Biography
My group aims at contributing to make clean energy accessible for everybody by using scientific knowledge to develop new, cost-effective renewable energies technologies. My research focuses on the processing, fundamental properties and applications of organic semiconductors, with special emphasis on Organic Solar Cells and Thermoelectric Generators. My group is interested on the interplay between structure (at the nano and micro-scale) and device performance. We are continuously developing novel processing schemes to control the structure of organic films, with the aim of improving the performance of the devices and simultaneously understanding the fundamental processes that govern their properties. One of our main strenghts is the use of spectroscopy (specially Raman and ellipsometry) for the characterization of organic semiconductors. Other areas of interest include polymer based photodiodes and lasers, as well as nanofibers and other complex "macro structures". We are also interested in other material systems with strong potential for energy applications, including hybrid perovskites, oxides, and carbon nanotubes.
I am a physicist and my core expertise lies in combining novel material processing methods with advanced spectroscopic techniques focusing on renewable energy applications such as organic photovoltaics and thermoelectric generators. After finishing my degree in physics in Santiago de Compostela, I embarqued in a PhD under the supervision of Prof. Donal Bradley at Imperial College London in United Kingdom, where I studied organic lasers and started to build experience in spectroscopic characterization tools. Then working in the same institution under the supervision of Prof. Jenny Nelson, I was part of a national collaboration project together with researchers at Cambridge and at UCL, where we demonstrated the viability of organics for X-ray medical imaging applications. Afterwards, as a Fellow of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science I worked with Prof. Hideyuki Murata (JAIST) in the field of organic solar cells and nanostructuration techniques. I joined The Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas in 2008, first as JAE-Doc, then as Ramon y Cajal fellow and since 2012 as Tenured Scientist. In 2018 I was internally promoted to Research Scientist (Investigador Científico, 2nd level in CSIC´s 3 level scale for permanent public servants).
My work is already highly recognized internationally as illustrated by the large number of citations (~7100) that my publications have attracted, and the numerous publications in high impact journals such as Nature Materials. I was the recipient of the 2012 Young Researcher in Experimental Physics Award of the Spanish Royal Society of Physics and the Fundación BBVA. I am co-author of 120 articles, four review papers, three book chapters and co-inventor in four patents. I have given more than 30 invited presentations. I was the principal investigator in three projects of the Plan Nacional, one bilateral with Japon, and several with the private sector. I have been awarded an ERC Consolidator Grant 2014 for my project FOREMAT, aimed at developing high throughput methods for the efficient evaluation of multicomponent organic materials for photovoltaic and thermoelectric applications.
