Creating Connections, Creating Actions

From scientific results to impactful innovation in a complex society: How Living Labs unite entrepreneurs, scientists, government and public interests into action

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.

Sergio González-Casal, Ignasi Fina*, Florencio Sánchez, Josep Fontcuberta, ACS Appl. Electron. Mater. 2019191937-1944. Publication Date: September 2, 2019

Elies Molins has given lectures at the International Conference on Materials Science (ICMS), at the Center for Applied Nanotechnology (CNAP) and at the Universidad Autonoma de Chile. His conferences have been about porous materials and their applications in catalysis and medicine. 

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". 

Dr. Isabel Fuentes, Dr. María José Mostazo‐López, Dr. Zsolt Kelemen, Prof. Dr. Vicente Compañ, Dr. Andreu Andrio, Prof. Dr. Emilia Morallón, Prof. Dr. Diego Cazorla‐Amorós, Prof. Dr. Clara Viñas, Prof. Dr. Francesc Teixidor. Chemistry A European Journal, 06 August 2019.  

Organic electronics – From intrinsic material properties to selective sensors

Directors of SOMMa Centres discussed at CNIO (Spanish National Cancer Research Center) in Madrid, the network's best practices in gender equality, to implement a change of culture that allows gender equality to be integrated into strategic science decisions. From the ICMAB, Riccardo Rurali, ICMAB Deputy Director and Coordinator of the Gender Equality Committe at the ICMAB, attended the event.

Hi, I'm Genís Guillem from Sabadell. I am in the last course of de the degree in Physics and Chemistry of the UAB and I will be making my TFG in chemistry in the ICMAB.
The photography is taken near the Old Man of Storr on the isle of Skye in Scotland. It was a short and pleasant hike.

The Superconducting Materials and Large Scale Nanostructures (SUMAN) group at the ICMAB is looking for a PhD candidate to carry out the PhD thesis in the field of "Vortex physics in the overdoped state of High Temperature Superconductors”. The project will be in the framework of the ERC-Advanced Grant ULTRASUPERTAPE, and ERC-Proof-of-Concept Grant IMPACT, with Prof. Teresa Puig. 

The goal of the first Grenoble Barcelona Twin Conference, celebrated at the CNRS Campus in Grenoble on 23-25 October, is to put together Barcelona and Grenoble scientists working on condensed matter, quantum physics, materials science and electrical engineering. Many ICMAB researchers have participated in the meeting! 

In the morning of Thursday, 26 September 2019, Judith Morlà, TecnioSpring researcher at the Nanomol Group, and Andrés Gómez, Senior Technician at the Scanning Probe Microscopy Lab, became "A researcher in your classroom": they went to give some science talks to two high schools, in the framework of the European Researchers' Night. 

We have a new Helium Liquefier! With the new ATL 160 QuantumDesign equipment, we will be able to satisfy between 90-95 % of our Helium needs (now we were around 60 %). We use liquid Helium at the Low Temperatures and Magnetometry Service, since magnetic measurements are carried out at extremely low temperatures (5 K!). Liquid Helium is used as a refrigerant. 

On Wednesday, 23 October 2019, and to celebrate the Open Access Week, which is celebrated this week all over the world, we organized a seminar on "Open Access at ICMAB: Frequently Asked Questions". The seminar was for the Institute researchers to solve some doubts about publishing in Open Access, and organized by the ICMAB "Manuel Cardona" library. Read here more about it!

The European Researchers’ Night, since its firs edition in 2005, brings science, technology and researchers closer to the general public on the last Friday of September. The ICMAB participated in this year's edition with talks, workshops and a dramatised lecture at the event organized at CosmoCaixa Science Museum in Barcelona, and in the CSIC "Residència d'Investigadors". 

The ICMAB is now a member of SECPHO, a national technological innovation cluster formed by companies, technology centres and research centres. SECPHO is focused on promoting technological innovation through the application of photonic technologies, or technologies based on light, to all types of sectors of our economy. 

J. Blasco, J. A. Rodríguez-Velamazán, G. Subías, J. L. García-Muñoz, J. Stankiewicz, J. García. Acta Materialia Volume 176, 1 September 2019, Pages 53-62.

During the European Researchers' Night celebrated on Friday, 27 September 2019 in Cosmocaixa Barcelona (Nit Jove de la Recerca), the representation of the dramatised lecture "Madame Châtelet and her Instagram Followers" was held (twice!) with a great amount of people in the audience! We could expland the knowledge of great women scientists to all those who came to see the Châtelet team in action!

