Nanostructured materials

Nanostructures are being developed in order to take advantage on their specific tailored properties and to make use of them in the development of multiresponsive composites. Magnetic nanoparticles produced by bacteria are being investigated, together with novel magnetic, plasmonic and photocatalytic nanoparticles, among others. Further, novel porous materials, basically MOFS and Zeolites are being investigated based on their tuneability and outstanding intrinsic properties.
Researchers
Andreo, Jacopo | Post-Doctoral Researcher | |||||
![]() Dr. Jacopo Andreo received his M.Sc. in Chemistry in 2016 from the University of Turin and his Ph.D. in Chemistry from The University of Parma, with a thesis on cobalt and palladium coordination complexes with zwitterionic ligands. He is currently working at the BCMaterial with Prof. Stefan Wuttke, focusing on the synthesis and characterization of conductive MOFs and hierarchical materials. |
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Barroso García, Nagore | Pre-Doctoral Researcher | |||||
![]() Nagore Barroso García graduated in Chemistry in 2018 at the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU). Her degree thesis was on “Surface modification of Poly(ethylene terephthalate) for biomedical applications” in the Macromolecular Chemistry Laboratory of the Faculty of Science and Technology of Leioa.
Subsequently, she finished her master’s degree in New Materials in 2019 at the University of the Basque Country and the University of Cantabria with a thesis based on “Hyaluronic acid/chitosan biodegradable polycomplexes for 3D printing”, carried out in the Macromolecular Chemistry Laboratory of the Faculty of Science and Technology.
Currently, she is starting her PhD at BCMaterials, in the field of metal-oxide framework nanoparticles (MOF NPs) under the direction of Stefan Wuttke. |
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Beobide, Garikoitz | UPV/EHU Research Associate | |||||
Email: garikoitz.beobide@ehu.eus
Garikoitz Beobide is professor of Inorganic Chemistry at the UPV/EHU since 2010. G.B. obtained his BSc in Chemistry degree (University of Strathclyde and UPV/EHU) in 2002 and PhD degree in 2007, receiving from the UPV/EHU the doctorate extraordinary award related to his research results. During the postdoctoral period (2007-2010), G.B. joined the IK4-Tekniker Technology Centre as a Senior Scientist, where his research focused in the development and application of materials and functional surfaces. Since 2010, as professor of the UPV/EHU, his research field is devoted to the design and synthesis of novel metal-organic materials, including MOF (metal-organic frameworks), MBioF (metal-biomolecule frameworks), SMOF (supramolecularly assembled metal-organic frameworks) and MOA (metal-organic aerogels). G.B. deals also with the modelling of electronic properties and adsorptive behavior of materials, through both experimental techniques and computational calculations (DFT, GCMC) that allow a deeper understanding of the surface of porous systems, interactions with adsorbed species and potential applications. As a result of his research activity, G.B. has made more than 70 contributions to scientific journals (h-index: 24). G.B. is also co-author of three international patents and co-founder of Poretune S.L. Company, a star-up devoted to the development of novel porous catalysts for electrochemical applications. |
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Castillo, Oscar | UPV/EHU Research Associate | |||||
Email: oscar.castillo@ehu.eus
Associate Professor of Inorganic Chemistry at the University of the Basque Country since April 2010. He completed his PhD studies in September 2001, joining the University of the Basque Country in that same year as a teacher within the Department of Inorganic Chemistry. In April 2015 he received the accreditation to the academic full professor body. He has developed several research lines all of them related to porous metal-organic materials. One of them focused on developing a sustainable production route for this type of porous materials through its solvent-free synthesis by directly heating a carefully selected reagent mixture so that some of them melt at moderate temperatures. It was also possible to demonstrate that microwave heating allows reducing reaction times to a few minutes while maintaining high yields and materials performance. In addition, he developed another research line based on the use of nucleobases together with different metal centers for the formation of porous materials with a three-dimensional skeleton supported by coordination links between nucleobases and metal centers (Metal-Biomolecule Frameworks, MBioFs) or by complementary hydrogen bonds between the nucleobases attached to the metal centers (Supramolecular