From the beginning of his career, Maurizio Prato used his physical organic and synthetic chemistry backgrounds to expand the horizons of the chemical reactivity of fullerenes.

[2] The reaction is very versatile, consisting in the condensation of an alpha-amino assid and an aldehyde to generate a reactive 1,3-dipole that then adds to a double bond of C60 or CNT, giving a pyrrolidine ring fused to the carbon skeleton.

In particular, Maurizio Prato, in a longstanding collaboration, initially with Alberto Bianco and later with Kostas Kostarelos, demonstrated the utility of carbon nanotubes to serve as efficient scaffolds for the delivery of vaccines and drugs.

Another topic recently developed by prof. Prato focuses on the synthesis and the study of carbon nanodots, quasi-spherical, water-soluble and fluorescent nanoparticles with a diameter < 10 nm.

[9] These nanoparticles with a carbonaceous core are very rich in primary aliphatic amine groups on their surface that can be exploited not only for coupling reactions with molecules and/or other nanomaterials but also for catalysis and, interestingly, emission can be tailored through a rational choice of organic precursors.