Financing green development: 'Climate Bonds’ as a solution for institutional investors engagement

A Work Project, presented as part of the requirements for the Award of a Masters Degree in Management from the NOVA – School of Business and Economics

Plux: Designing a solution for growth in the sports sector

A Work Project, presented as part of the requirements for the Award of a Masters Degree in Management from the NOVA – School of Business and Economics

Mota-Engil: A solution to turnover its negative stock market performance

A Work Project, presented as part of the requirements for the Award of a Masters Degree in Finance from the NOVA – School of Business and Economics

Mainroad: Information technology investment solution

A Work Project, presented as part of the requirements for the Award of a Masters Degree in Management from the NOVA – School of Business and Economics

Development of oxidoreductase based electrochemical biosensors

Dissertação para obtenção do Grau de Mestre em Biotecnologia

Old cellulose for new multifunctional networks

Dissertação para obtenção do Grau de Doutor em Ciência e Engenharia de Materiais

Effect of surfactant on PDLC films with and without permanent memory effect

Dissertação para obtenção do Grau de Mestre em Engenharia Química e Bioquímica

Development of ion jelly thin films for electrochemical devices

Dissertação para obtenção do Grau de Doutor em Química Sustentável

TSKY: a dependable middleware solution for data privacy using public storage clouds

Dissertação para obtenção do Grau de Mestre em Engenharia Informática

Social entrepreneurship as a solution provider for ageing societies in Europe

A Work Project, presented as part of the requirements for the Award of a Masters Degree in Management from the NOVA – School of Business and Economics

Development of suberin films driven by an ionic liquid-based depolymerisation process

Dissertation presented to obtain the Ph.D degree in Chemistry

Design and characterization of Chitin- Glucan polymeric structures for wound dressing materials

The main objective of this work was the development of polymeric structures, gel and films, generated from the dissolution of the Chitin-Glucan Complex (CGC) in biocompatible ionic liquids for biomedical applications. Similar as chitin, CGC is only soluble in some special solvents which are toxic and corrosive. Due to this fact and the urgent development of biomedical applications, the need to use biocompatible ionic liquids to dissolve the CGC is indispensable. For the dissolution of CGC, the biocompatible ionic liquid used was Choline acetate. Two different CGC’s, KiOnutrime from KitoZyme and biologically produced CGC from Faculdade de Ciencias e Tecnologia (FCT) - Universidade Nova de Lisboa, were characterized in order to develop biocompatible wound dressing materials. The similar result is shown in term of the ratio of chitin:glucan, which is 1:1.72 for CGC-FCT and 1:1.69 for CGC-Commercial. For the analysis of metal element content, water and inorganic salts content and protein content, both polymers showed some discrepancies, where the content in CGC-FCT is always higher compared to the commercial one. The different characterization results between CGC-FCT and CGC-Commercial could be addressed to differences in the purification method, and the difference of its original strain yeast, whereas CGC-FCT is derived from P.pastoris and the commercial CGC is from A.niger. This work also investigated the effect of biopolymers, temperature dissolution, non-solvent composition on the characteristics of generated polymeric structure with biocompatible ionic liquid. The films were prepared by casting a polymer mixture, immersion in a non-solvent, followed by drying at ambient temperature. Three different non-solvents were tested in phase inversion method, i.e. water, methanol, and glycerol. The results indicate that the composition of non-solvent in the coagulation bath has great influence in generated polymeric structure. Water was found to be the best coagulant for producing a CGC polymeric film structure. The characterizations that have been done include the analysis of viscosity and viscoelasticity measurement, as well as sugar composition in the membrane and total sugar that was released during the phase inversion method. The rheology test showed that both polymer mixtures exhibit a non- Newtonian shear thinning behaviour. Where the viscosity and viscoelasticity test reveal that CGCFCT mixture has a typical behaviour of a viscous solution with entangled polymer chains and CGCCommercial mixture has true gel behaviour. The experimental results show us that the generated CGC solution from choline acetate could be used to develop both polymeric film structure and gel. The generated structures are thermally stable at 100° C, and are hydrophilic. The produced films have dense structure and mechanical stabilities against puncture up to 60 kPa.

Application of NMR RDC’s, relaxation and self-diffusion for the study of dynamic processes of small molecules in solution

