Bogdan Guster, Miguel Pruneda, Pablo Ordejón, Enric Canadell, and Jean-Paul Pouget. Phys. Rev. Materials 3, 055001 – Published 16 May 2019.  

Unfortunately, our good friend, collaborator and benefactor or many ICMAB researchers, Dr. Massimo Marezio, passed away last May 13, 2019, in his hometown, Rome. Prof. Xavier Obradors, who met him while he was doing his PhD thesis in Grenoble, has written him some words as an obituary in the form of a last personal letter. Read it here. Massimo se n’è ándato, a sempre caro amico!

Isothermal Titration Calorimetry (ITC): a technique for studying binding affinity and thermodynamics of biomolecular interactions

Nahuel Statuto, Christian Hahn, Joan Manel Hernàndez, Andrew D. Kent, and Ferran Macià.
Phys. Rev. B 99, 174436 – Published 28 May 2019.

Iif you are in the science field, you probably receive every week plenty of spam emails asking you to write an article for this or that journal, or to go to this or that conference. Usually, these emails are easy to spot, and they are quickly thrown on the trash folder. However, is there a way to properly detect them? And to fight them? Read this article by Mariano Campoy-Quiles (and with an original illustration by Alejandro Santos) to know how.

Hello, I am Mauricio Morel, from Universidad de Chile. Now I have joined the group of Multifunctional Oxides and Complex Structures to do a postdoctoral stay for one month. I am a materialist chemist and I work in different areas such as organic synthesis, and liquid crystals, polymer, and nanostructured nanomaterials.
See you around!

Mariano Campoy-Quiles is an invited speaker at this ICN2 Severo Ochoa Workshop on energy storage and harvesting entitled "Energy Mining in the 21st century". The event will take place at the CCCB-Mirador on Friday, 12 July 2019. To attend the event, please contact the organizers.

Judit Tomsen, PhD fellow at the Nanomol group, was awarded with the best oral presentation at the European Students Colloid Conference (ESC-2019), that took place in Varna (Bulgaria) on 18-22 June 2019.

Alternative approaches for the fabrication of plasmonic platforms

Electron Spin Resonance (ESR) Approach in Studying Polymer Composites

by Srećko Valić, Ruđer Bošković Institute, Division of Physical Chemistry, Zagreb, Croatia

Monday, 1 July 2019 @ 12 pm
ICMAB - Sala d'Actes Carles Miravitlles

Roberta Verrelli, Ashley Philip Black, Carlos Frontera, Judith Oró-Solé, Maria Elena Arroyo-de Dompablo, Amparo Fuertes*, M. Rosa Palacín*.  ACS Omega 2019458943-8952. 

Our traditional photo contest, FOTICMAB, is already a consolidated activity and receives every year a high participation. This year, we had three categories: scientific, artistic and humoristic. The artistic category was the one with the highest participation (27 photos), followed by our most favourite scientific category (12 photos) and a humoristic category, with (only) 5 photos. We also received one video in the ClowntICMAB video category! 

The book "Oxide Spintronics" (Pan Stanford Publishing) has recently been published. Ignasi Fina and Gervasi Herranz, reserachers at the MULFOX group (Laboratory of Multifunctional Thin Films and Complex Structures) have co-authored the book, collaborating in some chapters about spintronic in multiferroics, and orbital symmetry and electronic properties of 2D electron systems.

M. Coll, J. Fontcuberta, M. Althammer, M. Bibes, H. Boschker, A. Calleja, G. Cheng, M. Cuoco, R. Dittmann, B. Dkhil, I. El Baggari, M. Fanciulli, I. Fina, E. Fortunato, C. Frontera, S. Fujita, V. Garcia, S.T.B. Goennenwein, C.-G. Granqvist, J. Grollier, R. Gross, A. Hagfeldt, G. Herranz, K. Hono, E. Houwman, M. Huijben, A. Kalaboukhov, D.J. Keeble, G. Koster, L.F. Kourkoutis, J. Levy, M. Lira-Cantu, J.L. MacManus-Driscoll, Jochen Mannhart, R. Martins, S. Menzel, T. Mikolajick, M. Napari, M.D. Nguyen, G. Niklasson, C. Paillard, S. Panigrahi, G. Rijnders, F. Sánchez, P. Sanchis, S. Sanna, D.G. Schlom, U. Schroeder, K.M. Shen, A. Siemon, M. Spreitzer, H. Sukegawa, R. Tamayo, J. van den Brink, N. Pryds, F. MilettoGranozio. Applied Surface Science, Volume 482, 15 July 2019, Pages 1-93.

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! 

Supercritical fluid technology for delivery systems for food bioactives

On 6-7 June 2019, the PhD meeting of the PhD fellows of the Barcelona Nanocluster in Bellaterra (JPhD2019) was held at the ICMAB-CSIC and at the ICN2 facilities. The meeting was organized by PhD fellows from the ICMAB-CSIC, ICN2, ALBA Synchrotron, UAB and IMB-CNM-CSIC, working in a nanoscience and nanotechnology related topic. 

The IX AUSE Conference and 4th ALBA User’s Meeting 2019, jointly organized by AUSE (the Spanish Synchrotron User Association) and ALBA Synchrotron, will be held in ALBA synchrotron, Cerdanyola del Vallès (Barcelona) during Tuesday-8th and Thursday-10th of October 2019. Submit your abstracts to participate until 14 June 2019!

I am a postgraduate student from the University of Manchester visiting Dr. Xavier Torrelles' group to learn surface x-ray diffraction data analysis.My undergraduate degree was from University of Manchester in Chemistry. I enjoy mountain running and cycling in my spare time.

My name is Teresa, I am 17 years old and I live in the city of Barcelona. I love reading and I do competitive Ice Skating. I am spending a month at ICMAB to learn many new things.

