The February issue of the magazine "El Pou de la Gallina" from Manresa is devoted to "Doing research abroad". The number was presented at the Casino in Manresa in a round table with Xavier Obradors, who participated in the report.
#CientífiksenJoc is a program for 5th Primary School classes, where students will design a video game about an active Catalan researcher. This year the topic of energy is discussed from various research perspectives.
Título : Laminated Organic Photovoltaic Modules for Agrivoltaics and Beyond: An Outdoor Stability Study of All-Polymer and Polymer: Small Molecule Blends
Autores: Xabier Rodríguez-Martínez, Sergi Riera-Galindo, Luis Ever Aguirre, Mariano Campoy-Quiles, Hans Arwin, Olle Inganäs
The integration of organic photovoltaic (OPV) modules on greenhouses is an encouraging practice to offset the energy demands of crop growth and provide extra functionality to dedicated farmland. Nevertheless, such OPV devices must meet certain optical and stability requirements to turn net zero energy greenhouse systems a reality. Here a donor:acceptor polymer blend is optimized for its use in laminated devices while matching the optical needs of crops. Optical modeling is performed and a greenhouse figure-of-merit is introduced to benchmark the trade-off between photovoltaic performance and transparency for both chloroplasts and humans. Balanced donor:acceptor ratios result in better-performing and more thermally stable devices than acceptor-enriched counterparts.
Hello! I am Fer Piña, a Nanotechnology Engineer student at ITESO in Mexico. With the JAE Intro program I am in the nanostructured materials department until June. During my stay I will be working in the laser processing group to fabricate high performance supercapacitors. About me, I really like swimming and I enjoy going to the beach.
Hello everyone! My name is Marc and I'm currently enrolled in the Master's Programme in Modelling for Science and Engineering at UAB. During the first half of this year, I'll be doing my thesis research in the Soft Matter Theory group, under the supervision of Dr Jordi Faraudo. In my free time I like to keep active with sports and try out new recipes in the kitchen. Hope to see you all at ICMAB !
The PhD researcher Daniel Riba López from the Functional Nanomaterials & Surfaces (FunNanoSurf) group at ICMAB-CSIC, will defend his PhD thesis on Wednesday, 1 March 2023 at 11 am at ICMAB.
The project is funded within the "Strategic Lines Projects 2022" call of the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation - Agencia Estatal de Investigación's State Program for the Promotion of Scientific-Technical Research and its Transfer.
Please register for the event designed and conceived from and for PhD candidates that will take place on the 7th and 8th of June 2023 at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona Campus, at ICMAB.
Most of the spiral magnetoelectric multiferroics investigated in recent years are geometrically or exchange-frustrated magnets, where the presence of triangular or other frustrated spin networks produce low magnetic transition temperatures. This critically limits their potential uses. The exceptional stability of the spiral magnetic order (at TS) in the layered structure of the YBaCuFeO5 double perovskite involves a nonconventional mechanism: spiral order by disorder. The model has been theoretically developed by Scaramucci et al. [Phys. Rev. Res. 2, 013273 (2020)] after the discovery of a huge impact of cation disorder on TS [M. Morin et al., Nat. Commun. 7, 13758 (2016)].
Last September 2022, the International Meeting of Scientific Workers was held in Buenos Aires, organized by FESIDUAS, FedLatCi, the World Federation of Scientific Workers (FMTS-WFSW) and the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation of Argentina.
Over the last few years, research on silica nanoparticles has rapidly increased. Particularly on mesoporous silica nanoparticles (MSNs), as nanocarriers for the treatment of various diseases because of their physicochemical properties and biocompatibility. The use of MSNs combined with therapeutic agents can provide better encapsulation and effective delivery. MSNs as nanocarriers might also be a promising tool to lower the therapeutic dosage levels and thereby to reduce undesired side effects. Researchers have explored several routes to conjugate both imaging and therapeutic agents onto MSNs, thus expanding their potential as theranostic platforms, in order to allow for the early diagnosis and treatment of diseases.
ICMAB researchers have participated in a study to create a versatile platform based on hierarchically nanostructured cell-adhesion peptides using quatsomes, which opens new possibilities for tissue engineering. The study, published in ACS Appl. Mater. Interfaces is a collaboration of three CIBER-BBN groups at ICMAB, IQAC (both CSIC) and IBEC.
