Research Groups

RESEARCH UNIT: Nanostructured Materials for Optoelectronics and Energy Harvesting

Nanostructured Materials for Optoelectronics and Energy Harvesting (NANOPTO)

We use scientific knowledge to help provide clean energy by developing photovoltaic and thermoelectric technologies with new functionalities, low cost and higher environmental sustainability.

The Nanostructured Materials for Optoelectronics and Energy Harvesting (NANOPTO) group focuses on the production and characterization of advanced semiconducting structures with the main objective of understanding their fundamental behavior in order to tailor and improve their functionalities and empower different applications in the areas of optoelectronics, energy management, and sensing devices.

The group is divided into four different research activities: Optoelectronics of group-IV semiconductor nanostructures, Organic-Inorganic Thermoelectrics, Photonic Architectures for Light Management and Organic Solar Cells.

Members

  • Dr. Maria Isabel Alonso - Research Scientist
  • Dr. Mariano Campoy-Quiles - Research Scientist
  • Dr. Miquel Garriga - Research Scientist
  • Dr. Alejandro R. Goñi - ICREA Research Professor
  • Dr. Agustín Mihi - Tenured Scientist
  • Dr. Sebastián Reparaz - Tenured Scientist
  • Dr. Valentina Belova - Postdoctoral Researcher
  • Dr. Laura Ciammaruchi - Postdoctoral Researcher
  • Dr. Bernhard Dörling - Postdoctoral Researcher
  • Dr. Denise Estrada Wiese - Postdoctoral Researcher
  • Dr. Juan Luis Garcia-Pomar - Postdoctoral Researcher
  • Dr. Aleksandr Perevedentsev - Postdoctoral Researcher
  • Dr. Luis Alberto Pérez - Postdoctoral Researcher
  • Dr. Leonardo Scarabelli - Postdoctoral Researcher
  • Ivan Álvarez Corzo - Project Researcher
  • Rana Adel Mohamed - PhD Researcher
  • Camilla Dore - PhD Researcher
  • Adrián Francisco López - PhD Researcher
  • Martí Gibert Roca - PhD Researcher
  • Mayte Gómez-Castaño - PhD Researcher
  • Albert Harillo - PhD Researcher
  • Jinhui Hu - PhD Researcher
  • José Piers Jurado - PhD Researcher
  • Minghua Kong - PhD Researcher
  • Cristiano Matricardi - PhD Researcher
  • Pau Molet - PhD Researcher
  • Enrique Pascual San José - PhD Researcher
  • Xabier Rodriguez Martínez - PhD Researcher
  • Kai Xu - PhD Researcher
  • Osnat Zapata-Arteaga - PhD Researcher
  • Fatma Abdallah Noureldin - MSc Student
  • Miquel Casademont - MSc Student
  • Carmen del Pino - MSc Student
  • David Vila-Liarte - MSc Student
  • Alex Jimenez Arguijo - Undergraduate Student
  • Paula Pàmies Puig - Undergraduate Student

a) Bacteria produce a thermoelectric network of carbon nanotubes in a porous nanocellulose matrix. b) Lead-halide perovskites are ferroelectricity-free, whereas domains are likely due to strain-driven twinning. c) Template induced assembly of MUHEG−Au nanorods from EtOH/water mixtures.

Achievements

The group would like to highlight three main achievements:

i) Carbon based thermoelectrics have attracted special attention as they do not contain toxic or scarce elements, and moreover can be solution processed at low temperatures, thus increasing sustainability, simplifying fabrication and reducing cost. The group went one step farther by moving from manufacturing to farming thermoelectric films which exhibit thermoelectric properties similar to the pristine materials while saving more than 90 % of the expensive carbon nanotubes. In addition, these films are thermally stable beyond 250 °C, amenable to conformal wrapping around randomly shaped heat sources, and importantly, can be enzymatically decomposed to reclaim the carbon nanotubes. A first step towards a new energy paradigm: do-it-yourself energy harvesters.

ii) A wide number of perovskite oxides have ferroelectric behavior. In organic-inorganic perovskite thin films, however, the existence of ferroelectricity has been under debate over the past few years. The group aimed at contributing to the understanding of this topic by extending the range of measurements beyond what is conventionally carried out. In particular, three force-microscopy techniques applied to two perovskite materials were employed, prepared with control of film thickness and grain sizes that enabled the evaluation of morphological differences. Based on experimental data and by comparing two well-known ferroelectric materials, it was concluded that lead halide perovskites are ferroelectricity-free.

iii) Plasmonic supercrystals and periodically structured arrays comprise a class of materials with unique optical properties that result from the interplay of plasmon resonances, as well as near- and far-field coupling. Assessing the efficacy of such square arrays for surface-enhanced Raman scattering spectroscopy, the signal was boosted by more than an order of magnitude, thereby enabling sensitive detection of analytes, such as the bacterial quorum sensing molecule pyocyanin, even in complex biological media.

