Press

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.

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". 

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". 

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.

On Saturday, 5 October 2019, we could see in the programme ¡Qué animal! from La2 RTVE, the researcher Anna Laromaine, from the Nanoparticles and Nanocomposites group, talking about the "supermaterial" bacterial cellulose. The programme was about animals with superpowers, so our Matheroes: the supermaterials of the future, were also featured in it! Thank you to all the ¡Qué animal! team!

The journal "Superconductor Science and Technology" published the Viewpoint by Xavier Obradors entitled "High critical current nanocomposite REBa₂Cu₃O₇ (RE = rare earth) tapes: towards a new era of ultra-high field magnetism". The article is about the generation of high magnetic fields with the new superconducting materials that are being studied at the ICMAB, among other places. 

Mariano Campoy Quiles, Alex Ponrouch and M. Rosa Palacín participated in the meeting of the Royal Society about ‘Energy Materials for a Low Carbon Future’ held in September 2018, in the fields of "Organic Thermoelectrics" and "Post -Li batteries". The opinions were published then in the Philosophical Transaction of the Royal Society in July 2019. 

Teresa Puig was interviewed in the digital radio programme "Hablando con Científicos" by Ángel Rodríguez Lozano, to talk about superconducting materials and her recent ERC Proof of Concept Grant on the scale-up production of high-temperature superconducting tapes.

• The future circular collider (FCC), with a 100 km circumference ring, will extend the research currently being conducted at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in the search for new physics.
• High-temperature superconductors, such as YBCO, are being studied to be used as coating for the FCC ring instead of copper. Researchers have found that these materials outperform copper by a factor of 40, which would greatly enhance the FCC efficiency and provide big energy savings.
• The Superconducting Materials and Large Scale Nanostructures (SUMAN) group at the ICMAB-CSIC participates in this study as part of a consortium with the ALBA Synchrotron, the IFAE and the UPC.

Researchers of the Nanomol group of the Institute of Materials Science of Barcelona (ICMAB-CSIC), together with the company Nanomol Technologies S.L. have begun a consultation process with the Spanish Association of Medicines and Health Products (AEMPS) to try and enter a new treatment in a clinical studies stage, to fight against venous ulcers in lower extremities. The study is carried out within the framework of the RIS3CAT NANONAFRES project.

Jose Giner was interviewed in Onda Cero Vigo, in the program "La Mirilla" with Raquel Sánchez, for the nanotransformers discovery, the MOFs that can reversible go from 2D to 3D structures. If you want to discover what these materials are, listen to the podcast! Jose Giner is "el chef de los nanomateriales"!

• Perovskites promise to be the next star material for solar cells, but the reason of their high efficiency is still unknown.
• Researchers at the Institute of Materials Science in Barcelona (ICMAB-CSIC) and the Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin für Materialien und Energie (Germany) have demonstrated with a new microscopy technique that perovskites are not ferroelectric, as was thought.
• The new technique, patented by CSIC in 2017, is the direct piezoelectric force microscopy (DPFM) which, for the first time, is used in lead halide perovskite solar cells.

• 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.

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. 

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! 

ICMAB researchers have collaborated in a study led by ICIQ researchers that look in detail at the interfaces in perovskite solar cells to understand the differences observed in their performance.

One of the seven awarded photos in this year's edition of FOTCIENCIA, the photo from our PhD fellow, Cristiano Matricardi, "Trampa de luz" is the star of the HERALDO newspaper article "Juegos de luces entre la naturaleza y el laboratorio" by María Pilar Perla Mateo. You can read here the article. 

One of our workshops for primary school students called "Become a Materials Detective" is the star of the TV children's show "Catacrak" from Barcelona Televisió (betevé), showcasted on Sunday 31 March 2019! Students from the school "Escola Mestre Morera" from Barcelona came to ICMAB to participate in the activity, in which they are introduced to the nanoworld and to the daily life of minerals. Do you want to see the video?

The Nature Chemistry journal celebrates its 10th anniversary asking some scientists working in different areas fo chemistry what did they think about the future development of their main field of research: the most amazing, exciting, important or challenging aspects they think are the most relevant. 

On 29 March 2019, the Presidency of the CSIC signed the institutional mandate of Open Access. It is a strong impulse for the open access of different types of CSIC research results, including peer-reviewed publications and associated research data, through the DIGITAL.CSIC repository.

Many of the people (researchers, students, technicians, administrative staff) that have worked at ICMAB since its foundation in 1986, are now developing their career and continuing their training in leading academic institutions and industries all over the world. Are you one of them? Would you like to keep in touch with your former colleagues? Then continue reading...

The online website "Motor Pasion" about the cars and motor word, opens their site today with a news post about the electric vehicle and the future batteries. M. Rosa Palacín, researcher at ICMAB, was consulted by the author of the article, Victoria Fuentes, and appers in the article giving her point of view and state of the art. Read it to know more about it! 

• A recently published study presents a new method to prevent infection by plant pathogens using bacterial cellulose and silver nanoparticles hybrid patches
• The study is the result of the collaborative work between two research groups belonging to ICMAB and CRAG, both Severo Ochoa Centers of Excellence at the UAB Campus

In last RECERCAT newsletter, our vice-director and researcher, M. Rosa Palacín, was interviewed. She talked about her research in batteries, about the arrival of the electric vehicle, about gender equality in reserach and about materials science in general. Read the interview here!

A new laser-based technique developed by the Institute of Materials Science (ICMAB-CSIC) uses urea, a common substance in the chemical industry and a low-cost alternative to noble metal co-catalysts, to enable a more efficient, one-step production of hybrid graphene-based organic-inorganic composite layers for environmental remediation; photodegradation of antibiotic contaminants from wastewater. The composition and chemical bonds of the urea-enriched thin layers were studied in detail using synchrotron light at the ALBA Synchrotron.

Arántzazu González, researcher from the ICMAB-CSIC, went on 11 February to a Primary School (Can Maiol) to talk to the students and visibilize women scientists, within the initative "Nuestras científicas: Jornada de investigadoras actuales y futuras" of the CSIC-Catalunya. The initiative appeared on the TVE1 news programme "L'informatiu" at 2 pm on 11 February 2019. Look at it here, from minute 16:04! 

The students of physics and chemistry of 4th ESO of the highschool "La Tordera" in Santa Maria de Palautordera received the visit on 6 February 2019 of Anna Laromaine, researcher at ICMAB. Anna visited the highschool in the framework of the #11F2019, the International Day of Women and Girls in Science, in which many researchers gave talks in primary and secondary schools during that week. 

Anna Laromaine, researcher at the N&N group at ICMAB, was interviewed by People First, a platform where people from different institutions and enterprises are highlighted. Anna, included in the Top 100 Women more influent in Spain, and awarded in 2016 with the L'Oréal-Unesco For Women in Science Research Award, describes her work as a researcher in nanomedicine, talks about the future of nanotechnology and women in science, about her role models in life, and about being a researcher, a university teacher and an entrepreneur at the same time. 

On 29 December 2018 the article "Martí Gich rep dos milions d'euros per investigar el 5G", written by the journalist Núria Jar, was published in the printed version of the "Diari de Sabadell", a local newspaper from the near city of Sabadell.

Núvol, the digital newspaper about culture, published on 28 December 2018 an article entitled "Escletxes per incloure la dona en la ciència" about our participation in the "Science & Tech Girls Vallès" event, which took pace on 17 November 2018 at the Biblioteca Vapor Badia (Sabadell).

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: 

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.