José Manuel Avila Santos

Since 2012 to 2013, Avila was postdoctoral fellow in the Physics Department of the University of Guelph, under the project: Development of Materials for Hydrogen Storage in Nanocavities. His contribution to the project was focused to characterization of the obtained materials in terms of: crystal structure at atomic level, thermal stability of the framework and electronic structure from the material. Also he studied the conditions of release of the free volume of guest species.Along the professional formation, Avila has acquired strong abilities in Crystallography, in particular, solving the crystal structure of novel materials such as Metal Organic Frameworks and technologically important materials. Also he has acquired an advanced training in X-ray optics and XRD instrumentation for conventional and synchrotron X-ray radiation sources.The post-graduated formation was in X-ray diffraction Crystallography: ab initio crystal structure solution and refinement from X-ray powder diffraction data collected in conventional equipment and synchrotron radiation facilities, and also from single crystal X-ray diffraction data. As complementary techniques, infrared, Raman and Mössbauer spectroscopies, thermogravimetry, electron microscopy (SEM, TEM) and gases adsorption were used.