Metal-Organic Frameworks, SMOFs). In both cases, they are novel materials in which the use of the nucleobases improves the adsorption selectivity of these materials. A third line focuses on the processing of MOFs as aerogels (Metal-Organic Aerogels, MOA). Aerogels consist of gels where the liquid present inside has been replaced by air without causing gel contraction. This is achieved by drying the gel under supercritical conditions, usually with CO2. There are few examples of these new materials in which the microporosity of MOF is combined with the meso- and macroporous characteristics of aerogels to give rise to a hierarchically ordered porous material. Currently, these three lines are converging in the preparation of multifunctional porous metal-organic materials where a second property (conductivity, luminescence, fluorescence) is altered by the interaction of host molecules with the biomolecules integrated in the porous material to develop highly selective chemical sensors. As a result of the aforementioned research activity, 146 contributions (h=34) have been made to scientific journals in the area of materials science, inorganic chemistry and crystalline engineering. He is also co-author of two patents in this area and co-founder of a technology-based company (PORETUNE SL) related to one of these patents. In the last 5 years, he has participated in 6 national and regional research projects, being IP in four of them. He has also directed 7 doctoral theses and 2 more will be defended shortly. I am also a cofounder, together with Drs. Garikoitz Beobide and Daniel Vallejo of the start-up company PORETUNE S.L. which is responsible for exploiting one of these patents (PCT / ES2017 / 070255). |
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Fernández, Roberto | Post-Doctoral Researcher | |||||
![]() Expertise Bio Interests and objetives |
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Fidalgo-Marijuan, Arkaitz | Post-Doctoral Researcher | |||||
![]() Expertise Crystal structure solution and refinement. IR and Raman spectroscopies. Thermal properties of materials. Catalytic activity measurements. DFT calculations. Bio Interests and objetives |
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Gandia Aguado, David | Pre-Doctoral Researcher | |||||
![]() Expertise Bio Interests and objetives |
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Hintz, Henrik | Post-Doctoral Researcher | |||||
![]() Henrik Hintz obtained his Bachelor’s degree (best student of the year) in chemistry at the University of Bremen in 2011. He continued his master´s studies at the Ludwig Maximilian University (LMU) of Munich focusing on organic and physical chemistry. For his master’s thesis in 2014 about postsynthetic modification of metal-organic frameworks he received a Roemer-Price of the Dr. Klaus Roemer-Foundation at the LMU for “excellent scientific achievements in the research field of chemistry”. Then, he moved to Bielefeld University for his doctoral studies in synthetic organic chemistry dealing with the synthesis of molecular rulers and spin markers for the EPR spectroscopy. In 2019 Henrik Hintz joined BCMaterials where his current research in the group of professor Wuttke is focused on the synthesis and modification of metal-organic frameworks. |
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Kazim, Samrana | Ikerbasque Research Fellow | |||||
![]() Expertise Bio Interests and objetives |
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Luque, Antonio | UPV/EHU Research Associate | |||||
Email: antonio.luque@ehu.eus
Dr. Antonio Luque (Male) received his M.Sc. in Chemistry 1986 and his Ph.D. in Chemical Sciences 1990 from the Basque Country University (UPV/HU) in Bilbao, Spain. Since 2002, he occupies the position of University Professor in the Inorganic Department of the above-cited university. He has published 155 articles in scientific journals, receiving more than 3900 citations (h-index = 35) focused on the chemistry of polyoxometalates, the structural and magnetic features of coordination compounds, the development of porous metal-organic materials, and the supramolecular self-assembly of discrete metal-organic entities. He is co-inventor of two patents, and he has supervised six Ph.D. Thesis and several final degree and master projects. His research lines are currently devoted to the development of solvent-free synthetic methods for producing MOF (metal-organic frameworks) at lower costs, using a scalable and environmentally friendly route. Another line of research is dedicate to the rational design and preparation of new MBioF (metal-biomolecule frameworks), SMOF (supramolecularly assembled metal-organic frameworks) and MOA (metal-organic aerogels). |
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Payno Zarceño, David | Pre-Doctoral Researcher | |||||
