M. Rosa Palacín and Alexandre Ponrouch, from the Solid State Chemistry Group at the ICMAB, are co-authors of a review on "Achievements, Challenges, and Prospects of Calcium Batteries" in a special issue about "Beyond Li ion batteries" of Chemical Reviews (ACS). Congratulations!

A collaboration project between the ICMAB (Elies Molins), ISGlobal (Krijn Paaijmans), and Biogents AG (Andreas Rose, Germany), has developed electrical barriers that avoid that mosquitos that can transmit diseases such as dengue, chikunguña, zika or malaria, get inside public spaces, such as schools, hospitals or workplaces.

The new developement of the Scanning Probe Microscopy Lab to measure the piezoelectricity of the materials has been featured in this month newsletter of the R+D CSIC under the title "A microscope to measure accurately the piezoelectric properties of materials". 

The article "A Solid‐State Aqueous Electrolyte‐Gated Field‐Effect Transistor as a Low‐Voltage Operation Pressure‐Sensitive Platform" from Marta Mas-Torrent and co-workers was highlighted in Advanced Science News. The work presents a proof-of-concept of a new transduction mechanism that can be exploited to fabricate pressure-responsive organic devices.

The journal "Superconductor Science and Technology" published the Viewpoint by Xavier Obradors entitled "High critical current nanocomposite REBa₂Cu₃O₇ (RE = rare earth) tapes: towards a new era of ultra-high field magnetism". The article is about the generation of high magnetic fields with the new superconducting materials that are being studied at the ICMAB, among other places. 

• The future circular collider (FCC), with a 100 km circumference ring, will extend the research currently being conducted at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in the search for new physics.
• High-temperature superconductors, such as YBCO, are being studied to be used as coating for the FCC ring instead of copper. Researchers have found that these materials outperform copper by a factor of 40, which would greatly enhance the FCC efficiency and provide big energy savings.
• The Superconducting Materials and Large Scale Nanostructures (SUMAN) group at the ICMAB-CSIC participates in this study as part of a consortium with the ALBA Synchrotron, the IFAE and the UPC.

The studies "Synchrotron tts-µXRD identification of secondary phases in ancient ceramics" published in Heritage Science, and "Breaking Preconceptions: Thin Section Petrography For Ceramic Glaze Microstructures" published in Minerals are now featured in UABDivulga. These two articles, in which researchers from the UAB and the ICMAB have collaborated, refute the common perception of thin-sections as an old-fashioned laboratory preparation and show how this sample format conceived in the 19th century is still in force and can be adapted to the research and the new tools of the 21st century, such as the synchrotron facilities.

• Material engineering at the nanoscale can be successfully employed in the design of a new type of materials: this is the case of superlattices formed by layers the same material with different crystal structure.
• The study, published in Nano Letters, paves the way for efficient thermoelectric and nanoelectronic devices, which require high quality materials without defects within their structure and interfaces.

Published in Physical Review X a study which, by combining the “long-wave method,” a mainstay of condensed-matter theory since the 50s, with modern electronic-structure techniques, researchers obtain highly accurate predictions of physical responses of crystals to nonhomogenous external perturbations. A great work by Miquel Royo and Massimiliano Stengel! 

• Researchers from the Institute of Materials Science of Barcelona (ICMAB-CSIC) and the Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology (LIST) have shown that thermal conductivity can be tuned by an external applied electric field.
• If the material is mechanically deformed in a suitable way, the external applied electric field can be much lower to achieve the same thermal response.
• These advances allow envisaging a truly zero-power analogue of electronics, because phononics circuits would need no power supply.

Atomic Layer Deposition (ALD) is a thin film deposition technique widely used in the synthesis of semiconductor devices and nanomaterials. The main characteristic is its atomic-scale control of the layer thickness and film uniformity. Now, Mariona Coll, researcher at the ICMAB, and Mari Napari, researcher at the University of Southampton, have published a review in the journal APL Materials to describe some of the major achievements and challenges of doped and complex oxides ALD.

Read this interview to Mariona Coll to know more about ALD and its applications!

The article and patent related to the preparation of Graphene Oxide Aerogels, using supercritical carbon dioxide, is featured in R+D CSIC, in the news post "Ultralight, elastic and highly porous graphene oxide aerogels". 

On Saturday, 5 October 2019, we could see in the programme ¡Qué animal! from La2 RTVE, the researcher Anna Laromaine, from the Nanoparticles and Nanocomposites group, talking about the "supermaterial" bacterial cellulose. The programme was about animals with superpowers, so our Matheroes: the supermaterials of the future, were also featured in it! Thank you to all the ¡Qué animal! team!

Teresa Puig was interviewed in the digital radio programme "Hablando con Científicos" by Ángel Rodríguez Lozano, to talk about superconducting materials and her recent ERC Proof of Concept Grant on the scale-up production of high-temperature superconducting tapes.

Researchers of the Nanomol group of the Institute of Materials Science of Barcelona (ICMAB-CSIC), together with the company Nanomol Technologies S.L. have begun a consultation process with the Spanish Association of Medicines and Health Products (AEMPS) to try and enter a new treatment in a clinical studies stage, to fight against venous ulcers in lower extremities. The study is carried out within the framework of the RIS3CAT NANONAFRES project.

Jose Giner was interviewed in Onda Cero Vigo, in the program "La Mirilla" with Raquel Sánchez, for the nanotransformers discovery, the MOFs that can reversible go from 2D to 3D structures. If you want to discover what these materials are, listen to the podcast! Jose Giner is "el chef de los nanomateriales"!

• Perovskites promise to be the next star material for solar cells, but the reason of their high efficiency is still unknown.
• Researchers at the Institute of Materials Science in Barcelona (ICMAB-CSIC) and the Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin für Materialien und Energie (Germany) have demonstrated with a new microscopy technique that perovskites are not ferroelectric, as was thought.
• The new technique, patented by CSIC in 2017, is the direct piezoelectric force microscopy (DPFM) which, for the first time, is used in lead halide perovskite solar cells.

M. Rosa Palacín was on Thursday, 11 July 2019, in Madrid at the conference organized by EL PAÍS, CincoDías and Cadena SER about the future of electric cars "Los retos del coche eléctrico". The event counted with the presence of Teresa Ribera (Ecologic Transition Minister), Reyes Maroto (Industry, Commerce and Turism Minister), José Bogas (Endesa) and Luis Antonio Ruiz (Jaguar Land Rover), and other experts in engineering and materials science. 

Published in Advanced Materials Technologies a Review on the recent progress on the use of organic semiconductors blended with insulating binding polymers as active materials in organic transistors. This route leads to more reliable, less expensive devices with enhanced electrical performance. A great work by Sergi Riera-Galindo, Francesca Leonardi, Raphael Pfattner and Marta Mas-Torrent.