Anna May

The N&N Group participates in the Nano Festival at the Campus UAB

Written by Anna May on April 4, 2016. Posted in News, Science outreach.

The N&N Group has collaborated in the first science outreach festival of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology. This festival, held between April 4th-8th 2016 in different locations of the Spanish geography (Zaragoza, Donostia, Barcelona, and Campus UAB) is full of different activities: seminars, exhibitions, workshops, nanodebates and competitions.

Anna May and Pol Sallés participated in the workshop around “Nanomaterials at ICMAB“, in which different nanomaterials created by ICMAB were shown and the role of nanotechnology in our daily life products was discussed. The assistants were mainly students from the UAB (Nanoscience and Nanotechnology, Biotechnology, etc.), but also high school students interested in pursuing a Nanoscience degree were present. Tomorrow, Tuesday 5th April, Anna Laromaine will give a talk on Nanomedicine (Sala d’Actes, Facultat de Ciències, 10.30 – 13 h) and the workshop will also be held at the C1 Hall of the Facultat de Ciències (13 – 15 h).

The program of the different activities held at Campus UAB can be found here.

ICMAB workshop

The news at the ICMAB webpage is found here.

Farewell to Jana and welcome to Iván and Deyaa – Group Lunch and Lab Cleaning Day

Written by Anna May on April 1, 2016. Posted in Group activities, News, Welcome and farewell.

This Friday, after the Lab Cleaning (good job!) we had a N&N Group Lunch to say goodbye to Jana, who did a fantastic job at ICMAB and now is going back to ETH Zurich, and to welcome the two new visiting Ph.D. students, Deyaa, from Egypt, and Iván, from Colombia.

There were 15 of us today! The group always gets big in spring time with all the new students!

Open Ph.D. positions within the N&N Group

Written by Anna May on March 16, 2016. Posted in General News, Group activities, News, Projects News.

Thinking about starting a Ph.D? The N&N Group offers the following Ph.D. opportunities for this year 2016 (click here for a detailed description of each topic):

Engineering Bacterial Cellulose Nanocomposites
Investigation of new phenomena in novel multiferroics
Functionalized bacterial cellulose for skin tissue regeneration

Eligibility:

Candidates should be ready to enter an official doctoral programme in September 2016 (under Spanish Law). By this time, they must have obtained a university degree and a master degree; or must hold an official university qualification from a country of the European Higher Education Area with a minimum of 300 ECTS of official university studies, of which at least 60 are at masters’ level.
Candidates must have a strong commitment to scientific research and an excellent academic record (desirable above 8 in a scale of 10).
Candidates must have good working knowledge of English.
MINECO fellowship candidates may not have held a PhD contract exceeding 12 months by June 2016.

How to APPLY:

DEADLINE: Extended to 14th April 2016

Documentation required:

Personal data and CV.
Covering letter, including motivation for applying.
A copy of your Certified Academic Record, showing grades obtained (degree and masters). If these are not in Catalan, Spanish or English, applicants should attach an official translation in one of these languages.
Two letters of recommendation from lecturers or researchers with whom you have studied or worked and who can judge your potential as a PhD student. Only letters with official letterhead and signature will be accepted. Please be sure to inform your referees that their letters must be uploaded in the online application tool before deadline to provide the following information in the application form.

The ICMAB offers other Ph.D positions. More information following this link.

If you have further questions, or if there are particular issues regarding your application, please contact: Anna Roig (roig@icmab.es), Martí Gich (mgich@icmab.es), or Anna Laromaine (alaromaine@icmab.es).

Hot off the press: accepted manuscript in Chem. Commun.

Written by Anna May on March 11, 2016. Posted in New publications, News.

Today is the big day: second manuscript accepted!

The manuscript “A silica-based magnetic platform decorated with mixed ligand gold nanoparticles: A recyclable catalyst for esterification reactions” (Elif Ertem, Nerea Murillo-Cremaes, Randy Patrick Carney, Anna Laromaine, Emma-Rose Janeček, Anna Roig* and Francesco Stellaccia*; DOI: 10.1039/C6CC01146B) has been accepted in Chemical Communications.

