Hanna BoströmAssistant professor
About me
I studied Chemistry at the University of St Andrews and subsequently completed my PhD in Inorganic Chemistry at the University of Oxford supervised by Andrew Goodwin.
My thesis focused on the structural degrees of freedom in perovskite-like coordination polymers. I did my Postdoc at Uppsala University and a stint at the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research (2020-2022) as a Humboldt postdoctoral research fellow. There, I was based in the group of Bettina Lotsch and investigated the synthetic (ir!)reproducibility of metal-organic frameworks.
In 2022, I was awarded a starting grant from Vetenskapsrådet and subsequently relocated to Uppsala in January 2023. The same year, I took up a WISE-funded tenure-track position about “nanoporous materials for sustainable solutions” at Stockholm University.
Research
Prussian blue analogues
Prussian blue analogues (PBAs) are networks consisting of metal ions and cyanide linkers, originally famous for their strong blue colour. Depending on the charges and stoichiometry, PBAs range from dense redox-active systems to microporous structures with affinity for small molecules. They are now actively researched for their versatile properties spanning catalysis to ion transport. Although the average structure is relatively simple, PBAs are very playful materials that often come up with new ways of being complicated. As a result, there is still a lot to learn about their fundamental behaviour and crystallography. We have studied these materials under various conditions, to e.g. further understand how the propensity for phase transitions and flexibility depends on the stoichiometry.
Spin crossover
Spin crossover involves a electronic rearrangement of transition metals from the high spin to the low spin state. It is typically seen in compounds with FeII coordinated by N-bearing ligands and can be induced by a stimulus such as temperature, pressure, radiation, or the sorption of guests. Spin transitions normally change both the colour and magnetic properties, and so find many applications in sensing, switching, or even solid-state cooling. Coordination polymers often show very favourable spin crossover behaviour, but many aspects still require further study. We focus on Prussian blue analogues, Hofmann complexes and related frameworks to create new SCO-active systems and investigate the fundamental science of spin crossover transitions, including unusual stimuli.
High-pressure crystallography
Studying materials under non-ambient conditions helps us to understand materials, for example by discovering low-energy structural distortions or investigate their tolerance to extreme conditions. High-pressure crystallography explores the structural response during compression to pressures on the order of several GPa and can often give rise to new phases that are difficult to achieve by other means. In collaboration with Andrew Cairns, we have been investigating a range of Prussian blue analogues under pressure and amongst other discovered the first polar phase of a PBA.