This summer school SURE 2022 on "Sustainable Materials for Renewable Energy Applications" was organized by two European associations: EPNOE and ESEIA, and ICMAB.
The PhD researcher Rana Adel, from the Nanostructured Materials for Optoelectronics and Energy Harvesting (NANOPTO) Group at ICMAB-CSIC, will defend her PhD thesis on Friday, 22 July 2022 at 10 am in a hybrid session at ICMAB.
The PhD researcher Lídia Ballell, from the Nanomol-Bio Group at ICMAB-CSIC, will defend her PhD thesis on Friday, 22 July 2022 at 11 am in a hybrid session at UAB.
In the framework of the ERC PoC project OrGeVine, an expedition of ICMABers visited the vineyards of the cooperative COVIDES and installed several IoT devices.
Here, the alpha amino acid l-alanine is employed as both a capping and stabilizing agent in the aqueous synthesis of submicron-sized metallic copper particles under ambient atmospheric conditions. The reduction of the copper(II) precursor is achieved using l-ascorbic acid (vitamin C) as the reducing agent. The nature of the complex formed between l-alanine and the copper(II) precursor, pH of the medium, temperature, and the relative proportion of capping agent are found to play a significant role in determining the size, shape, and oxidative stability of the resulting particles.
The channel, a project led by ICN2, features also some research made in ICMAB.
"What the Fisica" or #WTF is a new science Youtube channel in Spanish that offers a broad view about top research performed at ICN2 and neighbouring centres such as ICMAB, IFAE and IMB-CNM-CSIC.
The UAB supports this channel not only by sharing content but also offering a space for the video recording.
Rosario Núñez and José Giner from the Inorganic Materials & Catalysis Group (LMI) group were the Chairs of this European Conference on Boron Chemistry.
Título : Emergent Insulator–Metal Transition with Tunable Optical and Electrical Gap in Thin Films of a Molecular Conducting Composite
Autores: Raphael Pfattner*, Elena Laukhina*, Jinghai Li, Rossella L. Zaffino, Núria Aliaga-Alcalde, Marta Mas-Torrent, Vladimir Laukhin, and Jaume Veciana*
Composites exhibit unique synergistic properties emerging when components with different properties are combined. The tuning of the energy bandgap in the electronic structure of the material allows designing tailor-made systems with desirable mechanical, electrical, optical, and/or thermal properties. Here, we study an emergent insulator–metal transition at room temperature in bilayered (BL) thin-films comprised of polycarbonate/molecular-metal composites. Temperature-dependent resistance measurements allow monitoring of the electrical bandgap, which is in agreement with the optical bandgap extracted by optical absorption spectroscopy.
The candidate will work on the project Improving solar cell efficiency by spectral matching and charge mobility enhancement (ISOSCELLES) within the framework of the Spanish R&D program “Generación de Conocimiento 2021”.
The PhD researcher Xiaodong Zhang, from the CMEOS Group at ICMAB-CSIC, will defend his PhD thesis on Thursday, 14 July 2022 at 10 am in an online session.
The ALBA Synchrotron, in collaboration with the FECYT, has made a series of five informative videos in which some examples of experiments performed with synchrotron light are reported.
Hello everyone! I am Ana Conde and I have recently joined the NANOPTO group to work on the DYNAMO project under the supervision of Dr. Agustín Mihi. Throughout my research career, I have been working on the nanofabrication of nanostructures for various applications including 2D material devices and plasmonics. Although I have been living in Switzerland for 3.5 years, my face might seem familiar to some of you from my PhD times, where I was a frequent visitor of CNM, ICN2, and ICMAB.
In my free time, most likely you’ll find me far away from the city, with my van, practicing outdoor sports such as trail running, ski-touring, or climbing. However, if it is raining, I might be cooking or baking to recover some energy :)
Engineering oxygen octahedra rotation patterns in ABO3 perovskites is a powerful route to design functional materials. Here we propose a strategy that exploits point defects that create local electric dipoles and couple to the oxygen sublattice, enabling direct actuation on the rotational degrees of freedom. This approach, which relies on substituting an A site with a smaller ion, paves a way to couple dynamically octahedra rotations to external electric fields.