Open Access en el ICMAB: Preguntas Frecuentes

On Monday, 28 October 2019, the ICMAB staff, especially the new Master students and PhD and Postdoc fellows, are invited to the presentation of the Scientific Equipment Platforms (SEP) of the ICMAB. The 9 Scientific and Technical Services have prepared some posters to present their equipment and research techniques to the researchers to broaden up their research possibilities. We are sure that from this day, new and exciting collaborations will emerge.

GaN & ZnO semiconductor optoelectronic devices: From weak to strong-coupling regimes

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 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". 

Hi,
My name is Alex and I am originally from Sweden, where I also did my PhD in physics at Uppsala University. After that I spent three years as postdoctoral researcher in Zürich, Switzerland, before coming to ICMAB and Barcelona via an international postdoc grant from the Swedish research council. In my research I use computational methods to study the properties of materials, with focus on magnetism and magnetic materials. At ICMAB I will work with Massimiliano Stengel to investigate strain gradient induced magnetic phenomena. 

In my free time I like running, snowboarding, cooking and eating good food.

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 European Technology and Innovation Platform on Batteries, BatteRIes Europe, held its first General Assembly on 22 October 2019 in Brussels, Belgium. Following the launch of the platform in June 2019, the day was dedicated to setting up the ground of the European initiative supported by the European Commission that will shape the research ecosystem for batteries in Europe, through the election of its very first Governing Board. M. Rosa Palacín will be part of this Governing Board, in the area of "Future and Emerging Technologies". 

On 22-23 November, the new edition of the 100xCiencia meeting, the meeting of the Severo Ochoa centers and María de Maeztu units will take place in Donostia/San Sebastián! Nora Ventosa, researcher at the Nanomol Group will represent the ICMAB at the SOMMa General Assembly, and will give a talk on Technology Transfer in Nanomedicine on Saturday, 23 November in the morning (11 am). 

Jacqueline Labra-Muñoz,Zorica Konstantinović, Lluis Balcells, Alberto Pomar, Herre S. J. van der Zant, and Diana Dulić. Appl. Phys. Lett. 115, 063104 (2019); 

This year, the Maker Faire Barcelona took place the weekend of 5-6 October in a new location: at the NAU BOSTIK, in the neighborhood of La Sagrera in Barcelona. The space was perfect for this kind of event, full of artists, inventors, creativity and sustainability. We felt really good there! From the ICMAB, Andrés Gómez and Anna May did two rounds of the workshop "Printing nanomaterials with 3Doodler" and gathered around 12-15 participants in each round. Thank you to the Maker Faire for counting on us!

The Soft Lab, run by Amable Bernabé, has hosted from Monday, 7 October, to Wednesday, 9 October a course on "Characterization techniques for particulate materials". The course has counted with 12 participants from different CSIC centers (including ICMAB, IBM-CNM, ICM, IQAC...) and has introduced the participants to different techniques to characterize nanoparticles and other particulate matter, including the basic fundamentals, sample preparation, practical examples and results interpretation. 

Heyo! I'm Xavi from Barcelona. I'm a chemistry student who will be doing his TFG at ICMAB working with magnetic metamaterials. I consider myself a cheerful person and I love music and cheese above all. One of my dreams is to bring science to the people and make it interesting enough to make them learn and be entertained via Youtube videos or so. See you around!

Víctor Fuentes, Borislav Vasić, Zorica Konstantinović, Benjamín Martínez, Lluís Balcells, Alberto Pomar*. ACS Appl. Electron. Mater.2019. 

Hello! I'm Alba Martos, a chemistry student at UAB. I'll be staying at ICMAB for a few months, investigating and elaborating my degree's final project.

Research collaborations in the Pharmaceutical Industry

Lluis Balcells, Igor Stanković,* Zorica Konstantinović, Aanchal Alagh, Victor Fuentes, Laura López-Mir, Judit Oró, Narcis Mestres, Carlos García, Alberto Pomar and Benjamin Martínez. Nanoscale, 2019,11, 14194-14202. 

The Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities opens the call, from 17 October to 7 November 2019, to the Predoctoral Contrats: FPI (Formación Personal Investigador) and Severo Ochoa contracts (for Severo Ochoa centers). See the ICMAB projects and apply! We have many projects related to functional materials for energy, electronics and biomedicine applications for you!

The ICN2, the ICMAB-CSIC and the ALBA Synchrotron organise on 24 and 25 October 2019 a workshop devoted to innovation and technology transfer between R+D centers and companies. The event is part of the TNSI project, funded with European regional development funds (ERDF) by the Interreg-POCTEFA programme.

E. Pach and A. Verdaguer*. J. Phys. Chem. C 2019, 123, 34, 20998-21004.