The next conference cycle "Dilluns de Ciència" is about crystals and life. Two of the five conferences of the cycle will be given by two ICMAB researchers, Dra. Núria Aliaga (ICREA Reserach Professor) and Dr. Gerard Tobias (Tenured Scientist at ICMAB). All the talks will be at the "Residència d'Investigadors" at 6:30 pm, and will take place always on a Monday. The first talk is on January, 21, and the last one will be on April, 29, 2019. 

Exploring the metal-insulator transition in vanadium oxide thin films

Emerging electrochemical techniques in battery research

Would you like to know which are the 10 most cited articles of all time published by ICMAB researchers? Well, we have done the job for you. After looking the Web of Science-Core collection, we obtain the following results: 

The Phosphorus, Boron and Silicon (PBSi) Conference, held in Barcelona on 10-12 December 2018, counted with the participation of 150 scientists, and was chaired by Prof. Clara Viñas, from ICMAB-CSIC, and Prof. Evamarie Hey-Hawkings from Universität Leipzig. According to the participants, the conference was a great success!

Within the programme "A researcher in your classroom" (Un investigador a la teva aula), researchers from the ICMAB can spend a class at one secondary or primary school and show the students what it is like to be a scientist and the research in nanomaterials performed at our Institute. 

On 19 December 2018, Nora Ventosa and the other new IEC numerary members were invited to the morning radio programme "El matí de Catalunya Ràdio" to participate in the roundtable "La Tertúlia" with Monica Terribas. 

This year, to celebrate Christmas, on Wednesday, December 19 2018 at 12 pm, we will have with us Xavier Lasauca, R+D Knowledge and Information Systems Manager at the DGR (Secretary of Universities and Research, Department of Business and Knowledge of the Catalan Government). Xavier will give a Christmas Lecture entitled "Science Dissemination 2.0: Social Media for Researchers", in which he will summarise the benefits which can be gained from the use of social media to support research activities. 

After the seminar, there will be the traditional Christmas Concert by the ICMAB choir and the Christmas Buffet for all our staff. 

During 2018, ICMAB researchers have written more than 200 articles in international peer-review science journals of various disciplines: chemistry, physics, materials, nanotechnology, photonics, energy, superconductivity, biochemistry, etc. We have selected in this post the journals with the highest Impact Factor (IF) in which the researchers have published an article. Do you want to know which they are?

Congratulations Xavier!

Mahdi Chaari, Zsolt Kelemen, José Giner Planas, Francesc Teixidor, Duane Choquesillo-Lazarte, Abdelhamid Ben Salah, Clara Viñas and  Rosario Núñez*.  J. Mater. Chem. C, 2018, Advance Article.

Judith Molrà-Folch has been granted with a TECNIOspring Plus grant from ACCIÓ for the project "Fluorescent organic nanoparticles for Bioimaging", supervised by Dr. Nora Ventosa, from the NANOMOL group at ICMAB-CSIC. 

Hello! I am Aida Carreño from Alcanar (Catalonia, Spain) and I have obtained the master degree about Biotechnology in Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Now I have joined the group of Molecular Nanoscience and Organic Materials (NANOMOL) in order to pursue my PhD. I will be involved in Smart4Fabry project under the supervision of Dr. Nora Ventosa. About me, I enjoy playing basketball and outdoor sports such as cycling, tennis or even walking through the mountain, as well as, traveling.
See you around!

J. S. Reparaz, K. Pereira da Silva, A. H. Romero, J. Serrano, M. R. Wagner, G. Callsen, S. J. Choi, J. S. Speck, and A. R. Goñi. Phys. Rev. B 98, 165204.   

Arántzazu González, Ramon y Cajal researcher at ICMAB and participant of the program "A Researcher in your classroom" was at two primary schools in November, in the framework of the "Science Week" to show the students what is a scientist and what type of research we do at the ICMAB.

On 26 October 2018, Anna Laromaine participated in the project "Ciencia y Tecnología en femenino", organized by the Asociación de Parques Científicos y Tecnológicos de España (APTE) and with the support of Bayer, which took place at the Barcelona Science Park (PCB). The project consisted of a whole morning of science talks, workshops and a visit to the exhibition "Women that changed the world" for secondary school students. 

On 8 November 2018, the Institut d'Estudis Catalans (IEC) decided to incorporate six new numerary members, two in Biological Sciences and four in Science and Technology. Nora Ventosa, Doctor in Chemical Engineering and researcher at ICMAB-CSIC, was designated new numerary member in the Science and Technology section. Congratulations!

Hi! I am Sohini and I am from India. I have joined Inorganic Materials and Catalysis Laboratory (LMI's group) as a PhD. I will be working on boron cluster based fluorophores and it's application in two photon absorption spectroscopy. Travelling allows me to be independent, to connect with various people & visit new places. That's why it fascinates me the most, along with swimming & listening to music.
I am extremely glad to be here & I look forward to meet everyone.

Teresa Puig was on November 15, 2018, on the radio! The program "La Nit Estèrica" from Terrassa Digital (95.2 FM) interviewed Teresa Puig, ICMAB researcher from Terrassa. They talked about superconducting materials and about the begining of Teresa Puig in the superconducting world, about her current projects, and many more things!

The Catalan Government opens the call for the Beatriu de Pinós programme, which is aimed to incorporate postdoc fellows at the Catalan research centers and universities. 