The candidate will work in the framework of the EU project “Sustain-a-Print”. This project seeks to fundamentally change how we make, use and remake printed electronic circuitry based on inorganic nanomaterials, and sustainable organic substrates.
We share the winners of this years’ FOTICMAB contest! Which one is your favorite?
Our photo contest FOTICMAB2022 is over, the votes have been counted, the results are clear!
We appreciate the almost 100 participating pictures, it has been a very interesting edition with amazing photos! As a reminder, the winners of each category will receive one of the new official ICMAB sweatshirts!
This article appeared in Advances in Engineering and features a paper by Nieves Casañ-Pastor et al. published in the Journal of the Electrochemical Society
Advanced personalized immunotherapies still have to overcome several biomedical and technical limitations before they become a routine cancer treatment in spite of recent achievements. In adoptive cell therapy (ACT), the capacity to obtain adequate numbers of therapeutic T cells in the patients following ex vivo treatment should be improved.
The PhD researcher Julio Fraile, from the Solid State Chemistry (SSC) Group at ICMAB-CSIC, will defend his PhD thesis on Thursday, 7 July 2022 at 11 am at ICMAB.
The PhD researcher Sergi Martín Rio, from the Advanced Characterization and Nanostructured Materials (ACNM) Group at ICMAB-CSIC, will defend his PhD thesis on Tuesday, 5 July 2022 at 11 am at the Physics Faculty at the Universitat de Barcelona (UB).
The helium production rates in liquid metals (Pb-Li eutectic alloy, LLE and others) Blanket Breeders (BB) are nearly mol-to-mol linked to tritium and intimately associated with the compulsory requirement of high tritium self-sufficiency of next fusion reactors. When LLE is oversaturated and the helium solubility limit is exceeded, helium atoms can nucleate in the form of bubbles. The presence of helium bubbles within LLE channels could have severe impact on the diverse BB designs, in particular on tritium transport permeation and its recovery.
Título : Water-Stable Carborane-Based Eu3+/Tb3+ Metal–Organic Frameworks for Tunable Time-Dependent Emission Color and Their Application in Anticounterfeiting Bar-Coding
Autores: Zhen LiZhen Li, Rosario Núñez, Mark E. Light, Eliseo Ruiz, Francesc Teixidor, Clara Viñas, Daniel Ruiz-Molina, Claudio Roscini*, and José Giner Planas*
Luminescent lanthanide metal–organic frameworks (Ln-MOFs) have been shown to exhibit relevant optical properties of interest for practical applications, though their implementation still remains a challenge. To be suitable for practical applications, Ln-MOFs must be not only water stable but also printable, easy to prepare, and produced in high yields. Herein, we design and synthesize a series of mCB-EuyTb1–y (y = 0–1) MOFs using a highly hydrophobic ligand mCBL1: 1,7-di(4-carboxyphenyl)-1,7-dicarba-closo-dodecaborane. The new materials are stable in water and at high temperature.
A group of ICMAB and IMB-CNM reserachers have developed a disposable electrochemical sensor to detect contaminants in water. No sample pre-treatment is required and water can be analysed on site in the field. The sensor can be connected to a portable device, such as a mobile phone, and no specific training is needed to use it.
Título : Identifying structure–absorption relationships and predicting absorption strength of non-fullerene acceptors for organic photovoltaics
Autores: Jun Yan, Xabier Rodríguez-Martínez, Drew Pearce, Hana Douglas, Danai Bili, Mohammed Azzouzi, Flurin Eisner, Alise Virbule, Elham Rezasoltani, Valentina Belova, Bernhard Dörling, Sheridan Few, Anna A. Szumska, Xueyan Hou, Guichuan Zhang, Hin-Lap Yip, Mariano Campoy-Quiles* and Jenny Nelson*
Non-fullerene acceptors (NFAs) are excellent light harvesters, yet the origin of their high optical extinction is not well understood. In this work, we investigate the absorption strength of NFAs by building a database of time-dependent density functional theory (TDDFT) calculations of ∼500 π-conjugated molecules. The calculations are first validated by comparison with experimental measurements in solution and solid state using common fullerene and non-fullerene acceptors. We find that the molar extinction coefficient (εd,max) shows reasonable agreement between calculation in vacuum and experiment for molecules in solution, highlighting the effectiveness of TDDFT for predicting optical properties of organic π-conjugated molecules.
