUS).

Experimental research activity in the field of Materials Physics. 

The past research topics concerned: 

a) damage induced in crystals (Si, SiC, and GaAs) by ion irradiation: amorphization and epitaxial regrowth; 

b) electrical activation and de-activation of dopants in semiconductors; 

c) phase transitions induced by pulsed laser irradiation; 

d) relaxation of the amorphous Si; 

e) silicide phase transitions in nanometric confined structure; 

f) semiconductor silicides (FeSi2) for optoelectronic applications.

The current research activity concerns: 

a) realization and characterization of nanostructures by self-aggregation; 

b) metallic nanostructures for applications in catalysis, sensors and energy; 

c) chalcogenides; 

d) realization of nanostructures by laser ablation in vacuum and in liquid; 

e) realization of nanoporous structures by ion irradiation

f) high gap semiconductors for power devices.