Rate My Professor Tina Salguero

Tina Salguero is an Associate Professor and Associate Department Head in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Georgia. She also serves as the Academic Director of the Georgia Electron Microscopy facility. Salguero received her B.A. in Chemistry from Columbia University in 1997 and her Ph.D. in Chemistry from the California Institute of Technology in 2003. Her research program centers on the synthesis, assembly, and characterization of hybrid inorganic nanomaterials, particularly those incorporating atomically thin nanosheet building blocks. Examples include graphene, graphite oxide, layered metal chalcogenides such as MoS2 and NbSe2, transition metal oxides like NbWO6 and Ca2Nb3O10, hexagonal boron nitride, and lamellar perovskites. These two-dimensional crystals offer exceptional mechanical strength, thermal stability, and high surface area, enabling novel electronic, optical, and catalytic properties in hybrid assemblies.

The Salguero group utilizes solution-based top-down exfoliation and bottom-up crystal growth strategies to isolate and manipulate nanosheets, followed by advanced electron microscopy and spectroscopy for characterization. Targeted applications encompass energy storage devices like batteries and supercapacitors, gas and moisture barriers for flexible electronics and photovoltaics, electrically conductive materials for fuel cells and lightning protection, and catalytic supports. Key publications include “Nanoscience of an ancient pigment” (Journal of the American Chemical Society, 2013), “Exfoliation of Egyptian Blue and Han Blue, Two Alkali Earth Copper Silicate-Based Pigments” (Journal of Visualized Experiments, 2014), “Zone-Folded Phonons and the Commensurate–Incommensurate Charge-Density-Wave Transition in 1T-TaSe2 Thin Films” (Nano Letters, 2015), and “A charge-density-wave oscillator based on an integrated tantalum disulfide–boron nitride–graphene device operating at room temperature” (Nature Nanotechnology, 2016). Salguero has obtained major grants such as a $750,000 Department of Energy Early Career Research Program award in 2012 and a nearly $1 million NSF Major Research Instrumentation grant in 2020 for acquiring a high-resolution low-voltage electron microscope. Her scholarship, with over 13,000 citations, impacts fields including inorganic chemistry, 1D and 2D nanomaterials, electron microscopy, and archaeometry, where she applies materials expertise to ancient pigments and ceramics.