Publications

Farming thermoelectric paper
D. Abol-Fotouh, B. Dörling, O. Zapata-Arteaga, X. Rodríguez-Martínez, A. Gómez, J. S. Reparaz, A. Laromaine, A. Roig and M. Campoy-Quiles
Energy and Enviromental Science, 12, 716-726, 2019

Ferroelectricity-free lead halide perovskites
A. Gómez, Q. Wang, A. R. Goñi, M. Campoy-Quiles and Antonio Abate 
Energy and Enviromental Science, 12, 2537-2547, 2019

Solvent-assisted self-assembly of gold nanorods into hierarchically organized plasmonic mesostructures
C. Hanske, E.H. Hill, D. Vila-Liarte, G. González-Rubio, C. Matricardi, A. Mihi and L.M. Liz-Marzán
ACS Applied Material & Interfaces 11, 12, 11763-11771, 2019

Solar harvesting: a unique opportunity for organic thermoelectrics?
J. P. Jurado, B. Dörling, O. Zapata‐Arteaga, A. Roig, A. Mihi and M. Campoy‐Quiles
Advanced Energy Materials, 9, 45, 1902385, 2019

Nanostructured back reflectors for efficient colloidal quantum-dot infrared optoelectronics
S. Baek, P. Molet, M. Choi, M. Biondi, O. Ouellette, J. Fan, S. Hoogland, F.P. García-de-Arquer, A. Mihi and E. H. Sargent
Advanced Materials, 31, 33, 11901745, 2019. DOI: 10.1002/adma.20190174

Energy transfer and interference by collective electromagnetic coupling
M. Gómez-Castaño, A. Redondo-Cubero, L. Buisson, J.L. Pau, A. Mihi, S. Ravaine, R.A.L. Vallée, A. Nitzan and M. Sukharev
Nano Letters, 19, 5790-5795, 2019

Blade coated P3HT:non-fullerene acceptor solar cells: a high-throughput parameter study with a focus on up-scalability
E. Pascual-San-José, X. Rodríguez-Martínez, R. Adel-Abdelaleim, M. Stella, E. Martínez-Ferrero and M. Campoy-Quiles
Journal of Materials Chemistry A, 7, 20369-20382, 2019

Narrow linewidth quantum emitters in electron-beam shaped polymer
C. Ciancico, K. Schädler, S. Pazzagli, M. Colautti, P. Lombardi, J. Osmond, C. Dore, A. Mihi, A. Ovvyan, W. HP Pernice, E. Berretti, A. Lavacchi, C. Toninelli, F. Koppens and A. Reserbat-Plantey
ACS Photonics,, 2019.

Assembly-induced bright-light emission from solution-processed platinum(II) inorganic polymers
A. Perevedentsev, F. L. Bargardi, A. Sánchez-Ferrer, N. J. Cheetham, A. Sousaraei, S. Busato, J. Gierschner, B. Milián-Medina, R. Mezzenga, R. Wannemacher, J. Cabanillas-Gonzalez, M. Campoy-Quiles and W. R. Caseri
ACS Omega, 4, 6, 10192-10204, 2019

Equal footing of thermal expansion and electron-phonon interaction in the temperature dependence of lead halide perovskite band gaps
A. Francisco-López, B. Charles, O. J. Weber, M. I. Alonso, M. Garriga, M. Campoy-Quiles, M. T. Weller and A. R. Goñi
Journal Physical Chemical Letters, 10, 11, 2971-2977, 2019

On the impact of the stress situation on the optical properties of WSe2monolayers under high pressure
A. Francisco-López, B. Han, D. Lagarde, X. Marie, B. Urbaszek, C. Robert and A. R. Goñi
Papers in Physics, 11, 110005, 2019

Spectroscopic ellipsometry study of FAxMA1−xPbI3 hybrid perovskite single crystals
M. I. Alonso, B. Charles, A. Francisco-López, M.Garriga, M. T Weller, A. R. Goñi
Journal of Vacuum Science & Technology B, 37, 062901, 2019

Tunable index metamaterials made by bottom-up approaches
M. Gómez-Castaño, H. Zheng,  J.L. Garcia-Pomar, R. Vallée,  A. Mihi and S. Ravaine
Nanoscale Advances, 1, 1070-1076, 2019

Will organic thermoelectrics get hot?
M. Campoy-Quiles 
Philosophical Transaction of the Royal Society A, 377, 20180352, 2019.

Thermoelectrics: From history, a window to the future
D. Beretta, N. Neophytou, J. M. Hodges, M.G. Kanatzidis, D. Narducci, M. Martin- González, M. Beekman, B. Balke, G. Cerretti, W. Tremel, A. Zevalkink, A.I. Hofmann, C. Müller, B. Dörling, M. Campoy-Quiles and M. Caironi
Materials Science & Engineering R, 138, 210-255, 2019

Band gap tuning of solution-processed ferroelectric perovskite BiFe1–xCoxO3 Thin Films
P. Machado, M. Scigaj, J. Gazquez, E. Rueda, A. Sánchez-Díaz, I. Fina, M. Gibert-Roca, T. Puig, X. Obradors, M. Campoy-Quiles and M. Coll
Chemistry of Materials, 31 (3),  947–954, 2019

Geometric frustration in ordered lattices of plasmonic nanoelements
A. Conde-Rubio, A. Fraile-Rodríguez, A. Espinha, A. Mihi, F. Pérez-Murano, X. Batlle and A. Labarta
Scientific Reports, 9, 3529, 2019

Awards and Recognitions

  • The photo “Trampa de luz” from Cristiano Matricardi awarded in the 16th edition of FOTCIENCIA
  • Mayte Gómez awarded with the best poster at the 4th Scientific Meeting of BNC-b Students 
  • Nanopto obtains the Excellent Group certificate by CSIC (2018-2019)
  • Martí Gibert, Poster Prize at the SCN2 First Annual Congress of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology
  • The project CELLUPACK by Camilla Dore wins the "Generating Ideas" programme of the PRUAB
  • Mariano Campoy-Quiles was appointed scientific collaborator of the Agencia Estatal de Investigación (AEI) in the Scientific and Technical Coordination, Evaluation and Monitoring Division. He is Coordinator of the Materials Science and Technology (MAT) Scientific Area.
Coordination
Anna May-Masnou This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Redaction
Anna May-Masnou This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Web & Graphic Editor
José Antonio Gómez  This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Webmasters
José Antonio Gómez This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Albert Moreno     This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
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