Natália de Fátima Teixeira Correia Assistant Researcher of REQUIMTE REQUIMTE/CQFB Departamento de Química, Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia, Universidade Nova de Lisboa 2829-516 Caparica, Portugal Phone: + 351 212948300; ext-10975 Fax: + 351 212948550 e-mail:n.correia@dq.fct.unl.pt
Research Interests
My research activity relates to the study of physical properties of molecular materials presenting metastable phases by the techniques of Thermally Stimulated Depolarisation Currents (TSDC), Dielectric Relaxation Spectroscopy, Dynamic Mechanical Spectroscopy (ARES- Adavanced Rheometric Expansion System), Differential Scanning Calorimetry (DSC) and X-ray diffraction. I am mainly interested in the problems of stability and glass transition for a variety of these systems: polymers (liquid crystals, amorphous, semi-crystallines and polymer blends), plastic crystals and glassy crystals, and low molecular weight glass formers. Some of these materials have a strong interest for the pharmaceutical and agro-chemical industries like maltitol, sorbitol, fructose, indomethacin, salsalate (example of a pharmaceutical liquid crystal), caffeine (a pharmaceutical glassy crystal) and theophylline. Current research is also concerned with molecular mobility, slow relaxation processes associated with both the glass and sub-glass transition in pharmaceutical and agro-chemical materials; Relations between these relaxations and the nucleation and crystallization process; Polymorphic transformations or amorphization of therapeutic materials; influence of confinement on state diagrams and dynamics; structural relaxation (physical ageing).
Main publications
“Dielectric study of the slow motional processes in the polymorphic states of anhydrous caffeine”. J. J. Moura Ramos, N. T. Correia, H. P Diogo, M. Descamps, J. Phys. Chem. B, 110, 8268-8273, 2006. “The plastic and glassy states of caffeine”. M. Descamps, N. T. Correia, P. Derollez, F. Danède, F. Capet, J. Phys. Chem. B, 109, 16092-16098, 2005. “Vitrification, nucleation and crystallization in phenyl-2-hidroxybenzoate (salol) studied by Differential Scanning Calorimetry (DSC) and Thermally Stimulated Depolarisation Currents (TSDC)”. J. J. Moura Ramos, N. T. Correia, H. P. Diogo, Phys. Chem. Chem Phys., 6, 793-798, 2004. “The ß-a Branching in D-Sorbitol as Studied by Thermally Stimulated Depolarisation Currents (TSDC)”. N. T. Correia, C. Alvarez, J. J. Moura Ramos, M. Descamps, J. Phys. Chem. B, 105, 5663-5669, 2001. “Molecular Mobility and Fragility in Indomethacin: A Thermally Stimulated Depolarization Current Study”. N. T. Correia, J. J. Moura Ramos, M. Descamps, G. Collins, Pharm. Res., 18, 1767-1774, 2001.