Título : Synchrotron radiation based operando characterization of battery materials
Autores: Ashley P. Black, Andrea Sorrentino, François Fauth, Ibraheem Yousef, Laura Simonelli, Carlos Frontera, Alexandre Ponrouch, Dino Tonti and M. Rosa Palacín *
Synchrotron radiation based techniques are powerful tools for battery research and allow probing a wide range of length scales, with different depth sensitivities and spatial/temporal resolutions. Operando experiments enable characterization during functioning of the cell and are thus a precious tool to elucidate the reaction mechanisms taking place. In this perspective, the current state of the art for the most relevant techniques (scattering, spectroscopy, and imaging) is discussed together with the bottlenecks to address, either specific for application in the battery field or more generic. The former includes the improvement of cell designs, multi-modal characterization and development of protocols for automated or at least semi-automated data analysis to quickly process the huge amount of data resulting from operando experiments. Given the recent evolution in these areas, accelerated progress is expected in the years to come, which should in turn foster battery performance improvements.
The project aims to engage talent young students for a Materials Science doctorate in the field of High Temperature Superconductors (HTS), by investigating the mechanisms of a novel high-throughput growth process, the material microstructure and physics of superconductors.
The candidate will work on the project The cold-chain challenge: à la carte Time-temperature indicators enabled by patterned structural colour in organic semiconductors (VERITASCAN) within the framework of the EU ERC Proof of Concept 2022 grants. The ambition of VERITASCAN is to advance a novel class of time-temperature indicators characterized by low cost, broad application-centred customisability and ease of handling.
The candidate will work on the project The cold-chain challenge: à la carte Time-temperature indicators enabled by patterned structural colour in organic semiconductors (VERITASCAN) within the framework of the EU ERC Proof of Concept 2022 grants. The ambition of VERITASCAN is to advance a novel class of time-temperature indicators characterized by low cost, broad application-centred customisability and ease of handling.
In the presence of asymmetric potential barriers, ferroelectric polarization can be reversed by light due to the photoinduced suppression of polarization. Both thermal effects and photocarrier-induced polarization screening may agree with this experimental observation, challenging its understanding. Here, we explore light-induced ferroelectric polarization switching in BaTiO3 thin films and demonstrate that the optical switch of polarization is mainly driven by photocarriers rather than thermal effects. It is shown that this response is governed by the concentration of photo-generated charges. Our conclusions can help us to better design optically switching devices based on ferroelectric materials.
The cover illustrates the article "Boron clusters (ferrabisdicarbollides) shaping the future as radiosensitizers for multimodal (chemo/radio/PBFR) therapy of glioblastoma".
Research involved in developing alternative energy sources has become a necessity to face global warming. In this context, superconductivity is an appealing solution to enhance clean electrical energy provided that lower production costs can be attained. By implementation of chemical solution deposition techniques and high-throughput growth methods, low-cost nanostructured epitaxial cuprate superconductors are timely candidates.Here, we present a versatile and tunable solution method suitable for the preparation of high-performance epitaxial cuprate superconducting films. Disregarding the renowned trifluoroacetate route, we center our focus on the transient liquid-assisted growth (TLAG) that meets the requirement of being a greener chemical process together with ultrafast growth rates beyond 100 nm/s.
Hi, I am Fereshteh, from Iran. I joined ICMAB December 2022. I’m going to work with Prof. Gervasi Herranz and Dr. Gyanendra Singh and the topic is spin generation which is controlled by electrostatic. My master is in solid state and it was not focused on experimental practices so there are a lot to learn here and I’m too much excited about that. In my free time, I love visiting interesting towns and wondering in the nature, also watching movies and football games, enjoying time with my family and friends, dancing are my favorites. I love to talk and connect with different people which I found it so easy in Barcelona due to its wonderful culture that captured my heart in such short period. See you at ICMAB!
The Horizon Europe project NABIHEAL, coordinated by the Center for Biomedical Research Network (CIBER) at the Institute of Materials Science of Barcelona (ICMAB-CSIC), was launched on 11-12 January 2023 in Barcelona with the first meeting of the international consortium, formed by 14 partners from 7 countries, including research centers, universities, and private companies.
"Hello! I'm Giovanni, bachelor in Material Science in University of Padova. Here to do the master thesis of NANOMED Erasmus mundus program. Always up for sport, outdoor activities, barbeques and beers. See you around!"
In the #ChemicalScience Pick of the Week, M. Rosa Palacín and colleagues from ICMAB and ALBA Synchrotron present a perspective which focuses on the state-of-the art of operando techniques using synchrotron radiation applied to batteries, covering from hard to soft X-rays.