Doctor Martí Gibert, from the NANOPTO Group at ICMAB-CSIC, defended his PhD thesis titled "On Improving the Efficiency of Organic Photovoltaic Devices: Novel Strategies" on Wednesday, 15 June 2022. Congrats!
The voting is now open, and until Sunday 26 June at midnight. Vote so that the best photos can win!
Our photo and video contest FOTICMABcontinues to strike back! The contest was open for all ICMAB members, from 13 May to 19 June 2022. And now it's time to vote, until the 26 June!
This year we have three categories, and we have participants from each one:
SCIENTIFIC: 20 photos
ARTISTIC: 28 photos
FAUNA AND FLORA: 34 photos
Some of them are amazing! Thank you for participating with such nice pictures!
Título : Water soluble organometallic small molecules as promising antibacterial agents: synthesis, physical–chemical properties and biological evaluation to tackle bacterial infections
Autores: Ines Bennour, M. Núria Ramos, Miquel Nuez-Martínez, Jewel Ann Maria Xavier, Ana B. Buades, Reijo Sillanpää, Francesc Teixidor, Duane Choquesillo-Lazarte, Isabel Romero, Margarita Martinez-Medinad and Clara Viñas
The Na[3,3′-Fe(8-I-1,2-C2B9H10)2] and Na[2,2′-M(1,7-C2B9H11)] (M = Co3+, Fe3+) small molecules are synthesized and the X-ray structures of [(H3O)(H2O)5][2,2′-Co(1,7-C2B9H11)2] and [Cs(MeCN)][8,8′-I2-Fe(1,2 C2B9H10)2], both displaying a transoid conformation of the [M(C2B9)2]− framework, are reported. Importantly, the supramolecular structure of [(H3O)(H2O)5][2,2′-Co(1,7-C2B9H11)2] presents 2D layers leading to a lamellar arrangement of the anions while the cation layers form polymeric water rings made of six- and four-membered rings of water molecules connected via OH⋯H hydrogen bonds; B–H⋯O contacts connect the cationic and anionic layers.
We welcome all students, technicians, researchers from universities, technological centers, start ups and companies to visit us on this day to see what we can do for your science!
Título : Matching electron transport layers with a non-halogenated and low synthetic complexity polymer:fullerene blend for efficient outdoor and indoor organic photovoltaics
Autores: Xabier Rodríguez-Martínez, Sergi Riera-Galindo, * Jiayan Cong, Thomas Österberg, Mariano Campoy-Quiles and Olle Inganäsa
The desired attributes of organic photovoltaics (OPV) as a low cost and sustainable energy harvesting technology demand the use of non-halogenated solvent processing for the photoactive layer (PAL) materials, preferably of low synthetic complexity (SC) and without compromising the power conversion efficiency (PCE). Despite their record PCEs, most donor–acceptor conjugated copolymers in combination with non-fullerene acceptors are still far from upscaling due to their high cost and SC. Here we present a non-halogenated and low SC ink formulation for the PAL of organic solar cells, comprising PTQ10 and PC61BM as donor and acceptor materials, respectively, showing a record PCE of 7.5% in blade coated devices under 1 sun, and 19.9% under indoor LED conditions.
Transport of heat and hypersound with gigahertz (GHz) to terahertz (THz) phonons is crucial for heat management in electronics, mediating signal processing with microwave radiation, thermoelectrics, and various types of sensors based on nanomechanical resonators. Efficient control of heat and sound transport requires new materials, novel experimental techniques, and a detailed knowledge of the interaction of phonons with other elementary excitations.
The candidate will work in the framework of the la-Caixa Project “Recyclable photon up and down conversion bioplastics for photo-protected light harvesting: a step towards circular optical bioplastics economy.”