Strategic fields:

• Advance in the next generation materials for renewable energy generation:
  • From the sun (photovoltaics): organics, perovskites, boron-based, oxides, nanostructured inorganics, hybrid systems, photonic structures
  • From waste heat (emerging thermoelectrics): organics, nanocarbon (polymer/carbon strategies).
• Advance in the next generation materials for storage technologies (post-Li-ion battery technologies): hard carbon anodes for Na-ion batteries; electrolytes, anodes and cathodes for Mg- and Ca-based batteries, Zn-air batteires
• Develop innovative sustainable technologies, replacing critical or toxic materials by others, in the field of metal organic frameworks (MOFs), oxide-nitride layers, carbons and polymeric materials.
• Advance characterization and theoretical tools that help the understanding of materials for energy (e.g. XRD, AFM/SPM, TEM, IR, UV and Raman spectroscopies, ALBA’s synchrotron lines, theoretical simulations).

Strategic fields:

• Low cost manufacturing processes suitable for industrial applications based on chemical deposition methods and inkjet deposition.
• Nanostructuring of the films to enhance their performance.
• Advanced characterization techniques (electronic nanoscopy, density functional theory analysis of defects, X-ray magnetic circular dichroism and in-situ X-ray diffraction synchrotron studies, in-situ resistivity and high magnetic field transport measurements).

Strategic fields:

• Contribute in exploiting orbital physics and interface engineering to induce emerging properties, using oxides for data storage, communications and light harvesting.
• Engineering magnetic properties, searching and understanding multiferroic materials, integrating ferroelectric and ferromagnetic oxides on silicon, tailoring electronic properties with nitrides and designing and making artificial polar materials.
• Development of thin films of these materials with subnanometric precision.
• Use the most advanced tools of lithography for device microfabrication, prior to electrical, magnetic and optical characterization.
• Structural, morphological and microstructural analysis are done by a combination of in-house techniques (e.g. PLD) and extensive use of large scale facilities (ALBA synchrotron radiation, neutron beams, most advances electron microscopes, etc.).
• Theory and simulation of the properties and behavior of the materials (flexoelectricity, thermal transport…).

Strategic fields:

• Use of organic molecules in electronic devices.
• Design novel molecular switches, memory electronic and spintronic devices, low-cost organic field-effect transistors and (bio) chemical and temperature sensor devices.
• The devices are developed considering a holistic perspective including: design and synthesis of the molecules, structural, morphological and electronic characterization, device fabrication and integration, and theory prediction and rationalization.
• From fundamental studies (molecule/surface interactions, structure/property correlations) and proof-of-concept devices.
• Nanoscale behavior, structure and geometry of the molecular systems, organic devices and engineered surface are characterized by STM, AFM, Kelvin probe, among others.  

Strategic fields:

• Synthesis of nanomaterials for therapy and diagnosis obtained by new manufacturing schemes and able to cross biological barriers (nanovesicles, nanocapsules, nanoparticles, dendrimers, nanotubes, containing bioactive molecules…),
• Synthesis of nanomaterials for multimodal diagnosis enabling to obtain images of the different tissues and metabolites distribution based on contrast agents magnetic nanoparticles and organic free radicals, X-ray absorbers or radionuclei.
• Synthesis of nanostructured materials for tissue repair to understand and control signals directing cell behavior towards vascular or neural reparation therapies (biocompatible nanostructured electrodes based on graphene; endothelial cells and magnetic nanoparticles, and surfaces that trigger the organization of growth factors…)
• Simulation of the behavior and self-assembly of soft and biomaterials.