Digitalisation has shortened the lifespan of devices and driven up electronic waste: 53.6 million tonnes in 2019, according to the United Nations, with 110 million forecast for 2050. Only 17.4% of the waste collected was properly recycled. Batteries add to the problem. They contain metals such as lithium, cobalt or cadmium, which are scarce, toxic and tied to supply chains with ethical and geopolitical issues. In 2020, only 47% of the portable batteries sold in the EU were collected.

A study led by BCMaterials researcher Maibelin Rosales, together with Senentxu Lanceros-Méndez, Javier del Campo, and Jorge Saiz, has been published in Journal of Materials Chemistry A and featured on the issue's front cover.

BCMaterials, through its Ikerbasque Research Professor Ivan Infante, participated in a review article published by Nature on colloidal quatum dots (QD) for optoelectronics. This work gathers QD fabrication methods with a focus on the applications of QDs in printed optoelectronics and quantum optics.

The RSC Chemical Nanoscience & Nanotechnology group of the Royal Society of Chemistry has selected as the first article of the week for the year 2025 the paper entitled “Insights into the Electroactive Impact of Magnetic Nanostructures in PVDF Composites via Small-Angle Neutron Scattering”, published in the journal ‘Nanoscale’.

This article has been written by BCMaterials researchers together with scientists from the Paul Scherrer Institut (Switzerland) and the University of Minho (Portugal).

A contribution from BCMaterials and colleagues “Laser-Treated Screen-Printed Carbon Electrodes for Electrochemiluminescence Imaging”, has been selected as cover of Chemical & Biomedical Imaging 2024 2 (12), 835-841. Congratulations to the authors.

https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/cbmi.4c00070

A contribution from BCMaterials and colleagues “Eco-friendly, sustainable, and safe energy storage: a nature-inspired materials paradigm shift”, has been selected as cover of Materials Advances Magazine (Mater. Adv., 2024,5, 7534-7547). Congratulations to the authors.

https://doi.org/10.1039/D4MA00363B

A contribution from BCMaterials and colleagues “Printed Memristors: An Overview of Ink, Materials, Deposition Techniques, and Applications”, has been selected as cover of the Advanced Electronic Materials, 10: 2470032. Congratulations to the authors.

https://doi.org/10.1002/aelm.202470032

A contribution from BCMaterials and colleagues “Enhancing Single-Layer WSe2 Light Emission in Perylene-Doped Polymer Films through Efficient Energy Transfer”, has been selected as cover of the Advanced Functional Materials magazine. Adv. Funct.

A contribution from BCMaterials and colleagues “Conductive carbon fabric generation from single-step upcycling of textile waste”, has been selected as cover of the RSC Sustainable Energy & Fuels magazine. 2024,8, 3844-3853. Congratulations to the authors.

https://doi.org/10.1039/D3SE01722B

BCMaterials has presented its 2023 Annual Activity Report. The document includes the highlights of the center's scientific activity during the past year, which continues on an upward trajectory in terms of the number and impact of publications, as well as the quantity and entity of the ongoing research projects. Last year BCMaterials had 65 ongoing projects with European, Spanish and Basque funding. Three of them were new important European projects.