Nanostructured materials

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.

Leixuri Baños Berganza graduated in Chemistry in 2018 at the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU). Her degree thesis was on “Synthesis of amides by metal-catalyzed aerobic oxidizing methods” at the Organic Chemistry Group of the Faculty of Science and Technology of Leioa.

Afterwards, she finished her master’s degree in Forensic Analysis in 2019 at the University of the Basque Country with a thesis based on the study of the polymorphism of different comercial drugs by X-ray diffraction, carried out in the Crystallography Group of the Faculty of Science and Technology of Leioa.

Currently, she is working on the project “Nanoparticle and Smart polymer composites for active control of cell microenvironments in biomedical applications”, with the objetive of synthetizing and characterizating new magnetic and plasmonic nanoparticles which kill the cancer cells through hyperthermia.

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.

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.

ResearcherID – ORCID

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).

ResearcherID – ORCID

Expertise
Single crystal and powder X-ray diffraction. Crystal structure solution and refinement. Crystallographic databases. Hydrothermal synthesis. IR and Raman spectroscopies. Thermal properties of materials.

Bio
Roberto Fernández de Luis got his PhD (Material science, 2009) from the University of the Basque Country. His research is focused on crystal structure determination and thermal stability of the crystal frameworks after the loss and uptake of guest and coordinated species. For these studies, he has specialized on single crystal and powder X-ray diffraction at non-ambient temperature. He is currently working in collaboration with the Crystallography group in UPV/EHU on the room temperature and hydrothermal synthesis of nano-structured hydrogels of silver vanadium oxides for sensing and battery applications.

Interests and objetives
Design of porous materials as sensor for alcohols detectors.
Development of electrode materials for battery applications.

Curriculum Vitae — ResearcherID

Expertise
Single crystal and powder X-ray diffraction.

Crystal structure solution and refinement.

IR and Raman spectroscopies.

Thermal properties of materials.

Catalytic activity measurements.

DFT calculations.

Bio
Arkaitz Fidalgo-Marijuan is graduated in Environmental Science in 2009 and Master in New Materials in 2010. In March 2014 he obtained his PhD degree on material science and technology at the University of the Basque Country. His research is focused on the synthesis and characterization of new metalloporphyrin MOF materials as heterogeneous catalysts and gas adsorption and separation. He has specialized on single crystal and powder X-ray diffraction, thermal characterization, catalytic activity studies and DFT calculations. He is currently working in collaboration with the Crystallography group in UPV/EHU on the synthesis and characterization of MOF@LI composites for CO2 capture.

Interests and objetives
Design of metalloporphrin based MOF materials for heterogeneous catalysis and gas adsorption.
Currently, I am involved in LISOL (Soluciones basadas en líquidos iónicos para diversificar las oportunidades de la industria vasca) project, funded under the ELKARTEK program of the Basque Government for the design of new composite materials based on ionic liquids supported on MOFs for CO2 capture and separation.

Curriculum Vitae — ResearchGate

Expertise
Structural, Magnetic and Biological techniques, including Cell Manipulation, Scanning and Transmission Electron Microscopies (SEM and TEM), Vibrating Sample and SQUID Magnetometry (VSM and SQUID), and Magnetic Hyperthermia.c

Bio
I obtained my Degree in Physics from the Universidad del País Vasco (UPV/EHU) in 2016, and afterwards I enrolled in the Interuniversity Master of New Materials, offered by the Universidad de Cantabria (UC) and the Universidad del País Vasco(UPV/EHU). In my Bachelor`s Final Year and master`s Degree Projects I have been working with the Group of Magnetism and Magnetic Materials, collaborating with the Inmunology, Microbiology and Parasitology department, in an interdisciplanary research project related to Magnetotactic Bacteria for Enhanced Applications. In this project I have developed a method to create 2D and 3D arrays of magnetotactic bacteria for data storage applications and theoretical studies, and in addition, I have also analyzed the viability of these bacteria as nanorobots for Magnetic Hyperthermia mediated Cancer Treatment.

Interests and objetives
I plan to continue my research in the areas of Novel Cancer Treatment Therapies such as Drug Delivery and Magnetic Hyperthermia.

Curriculum Vitae

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.

Expertise
Electro-optical characterization of organic semiconductors, perovskite and nanocomposites.
Thin film deposition by vaccum thermal evaporation and by wet chemistry.
Synthesis of plasmonic metal nanoparticles,conducting polymers.

