LABORATORY FOR APPLIED AND SUSTAINABLE CHEMISTRY

Welcome to the Laboratory for Applied and Sustainable Chemistry website!
We are a laboratory within the Ruđer Bošković Institute in Zagreb, Croatia, led by Dr. Krunoslav Užarević. Our main focus is advancing mechanochemistry in the search of new materials with exciting properties.

The famous "Hello Kitty" mill from InSolido Technologies showing a typical milling action of a mixer mill. The white teflon jars contain the reagents and milling media (e.g. zirconia balls). Video credit: Ivan Kulcsar (RBI).

LASC News

February 23rd, 2023. Bahar, Ivana, Natalija and Valentina are starting 72 hours straight of beamtime at DESY synchrotron. They are joined by Chumei Ye from the Bennet group at Cambridge University. Look out for some great science coming soon!
February 20th, 2023. Kruno gave an invited talk at TU Graz, and by all accounts, he did a great job!
January 31st, 2023. We say goodbye to one of our amazing postdocs, Katarina. We wish her a lot of luck in her future endeavors and hope we can work together in the future.
January 24th, 2023. Michael Hafner from the Falcaro group at TU Graz came for a short research visit as part of an exciting new collaboration.
January 4th, 2023. Tomislav and Kruno have a new paper out in ACS Sustainable Chemistry and Engineering; a great collaboration with the Šekutor lab and Jasna Alić Stolar! Read about the "Sustainable Synthesis of Diamondoid Ethers by High-Temperature Ball Milling" here.
December 23rd, 2022. We have a new group photo, courtesy of the departmental Holiday party. We wish all of our members, friends, and collaborators happy, safe and restful holidays, and a healthy and prosperous New Year.
November 22nd, 2022. Our Perspective article "Advancing mechanochemical synthesis by combining milling with different energy sources" is now out in Nature Reviews Chemistry! Congratulations to all authors! free-to-read link
November 1st, 2022. Our new paper with IRB's Laboratory for Magnetic Resonances is now out in Inorganic Chemistry, congratulations to all coauthors! link
September 7th-10th, 2022. Kruno, Valentina and Ivana all attended the 28th Croatian-Slovenian Crystallographic Meeting in Poreč, Croatia. All three had very successful oral presentations, Kruno chaired a session, and Ivana won the CCDC award for best presentation by a young scientist. Congratulations all!
September 4th-7th, 2022. Kruno attended the MOF2022 conference in Dresden with a poster presentation!
August 26th, 2022. Tomislav has successfully defended his PhD thesis titled "The role of solid-state reactivity in the prebiotic selection of nucleobases and the formation of peptides". Congratulations Dr. Stolar!
August 15, 2022. Tomislav has published his first corresponding author paper titled "Sustainable solid form screening: mechanochemical control over nucleobase hydrogen-bonded organic framework polymorphism" in CrystEngComm! Congratulations Tomislav, and the rest of the team! link
July 3-8, 2022. Tomislav presented a poster at the 2022 ICCOSS meeting in Ohrid, well done!
June 18-24, 2022. Ivana chaired the 2022 Crystal Engineering Gordon Research Seminar, and gave a talk in the corresponding Gordon Research Conference. Congratulations Ivana!
June 7th, 2022. Dr. Natalija Pantalon Juraj joins the group as a new postdoctoral fellow. Welcome!
June 6-10, 2022. Kruno, Bahar, and Valentina attended Income2022 in Cagliari with talks (Kruno and Bahar) and a poster (Valentina). Great work everyone!
May 31- June 3, 2022. Ivana presented a talk at the 2022 EPDiC in Šibenik.
April 4, 2022. Daniel Baier from the Borchard Group is here for a short visit, to do some exciting in situ monitoring of mechanochemical reactions. Welcome, Daniel!
March 22, 2022. The LASC team is thrilled to welcome Dr. Katarina Lisac to our group as a new postdoctoral fellow! You can see her profile in the Team Members section. Look out for some amazing new work.
February 23, 2022. Krunoslav published a paper on Mechanochemically synthesised dicyanamide hybrid organic–inorganic perovskites, and their melt-quenched glasses with the Bennett group in Chemical Communications. Congratulations Kruno! link
December 10, 2021. The LASC team is attending the Supramolecular Chemistry 2021 meeting at the Faculty of Science in the University of Zagreb. Tomislav and Ivana gave wonderful talks! Special thanks to Prof. Ivica Đilović for including a rare archeological photo from 2008 showing Kruno with hair in his presentation.
December 9, 2021. Kruno served as a main evaluator for the PhD thesis of Jessica Špačkova titled «Exploration de nouvelles voies d’enrichissement d’acides carboxyliques en oxygène-17 grâce à la mécanochimie et application à des études RMN haute résolution». Jessica was mentored by Thomas-Xavier Metro and Danielle Laurencin from Université de Montpellier. He was very impressed with Jessica's work and defense. Congrats Jessica!
October 4, 2021. Tomislav Stolar defends his PhD thesis topic. Congratulations Tomislav!
September 23, 2021. The LASC team is attending the 27th annual meeting of the Slovenian Chemical Society. Valentina gave a poster, Kruno gave an invited talk, and everyone had a great time in lovely Portorož!
August 31, 2021. Ivana Brekalo leaves for a 6-month visit to University of Warsaw where she will learn some computational chemistry. We wish her the best of luck!
July 1, 2021. HELLO WORLD The Laboratory for Applied and Sustainable Chemistry is born! We are now officially a laboratory within the IRB family, and what better way to celebrate than with a nice barbecue, celebrating the hot Zagreb summer that just began. Check out some images in the gallery, it was a blast!