Therapeutic applications of stimulus triggered delivery systems

Quantum molecular spintronics based on single-molecule magnets: Kondo Effect, single-molecule memory, and MOF-spintronics

Núria Crivillers was in Mollina (Málaga) from 17 to 20 June 2019 to participate as member of the jury on the "Certamen Jóvenes Investigadores" in which young researchers presented their research projects. Núria Crivillers was in charge of evaluating the projects in the field of physics, chemistry and mathematics. The CSIC sponsors and offers various stays at their researh institutes as part of the awards. 

Hi!
I'm a french student doing a research internship here for my degree in an engineering school. I already came here two years ago for a licence degree. I really enjoy the institut.

• The new Nature Index 2019 is out, and the data confirm the expected: ICMAB is the first CSIC center in research outputs per capita in the ranking, and the second in terms of research outputs.
• CSIC is the first research institute in Spain, and is ranked the 54th research institution worldwide, and the 4th government institution, in terms of research outputs. 

• 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.

On Wednesday, 12 June 2019, the Quantum exhibition at CCCB received the visit of three scientists working in Quantum research at the ALBA Synchrotron: Gervasi Herranz, from the ICMAB, Salvador Ferrer, from ALBA, and Jordi Fraxedas, from the ICN2. The three researchers talked to an audience of about 40 people about their quantum experiments at the ALBA synchrotron. 

J. Lyu, I. Fina, R. Bachelet, G. Saint-Girons, S. Estandía, J. Gázquez, J. Fontcuberta, and F. Sánchez. Appl. Phys. Lett. 114, 222901 (2019)

The 2019 #JCR is here! The latest update includes 11,877 total journals across 236 disciplines, 81 countries and five continents. 

On June 18, 2019, the winners of the ESCOLAB contest "Tenim una idea" were revealed. In the category "Idees to improve the health and nurition of the citizens" an idea to "develop an injectable chemical substance based on nanoparticles to regenerate bones in a quick and efficient way" was the winner. The idea came from Aina Vilar and Carlota Garcia, from the "Escola Pia de Granollers" who visited us last 10 May 2019, to learn about "The materials of the future for nanomedicine" with researcher Nora Ventosa. Congrats!

On Thursday, 11 July, we receive the visit of South Korean researchers working on Flexible Electronics. We have organized a small workshop open to all our staff and researchers of the surrounding centers, in which they will explain their research, and then some of our ICMABers researchers, will explain our research on this topic. You are all invited!

Doctor Qiaoming Zhang from the Nanomol Group at ICMAB, defended successfully his PhD thesis on Thursday, 13 June 2019. "I am the first Chinese Doctor of the NANOMOL group", he said, happily after his PhD Defense. Marta Mas-Torrent and Francesca Leonardi, his supervisors, were as proud as one can be! We have interviewed Qiaoming, to know about what he thinks of his PhD at ICMAB. Continue reading!

Anna Morales, alias SizeMatters in YouTube, is a Researcher in Nanoscience and Nanotechnology and a YouTuber. She owns the channel "SizeMatters", which is a nanoscience and nanotechnology channel in Spanish. In her last video, she explains the concepts of nanotechnology in some Marvel superheroes, and also in our Matheroes: ElectroWoman, Magnon, Bionanocapsule and Fotoenergy! 

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. 

We received a call from one of the students of 1st BTX of the Institut Marina, from La Llagosta. They wanted to visit us, since they had seen us at the "Fira de la Recerca en Directe" at CosmoCaixa Barcelona. So we agreed they would come and visit us. On Friday 24 May 2019 they came to the ICMAB to discover the "Materials of the future for energy" and to celebrate a EU Energy Day with us. 

The Fundació Catalunya La Pedrera develops the program "Bojos per la Ciència" to open the doors of the most relevant research institutes to the most excellent secondary school students. The ICMAB joined in 2017 the initiative "Bojos per la Física" coordinated by the ICN2, and the IFAE. This year, Ignasi Fina and Jordi Faraudo were in charge of showing piezoelectricity and molecular simulation to the students. 

Magnetic particles for biomedical applications: sample preparation, transport, detection and surface modification

by Prof. Abdelhamid Elaissari, University of Lyon-1, CNRS, Villeurbanne, France

Friday, 14 June 2019 @ 9:30 am
ICMAB - Sala d'Actes Carles Miravitlles

Hello! I'm Emilia from México. I came to ICMAB to do my master final work with NANOMOL group in hydrogels for cancer immunotherapy. This is possible for me thanks to Fundación Carolina scholarship to pursue a Master in Biomedicine.
I'm really glad to be here!

On Friday, 15 March 2019, the secondary school INS Mercè Rodoreda (Hospitalet de Llobregat) celebrated their "V Scientific Day" (V Jornada Científica) with scientific activities for their students, from 1st ESO to 2nd BTX. José Vidal-Gancedo, Reseracher at ICMAB, was one of the invited speakers. He had the big challenge of talking about "Organic radicals for biomedical applications" to 3rd and 4th ESO students. 

The Material-ES scientific magazine is published every three months by the Spanish Materials Society (SOCIEMAT). They are always looking for authors that would like to publish an article with them. Written works in Spanish and English will be accepted. Once received, they will be scheduled for publication in the next issues.

On 5 June 2019 we celebrate the World Environment Day to encourage worldwide awareness and action to protect our environment. Since it began in 1974, the event has grown to become a global platform for public outreach that is widely celebrated in over 100 countries. The event called "Environment and Society" is organized at IDAEA-CSIC. Nora Ventosa, researcher at the ICMAB and vice-president of the SCQ, will open the event, which has the Periodic Table as main theme, and in which all the speakers are women scientists!