![]() Career and achievements: David Payno studied physics and a Master in renewable energies in the Universidad Complutense de Madrid. During the master, he did an internship on CIEMAT, working in the project of building integration photovoltaics proposing a new standardization system. This results where showed in “XVI Congreso Ibérico y XII Congreso Iberoamericano de Energía Solar”. He did a training in the European Commission JRC of Netherlands, working the energy storage unit. Here, he study of the viability of giving a second life in a stationary application (like grid or renewables support) to the lithium batteries used in electric vehicles, by testing the degradation trends and processes in representative samples. In BCMaterials, he will do the PhD in the “Printable kesterites solar cells and interface optimization for high performance devices” project, looking for improvements on this green, element earth abundant and low toxic PV technology, and ways to make it cheaper and suitable for future commercialization. The used skills are materials characterization, photovoltaic characterization, multiple thin film deposition techniques as:
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Pérez-Yáñez, Sonia | UPV/EHU Research Associate | |||||
Email: sonia.perez@ehu.eus
Sonia Pérez-Yáñez is Assistant Professor in the Department of Inorganic Chemistry at the UPV/EHU since 2016. She obtained her PhD degree (UPV/EHU) in 2012, under the supervision of Professors Antonio Luque and Oscar Castillo, and she received from the University of the Basque Country the doctorate extraordinary award related to her research results. During the postdoctoral period, she kept on researching in the development and application of metal-organic materials in the same group given that she was awarded with two different postdoctoral fellowships from the UPV/EHU. During this period, she made a stay at the University of Saint Andrews under the supervision of Paul A. Wright. Currently, she is member of the Metal-Organic Materials research group. One of the most relevant research lines to which she is devoted deals with the development of porous metal-organic materials such as MBioFs (metal-biomolecule frameworks), SMOFs (supramolecularly assembled metal-organic frameworks) and MOAs (metal-organic aerogels). During the last years, her target research has evolved to obtaining those materials by sustainable methods (i.e. solvent-free) and to applying them for environment remediation. As a result of her research activity, she has made 50 contributions to scientific journals (h-index: 18) and she is co-author of two international patents. |
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Petrenko, Viktor | Ikerbasque Research Fellow | |||||
![]() Dr. Viktor Petrenko is experienced in small-angle scattering and reflectometry techniques for structural characterization of various colloidal solutions and soft matter in bulk and at interfaces. His current interest is focused onto application of small-angle neutron and X-ray scattering as well as reflectometry techniques for development of various type colloidal solutions for different applications. The main objects of his study are ferrofluids, solutions of bio-macromolecules, surfactants&polymer solutions, colloidal solutions of fullerenes, layered nanostructures, planar and developed electrochemical interfaces etc. For the moment Dr.V.I.Petrenko has 81 publications in Scopus, h index = 12. In 2005 he received Master Diploma with Honor at Taras Shevchenko Kyiv National University (Ukraine) and then PhD in molecular physics in 2008. Doctor of science diploma in physics and mathematics was received in 2017 at Taras Shevchenko Kyiv National University (Ukraine) and title of the work was “Structure and physical properties of magnetic fluids”. During PhD study he has performed a lot of small-angle scattering experiments at IBR-2 reactor in JINR (Russia) as well as at Budapest Neutron Center (Hungary). The PhD work was devoted to small-angle neutron scattering study of magnetic fluids and surfactants which are used for its stabilization. During postdoc researches Dr. Petrenko personally participated in scattering experiments at the Paul Scherrer Institute (Villigen, Swiss); MLZ (Garching, Germany); HZG (Geesthacht, Germany); DESY (Hamburg, Germany) etc. Also he has received several grants/fellowships for short term stay in Germany, Slovakia and Hungary. For the last several years he was invited to international conferences with Invited talk as well as to present his works at various seminars. During scientific career Dr. Viktor Petrenko was awarded by different diploma and prizes for the neutron scattering research works. Thus, in research team he got
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Reguera, Javier | Post-Doctoral Researcher | |||||