Deadline: from 28 January to 4 March 2019

Materials Discovery for Energy Applications

J. A. Sans, V. Monteseguro, G. Garbarino, M. Gich, V. Cerantola, V. Cuartero, M. Monte, T. Irifune, A. Muñoz & C. Popescu. Nature Communications, Volume 9, Article number: 4554 (2018). 

On Wednesday, 19 December 2018, we celebrated Christmas at our Institute. We had a full programme consisting in a Christmas lecture on "Science dissemination 2.0", then the ICMAB choir sang the Christmas songs, and then we had some Christmas finger food for all our staff.

On Friday, 14 December 2018, 25 secondary school students from the "Escola Vedruna Gràcia" visited the ICMAB thanks to the ESCOLAB programme. The students, all from the scientific branch, could enjoy a talk on "Nanomaterials for nanomedicine" by Anna Laromaine, from the NN group, and then visiti some of our Scientific Services.

Until 8 February 2019 at noon the deadline to send proposals for the 16th edition of FOTCIENCIA, an initiative that will select the best photos with scientific content, both photographs and micro-photographs, with prizes up to 1,500 € in each category!

After another year, we look back and see how was this year's scientific research. More than 200 articles, which makes a total of more than 5,200 publications (remember that we reached the 5,000 this last February?) and more than 140,000 citations since the Institue's foundation, in 1986, which makes an average of more than 13,300 citations per year, and 27 citations per article.

The most cited articles of 2018 are shown in this post. Do you want to know which ones are they?

Dr. Mahdi Chaari defended his PhD Thesis on December 7, 2018, at the Université de Sfax (Tunisia), obtaining the highest mark Mention Très Honorable avec les félicitations du jury. His supervisor from the ICMAB-CSIC, Dr. Rosario Núñez, was very happy for him. The thesis was entitled "Synthesis and characterization of new carborane derivatives for photo-optical and medicinal applications". 

OXOLUTIA SL, the ICMAB spin off created in 2010, has made relevant advances in the last 2 years in the technological development of coated conductors using cost-effective inks for the production of high temperature superconducting layers, as stated in their website on December 12, 2018. 

Next-Generation Materials to Tackle the Energy Challenge

On Tuesday, 27 November 2018, we had a very special visit in our Institute: "the scientists" class formed by 24 six-year old students from "La Trama" school in Sabadell visited us. It was a fantastic visit. All the kids were very happy to become real scientists for a day, and to visit the laboratories, the clean room, the glove boxes, the microscopes and even to perform an X-ray diffraction experiment to discover what is sand made of. 

During two mornings, 12 and 13 November 2018, the ICMAB hosted the workshop for secondary school students "Become a materials detective" (Converteix-te en un detectiu de materials) to celebrate the Science Week 2018. Four classes of 2nd ESO from the IES Vallès (Sabadell) came to ICMAB by train and became scientists for a day. 

On Thursday 25 October, the students from 2n BTX from the "Col·legi Maristes de Montserrat" (Lleida) took the bus and came to our center to spend an afternoon learning about nanotechnology and supermaterials! They could enjoy the visit of the "Matheroes" exhibition, a talk from one of our researchers, and a visit to our installations.

Hi! I'm Arnau, I'm 22 and I live in Sant Quirze. I'm an undergraduate on Nanotechnology and I'll be doing my final thesis working on the Smart4Fabry project with Nanomol-Tech. I used to play handball as well as the saxophone and the drums. In general, I like all kind of sports and I love travelling. See you around!! :)

• Researchers at the Polytechnic University of Valencia, the Institute of Materials Science of Barcelona and the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility have characterized the structural, electronic and magnetic behavior of nanoparticles of a rare phase of iron oxide, the epsilon phase, under extreme pressure conditions, emulating the conditions of the interior of the Earth.
• The study, published in Nature Communications, concludes that the presence of this rare phase of iron oxide in the inner Earth is possible, and that under these conditions there is a new iron oxide phase, epsilon prime, with magnetic properties radically different from those known so far.

The article entitled "Direct and converse piezoelectric responses at the nanoscale from epitaxial BiFeO₃ thin films grown by polymer assisted deposition" has made it to the Nanoscale cover (Volume 10, Number 43, 21 November 2018, Pages 20057–20476). 

Martí Gich, ICMAB reseracher at the Nanoparticles and Nanocomposites Group, has been awarded with a prestigious 2018 European Research Council (ERC) Consolidator Grant (CoG) for his project entitled “Ferrites-by-design for Millimeter-wave and Terahertz Technologies” (FeMiT).

Dr. Mengdi Qian from the Laboratory of Multifunctional Oxides and Complex Structures (MULFOX) successfully defended her PhD thesis on Friday, 16 November. Congratulations!

Ferran Macià, researcher at the MULFOX group at ICMAB, and at the University of Barcelona (Fundamental Physics Department) is co-author of the article "Subnanosecond magnetization dynamics driven by strain waves" published in the MRS Bulletin, the monthly Material Science publication with technical theme topics, news, reviews, and commentary. 

M. Rosa Palacín, researcher at ICMAB-CSIC and coordinator of the CARBAT project on the development of rechargeable calcium-based batteries appears in this news post in Business Insider, written by Raúl Salinas on the future batteries for electric vehicles. Read the whole text here:

Society should be more involved in science and vice versa. This could be the conclusion of the SOMMa 100xCiencia.3 meeting, held on November 15, 2018, at the National Center for Oncological Research (CNIO), organized by SOMMa, the alliance of Severo Ochoa Centers and Maria de Maeztu Units of Excellence to promote the excellence of research in Spain. Representatives of the 41 SOMMa members gathered in this meeting, which focused on the participation of society in science.