Título : Hierarchical Quatsome-RGD Nanoarchitectonic Surfaces for Enhanced Integrin-Mediated Cell Adhesion
Autores: Marc Martínez-Miguel, Miquel Castellote-Borrell, Mariana Köber, Adriana R. Kyvik, Judit Tomsen-Melero, Guillem Vargas-Nadal, Jose Muñoz, Daniel Pulido, Edgar Cristóbal-Lecina, Solène Passemard, Miriam Royo, Marta Mas-Torrent, Jaume Veciana, Marina I. Giannotti, Judith Guasch, Nora Ventosa*, and Imma Ratera*
The synthesis and study of the tripeptide Arg-Gly-Asp (RGD), the binding site of different extracellular matrix proteins, e.g., fibronectin and vitronectin, has allowed the production of a wide range of cell adhesive surfaces. Although the surface density and spacing of the RGD peptide at the nanoscale have already shown a significant influence on cell adhesion, the impact of its hierarchical nanostructure is still rather unexplored.
The candidates will work on projects related to organic photovoltaics (OPV) at the Nanostructured Materials for Optoelectronics and Energy Harvesting (NANOPTO) Department of the Institute of Materials Science of Barcelona (ICMAB-CSIC).
Doctor Jesús Alejandro De Sousa Rodríguez from the Molecular Materials for Electronic Devices (eMolMat) group at ICMAB-CSIC, defended his PhD thesis "Stable perchlorinated trityl radicals on surfaces for molecular (opto)electronics and spintronics" on Friday, 16 December 2022 at ICMAB.
From ICMAB, researcher Arántzazu González-Campo and her team participates in this new EIC Pathfinder Horizon Europe project.
The Horizon Europe SynEry project, coordinated by KU Leuven (Belgium), started its activity on April 2022 with the first meeting of the international consortium, formed by four partners, including ICMAB-CSIC.
Piezoelectric force microscopy (PFM) has demonstrated to be a powerful tool to characterize ferroelectric materials. However, extrinsic effects, most notably, those resulting from surface charges, often mask or mirror genuine piezoelectric response, challenging PFM data understanding. The contribution of surface charges to PFM signal is commonly compensated by using appropriate external bias voltage, which is ad-hoc selected and sample dependent.
Hi there! My name is Daniel Martín Jiménez and I am a new postdoc at ICMAB. I am an expert in Scanning Probe Microscopy. In 2017, I obtained my Ph.D. certificate in Madrid, and later I was working at the Justus-Liebig University in Giessen (Germany). I like science and literature.
HI, I'm Liher Urrutia and I'm 22 years old. I studied Biology in the UAB and now I'm at the master's degree in biochemistry, molecular biology and biomedicine at the UAB. I will do my master's thesis at this center and in the Vall d'Hebron, about the development of murine models for nanoparticle therapy of head and neck cancer. I'm coming from the Basque Country and I really like travelling and cooking, but I am also a fan of soccer and chess. Nice to meet you!
Hi! My name is Alfonsina from Indonesia (I think I am the only Indonesian at ICMAB). I have studied Chemical Engineering degree at University of Brawijaya, Indonesia, then I earned a scholarship to relocate to Taiwan pursuing my Master degree in Department of Chemical and Materials Engineering at National Central University, Taiwan. After that, I received a Marie Curie COFUND fellowship to do my doctoral study at Universitat Rovira I Virgili, Spain to study ternary organic solar cells. Nowadays, under the supervision of Dr. Mariano Campoy and Dr. Alejandro R. Goñi, I am going to start my postdoctoral study in the NANOPTO group of ICMAB with the research focus on improving the efficiency of organic solar cells using advanced geometries and artificial intelligence. In my free time, I like exploring new places, connecting with nature, trying different culinary, cooking and singing. See you around!
We offer a position for a predoctoral researcher in the framework of the project “Non-contact bipolar electrochemistry and its effects on bioelectrodes, electrochemical energy storage and electrocatalysis” with Nieves Casañ and Xavier Torrelles.
The candidate will work on the project "Effects of wireless electrochemistry in materails and devices for energy storage" in the groups of Nieves Casañ and Xavier Torrelles.
Hypothesis Quatsome nanovesicles, formed through the self-assembly of cholesterol (CHOL) and cetyltrimethylammonium bromide (CTAB) in water, have shown long-term stability in terms of size and morphology, while at the same time exhibiting high CHOL-CTAB intermolecular binding energies. We hypothesize that CHOL/CTAB quatsomes are indeed thermodynamically stable nanovesicles, and investigate the mechanism underlying their formation.
Defects in crystalline structures play a vital role in their properties, so their proper characterization is essential to understanding and improving the behaviour of the materials. In this work, their presence in Ca4Fe9O17 has been analysed. Its structure exhibits three different iron coordination topologies and can be described as layers of corner-sharing FeO5 bipyramids stacked along the c axis together with layers of edge-sharing FeO6 octahedra, both being linked by FeO4 tetrahedra. The relative position of the FeO4 tetrahedra generates three possible stacking directions, which results in stacking faults when more than one is combined.