This paper describes a novel and convenient synthetic strategy for the preparation of magnetically responsive silica nanospheres decorated with mixed ligand protected gold nanoparticles. Gold nanoparticles are attached to the silica surface via stable amide bond formation. The hierarchical nanospheres show promising results as a reusable and efficient catalyst for esterification reactions and they can be recovered through a simple magnetic separation.

Congratulations!

Figure: Schematic illustration of: (a) the partial ligand exchange of 3-mercapto-1-propanesulfonate (MPSA):1-octanethiol(OT) covered gold nanoparticles, (b) the synthesis of core-shell magnetic silica and (c) the synthesis of the magnetic silica decorated with gold nanoparticles hierarchical nanospheres.

Hot off the press: accepted manuscript in Faraday Discussions!

Written by Anna May on March 11, 2016. Posted in New publications, News.

We are very happy to announce that the manuscript “Gold nanotriangles decorated with superparamagnetic iron oxide nanoparticles: a compositional and microstructural study“ (J.A. Hachtela, S. Yuc , A.R. Lupini, S.T. Pantelidesa, M. Gich, A. Laromaine, A. Roig, DOI: 10.1039/C6FD00028B) has been accepted by the Faraday Discussions journal.

The manuscript will be presented and discussed at a forthcoming Faraday Discussions meeting, this next summer. During the meeting, all delegates will be able to contribute to the debate, which will be included in the final volume. This will be a great opportunity to discuss the formation mechanism of the magnetic gold nanotriangles with some experts on this field.

The combination of iron oxide and gold in a single nanoparticle results in both magnetic and plasmonic properties that can stimulate novel applications in bio-sensing, medical imaging, or therapeutics. Microwave heating method allows the fabrication of multi-component, multi-functional nanostructures by promoting selective heating at desired sites. Recently, we reported a microwave-assisted polyol route yielding gold nanotriangles decorated with iron oxide nanoparticles (1). Here, we present an in-depth microstructural and compositional characterization of the system by using scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM) and electron energy loss (EELS) spectroscopy. A method to remove the iron oxide nanoparticles from the gold nanocrystals and some insights on crystal nucleation and growth mechanisms are also provided.

Figure: (a) Schematic representation of the synthesis route. (b) HRTEM image of a Au NH-SPIONs and a Au NT-SPIONs. Characterization of the heterostructures: (c) UV-Vis-NIR spectra. (d) Hydrodynamic diameter of the Au-SPIONS measured by DLS. (e) Magnetization curve up to 6 T at 5K.

(1) Magnetic gold nanotriangles by microwave polyol synthesis (S.M. Yu, J.A. Hachtel, M.F. Chisholm, S.T. Pantelides, A. Laromaine, A. Roig; Nanoscale 2015, 7, 14039-14046. DOI: 10.1039/C5NR03113C).

Kick-off meeting of the E-BCN project

Written by Anna May on March 2, 2016. Posted in News, Projects News.

Yesterday, March 1st, was the day for the Kick-off Meeting of the project E-BCN: Engineering Bacterial Cellulose Nanocomposites (MAT2015-64442-R). The project will have a duration of three years and the team that will be working on it is formed by Anna Roig (PI), Martí Gich, Anna Laromaine, Jordi Faraudo (Materials Simulation and Theory Dept.), Dino Tonti (Solid State Chemistry Dept.), Laura Asturias and Anna May.
The main objective of the project is to develop new nanocomposites of bacterial cellulose (BC) by innovative cost-effective approaches. We will engineer BC at the biosynthesis stage, form nanocomposites with BC and nanoparticles, model relevant aspects of BC structure and its interaction with nanoparticles, and provide the proof of concept for novel devices and products.
If you want to know more about the project, keep following our activities in our website. You can also check our publications and/or contact us for any further question.

Jana Segmehl was at the Bio-inspired Materials 2016 conference

Written by Anna May on February 26, 2016. Posted in Conferences, News.

Jana Segmehl gave a Short Poster Lecture at the Bio-inspired Materials 2016 conference, in Potsdam (Germany). Her poster was entitled “Wood derived hierarchical cellulose scaffolds for multifunctional materials” (J. Segmehl (Sp), A. Krasnobaev, T. Keplinger, I. Burgert, ETH, Zürich (Switzerland)). The work presented is part of her Ph.D. thesis, which she is doing at ETH Zurich.

You can download the scientific program of the conference following this link.

Author: Anna May