Spin-lattice Relaxation, self-Diffusion coefficients and Residual Dipolar Couplings (RDC’s) are the basis of well established Nuclear Magnetic Resonance techniques for the physicochemical study of small molecules (typically organic compounds and natural products with MW < 1000 Da), as they proved to be a powerful and complementary source of information about structural dynamic processes in solution. The work developed in this thesis consists in the application of the earlier-mentioned NMR techniques to explore, analyze and systematize patterns of the molecular dynamic behavior of selected small molecules in particular experimental conditions. Two systems were chosen to investigate molecular dynamic behavior by these techniques: the dynamics of ion-pair formation and ion interaction in ionic liquids (IL) and the dynamics of molecular reorientation when molecules are placed in oriented phases (alignment media). The application of NMR spin-lattice relaxation and self-diffusion measurements was applied to study the rotational and translational molecular dynamics of the IL: 1-butyl-3-methylimidazolium tetrafluoroborate [BMIM][BF4]. The study of the cation-anion dynamics in neat and IL-water mixtures was systematically investigated by a combination of multinuclear NMR relaxation techniques with diffusion data (using by H1, C13 and F19 NMR spectroscopy). Spin-lattice relaxation time (T1), self-diffusion coefficients and nuclear Overhauser effect experiments were combined to determine the conditions that favor the formation of long lived [BMIM][BF4] ion-pairs in water. For this purpose and using the self-diffusion coefficients of cation and anion as a probe, different IL-water compositions were screened (from neat IL to infinite dilution) to find the conditions where both cation and anion present equal diffusion coefficients (8% water fraction at 25 ºC). This condition as well as the neat IL and the infinite dilution were then further studied by 13C NMR relaxation in order to determine correlation times (c) for the molecular reorientational motion using a mathematical iterative procedure and experimental data obtained in a temperature range between 273 and 353 K. The behavior of self-diffusion and relaxation data obtained in our experiments point at the combining parameters of molar fraction 8 % and temperature 298 K as the most favorable condition for the formation of long lived ion-pairs. When molecules are subjected to soft anisotropic motion by being placed in some special media, Residual Dipolar Couplings (RDCs), can be measured, because of the partial alignment induced by this media. RDCs are emerging as a powerful routine tool employed in conformational analysis, as it complements and even outperforms the approaches based on the classical NMR NOE or J3 couplings. In this work, three different alignment media have been characterized and evaluated in terms of integrity using 2H and 1H 1D-NMR spectroscopy, namely the stretched and compressed gel PMMA, and the lyotropic liquid crystals CpCl/n-hexanol/brine and cromolyn/water. The influence that different media and degrees of alignment have on the dynamic properties of several molecules was explored. Different sized sugars were used and their self-diffusion was determined as well as conformation features using RDCs. The results obtained indicate that no influence is felt by the small molecules diffusion and conformational features studied within the alignment degree range studied, which was the 3, 5 and 6 % CpCl/n-hexanol/brine for diffusion, and 5 and 7.5 % CpCl/n-hexanol/brine for conformation. It was also possible to determine that the small molecules diffusion verified in the alignment media presented close values to the ones observed in water, reinforcing the idea of no conditioning of molecular properties in such media.

A solution for estimates in software development projects

The Corporate world is becoming more and more competitive. This leads organisations to adapt to this reality, by adopting more efficient processes, which result in a decrease in cost as well as an increase of product quality. One of these processes consists in making proposals to clients, which necessarily include a cost estimation of the project. This estimation is the main focus of this project. In particular, one of the goals is to evaluate which estimation models fit the Altran Portugal software factory the most, the organization where the fieldwork of this thesis will be carried out. There is no broad agreement about which is the type of estimation model more suitable to be used in software projects. Concerning contexts where there is plenty of objective information available to be used as input to an estimation model, model-based methods usually yield better results than the expert judgment. However, what happens more frequently is not having this volume and quality of information, which has a negative impact in the model-based methods performance, favouring the usage of expert judgement. In practice, most organisations use expert judgment, making themselves dependent on the expert. A common problem found is that the performance of the expert’s estimation depends on his previous experience with identical projects. This means that when new types of projects arrive, the estimation will have an unpredictable accuracy. Moreover, different experts will make different estimates, based on their individual experience. As a result, the company will not directly attain a continuous growing knowledge about how the estimate should be carried. Estimation models depend on the input information collected from previous projects, the size of the project database and the resources available. Altran currently does not store the input information from previous projects in a systematic way. It has a small project database and a team of experts. Our work is targeted to companies that operate in similar contexts. We start by gathering information from the organisation in order to identify which estimation approaches can be applied considering the organization’s context. A gap analysis is used to understand what type of information the company would have to collect so that other approaches would become available. Based on our assessment, in our opinion, expert judgment is the most adequate approach for Altran Portugal, in the current context. We analysed past development and evolution projects from Altran Portugal and assessed their estimates. This resulted in the identification of common estimation deviations, errors, and patterns, which lead to the proposal of metrics to help estimators produce estimates leveraging past projects quantitative and qualitative information in a convenient way. This dissertation aims to contribute to more realistic estimates, by identifying shortcomings in the current estimation process and supporting the self-improvement of the process, by gathering as much relevant information as possible from each finished project.

Engineering of metal oxide nanoparticles for application in electrochemical devices

The growing demand for materials and devices with new functionalities led to the increased inter-est in the field of nanomaterials and nanotechnologies. Nanoparticles, not only present a reduced size as well as high reactivity, which allows the development of electronic and electrochemical devices with exclusive properties, when compared with thin films. This dissertation aims to explore the development of several nanostructured metal oxides by sol-vothermal synthesis and its application in different electrochemical devices. Within this broad theme, this study has a specific number of objectives: a) research of the influence of the synthesis parameters to the structure and morphology of the nanoparticles; b) improvement of the perfor-mance of the electrochromic devices with the application of the nanoparticles as electrode; c) application of the nanoparticles as probes to sensing devices; and d) production of solution-pro-cessed transistors with a nanostructured metal oxide semiconductor. Regarding the results, several conclusions can be exposed. Solvothermal synthesis shows to be a very versatile method to control the growth and morphology of the nanoparticles. The electrochromic device performance is influenced by the different structures and morphologies of WO3 nanoparticles, mainly due to the surface area and conductivity of the materials. The dep-osition of the electrochromic layer by inkjet printing allows the patterning of the electrodes without wasting material and without any additional steps. Nanostructured WO3 probes were produced by electrodeposition and drop casting and applied as pH sensor and biosensor, respectively. The good performance and sensitivity of the devices is explained by the high number of electrochemical reactions occurring at the surface of the na-noparticles. GIZO nanoparticles were deposited by spin coating and used in electrolyte-gated transistors, which promotes a good interface between the semiconductor and the dielectric. The produced transistors work at low potential and with improved ON-OFF current ratio, up to 6 orders of mag-nitude. To summarize, the low temperatures used in the production of the devices are compatible with flexible substrates and additionally, the low cost of the techniques involved can be adapted for disposable devices.