![]() Javier Reguera received his M.S. degree in Physics and Ph.D. in Materials Science at the University of Valladolid (2008, Valladolid, Spain). He performed his doctoral thesis with a FPI fellowship (Researcher personnel in formation) and later as assistant lecturer at the School of Engineering at University of Valladolid, under the supervision of Prof. J.C. Rodriguez-Cabello in the field of smart elastin-like polymers with multisensitivity. During his doctoral thesis Dr. Reguera performed several research stays at different European research institutions: Institute of Macromolecular Chemistry (Prage, Czech Republic), University of Nottingham (Nottingham, UK), and at ICSI-CNRS (Mulhouse, France). In 2009 J. Reguera was awarded with a Fulbright fellow grant to perform a postdoctoral stay at MIT (USA) at the group of Prof. F. Stellacci. In 2011 J. Reguera moved to EPFL (Switzerland) where he contributed to the formation of a new research laboratory under the supervision of Prof. F. Stellacci. During this time J. Reguera focused on the studies of self-assembled monolayers on the surface of metal nanoparticles. In November 2014, J. Reguera was awarded with an Ikerbasque fellow contract and started working at CIC biomaGUNE (Spain) at the laboratory of Prof. Luis M. Liz-Marzán. J. Reguera is a co-author of more than 40 publications and has presented his research in more than 50 conferences. He has been awarded with a Fulbright and Ikerbasque fellowships, and with the university extraordinary doctorate prize and the award of the Spanish group of polymers (GEP – RSEQ, RSEF). J. Reguera current research interest is: design and characterization of novel multifunction patchy nanoparticles, assembly and self-assembly of nanoparticles, and biomedical application of nanoparticles. |
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Sewlam, Esraa | Pre-Doctoral Researcher | |||||
![]() Esraa Samy Abu Serea graduated from Faculty of Science at Cairo University (2018), Cairo, Egypt with B.Sc. in Chemistry & Biochemistry. Subsequently, she continued his Master studies in New Materials and finished her master’s degree in 2020 at the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU) and the University of Cantabria (UC) with a thesis based Hybrid magnetic-plasmonic nanostructures for with shape anisotropy hyperthermia treatments, carried out in BCMaterials under the supervision of Dr. Javier Reguera-Gómez. Recently, she is performing her Ph.D. at BCMaterials, in Nanoparticle and Smart polymer composites. Interests and objectives Currently I am working in the Project entitled “Nanoparticle and Smart polymer composites for active control of cell microenvironments in biomedical applications” funded by Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities. The main objective of this project is to synthesis and characterize new magnetic and plasmonic Nanoparticles which have a great effect to kill the cancer cells through hyperthermia. |
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Vadillo Lacasa, Virginia | Pre-Doctoral Researcher | |||||
![]() Expertise Bio Interests and objetives |
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Wuttke, Stefan | Ikerbasque Research Professor | |||||
![]() BIO Stefan Wuttke created the research group “Wuttkegroup for Science”, initially hosted at the Institute of Physical Chemistry at the University of Munich (LMU, Germany). Currently, he is an Ikerbasque Professor at the Basque Center for Materials, Applications and Nanostructures (BCMaterials, Spain). His research is focused on developing methodologies to read and write chemical information from and onto the backbone of hybrid framework materials. In addition, his research interests also include the acquisition of a fundamental understanding of the chemical and physical processes involved in their synthesis and functionalization. |
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Yu, Xiangjiang | Guest UPV/EHU Researcher | |||||
![]() Yu Xiangjiang received his M.S. degree in the State Key Laboratory for Advanced Metals and Materials at University of Science and Technology Beijing in 2020, under the supervision of Prof. Ye Feng and his research focused on the structure and phase transformation process of Al/Ni multilayers. He is currently pursuing his Ph.D. under the supervision of Prof. Stefan Wuttke, focusing on the microfluidic synthesis of MOFs and encapsulate enzymes into MOFs. |
Research Associates
In this research line also take part several Research Associates, that belong to the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU) and perform part of their activity within BCMaterials. Thus, the work of the different lines is carried out in close collaboration with research groups at the University, promoting excellence and worldwide impact.