At 39, Nigerian Peter Ngene is hoping for a renewal of his contract at the University of Utrecht (Netherlands), which ends in 2020, and has no immediate plans to return to live in Africa.
A doctor in inorganic chemistry, he has become an expert on nanomaterials that can capture hydrogen or, on the contrary, release it. A very useful feature for future electric vehicles running on hydrogen, or for developing batteries.
He has also created original sensors. By playing on the composition of the crystals, he manages to modify the distance between two atoms. These materials change color depending on the concentration of hydrogen in the air, trapped inside the metals. “By blowing on our small sensor, it is possible to instantly see the level of lactose intolerance of a person,” says the scientist. Because the greater the intolerance, the more the breath of the patient is loaded with hydrogen. And he added: “It’s faster, more efficient and less expensive than a one-day hospital test with a spectrometer.” A newer, more accurate sensor version has been the subject of a publication in Nature Communications last November, of which he is the first author. This innovation “will serve the world, not just Africa”.
But he reluctantly relinquished his old research to devote his time to new metal hydrides for batteries. In addition to his work, Peter Ngene has spent two to three weeks a year, since 2013, teaching nanomaterials at the African University of Science and Technology in Abuja, Nigeria.