Bio
Dr. Samrana Kazim is working as a senior researcher & group leader of Nanostructured Materials at BCMaterials-Basque Center for Materials, Applicatons and Nanostructures, Spain. Prior to this position, she worked as a tenured Senior scientist (2013-2017) at Abengoa Research, a corporate research center of multinational energy company. She obtained her Master degree (M.Sc) and doctoral degree(Ph.D.) in Materials chemistry from New Delhi (India). After submitting her Ph.D., she worked as a post-doc at Indian Institute of Technology (IIT Kanpur,India) for one year, then she moved to Institute of Macromolecular Chemistry (IMC), Prague on IUPAC/UNESCO fellowship. She continued her work as staff scientist at IMC before moving to Abengoa Research. Her field of research interest includes perovskite solar cells, plasmonics, hybrid inorganic-organic nanocomposites. She has published more than 40 research articles in peer review international journal in the field of material science, energy and nanotechnology. She is co-author of 2 book chapters, book editor and co-inventor of 5 patents in the field of energy conversion and storage and delivered keynote & invited talks.

Interests and objetives
Her research objective is the development of nanostructured materials for optoelectronics devices and more specifically for thin film solar cells.

Google Scholar

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).

ResearcherID – ORCID – Google Scholar – Publons

Career and achievements

Itziar Oyarzabal received her B.S. Degree in Chemical Sciences in 2011 and her M.Sc. in Applied Chemistry and Polymeric Materials in 2012, both from the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU, Donostia-San Sebastián). She obtained her PhD degree (UPV/EHU) in December 2015, under the supervision of Professors José Manuel Seco Botana (UPV/EHU) and Enrique Colacio (University of Granada) and she received the extraordinary PhD award given by UPV/EHU. In 2016 she continued working in the same research group at UPV/EHU thanks to a Postdoctoral Grant from the university and in April 2017 she joined the Molecular Materials & Magnetism (M3) group at Centre de Recherche Paul Pascal (Pessac, France) led by Dr. Rodolphe Clérac. During the postdoctoral period of almost 4 years in France (first due to a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship and after to a Postdoctoral Grant from the Basque Government), she focused her research in the development of metal-organic materials with interesting magnetic properties.

She has published over 30 articles (h-index = 15) in peer-reviewed international journals and has presented her work as invited and oral speaker in several international and national conferences in the area of magnetism and material sciences. Her most important contribution to date is the development of a couple of metal-organic magnets with large coercivity and ordering temperatures up to 242°C (published in Science, 2020).

Expertise
Synthesis under inert-gas atmosphere (Schlenk technique and gloveboxes) and solvothermal synthesis. Single crystal and powder X-ray diffraction. Crystal structure solution and refinement. Magnetic properties of materials.

Interests and objectives

As an Ikerbasque Research Fellow, she plans to continue her research in the area of molecular magnetism.

Links to external profiles

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9149-2511

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Itziar-Oyarzabal

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:

• Spin coating
• Sputtering
• Inkjet print
• Chemical Bath CBD

https://es.linkedin.com/in/dapayno

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.

ResearcherID – ORCID

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

• First JINR prize for 2018 in Applied physics research (Russia, 2019);
• Prize of President of Ukraine for young scientists (Ukraine, 2013);
• Prizes of FLNP JINR for scientific works in condensed matter physics (Russia, 2009, 2010, 2015, 2017);
• M. Frank scholarship (Russia, 2017);
• National Scholarship Program of the Slovak Republic for PhD (Slovak Republic, 2015 and 2017);
• Letter of commendation from Presidium of Ukraine National Academy of Science for cycle of scientific works (Ukraine, 2012);
• L. Shapiro scholarship (Russia, 2011).

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.

Researchgate
Google Scholar

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.

Expertise
Magnetic nanoparticles synthesis by chemical and physical methods. Nanoparticules characterization (SEM, TEM, XRD, DLS, VSM). Design and characterization of magnetorheological fluids.

Bio
I received my degree in Industrial Chemical Engineer in 2008 and the degree in Materials Engineer in 2011. I get a Master in Structured materials for new technologies in 2013. I have been working in diferents research center since 2010 in diferent materials fields: polymer matrix composites for aeronautical aplications, metallurgical materials, sol-gel materials for electrooptical aplications. Since december 2017, I am working in a Ph.D. in magnetic nanoparticles for magnetorheological fluids applications.

Interests and objetives
Currently, I am involved in FLUMAN project. The aim of this project is to get magnetic nanoparticles with high saturation magnetization to use them in magnetorheological fluids for design and manufacture an damper prototype.

Curriculum Vitae

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.

http://wuttkescience.com/

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.