Irene Anton

MAGBBRIS project kicks off

Written by Irene Anton on April 5, 2018. Posted in Awards and scholarships, Conferences, General News, Group activities.

The MAGBBRIS Consortium, where Yajie Zhang and Anna Roig participate, celebrated its kickoff meeting during the 26th and 27th of March 2018. The project coordinator, Anna Rosell, welcomed the participants at the Vall d’Hebron Research institute (VHIR), in Barcelona.

During the meetings the participants had the opportunity to understand better the EuroNanoMed Joint Call thanks to Janna Slabbekoorn from the Competitive Calls Unit from VHIR. Afterwards they heard a little bit about each partner’s background related to the project. the members of the consortium could also learn about the past work using endothelial progenitor cells for the treatment of stroke, nanocapsule synthesis, pre-clinical and clinical magnetic resonance imaging, different in vitro models of the blood-brain barrier, manufacturing of high volumes of proteins under GMP conditions and magnetic targeting of nanomaterials.

We wish a lot of success to the MAGBBRIS project!

Welcome Gerrit!

Written by Irene Anton on April 3, 2018. Posted in General News, Welcome and farewell.

This spring we have a new member in the N&N group: Gerrit, from Germany!

Hi, my name is Gerrit and I’m a master’s student of toxicology from Düsseldorf, Germany. In 2016, I got my bachelor’s degree in pharmaceutical chemistry in Cologne. Now, I am glad to enter the Group of Nanoparticles and Nanocomposites for an internship of six months under the supervision of Dr. Anna Laromaine. My topic will be the investigation of the effects of cellulose on the nematode C. elegans and vice versa. I’m looking forward to meeting you!

Good luck with your project Gerrit and we all hope you enjoy your time at the N&N group!

LLAVOR Project was awarded to the Group NN

Written by Irene Anton on March 27, 2018. Posted in Awards and scholarships, General News, Projects News, Uncategorized.

PLANT HEALING, a project lead by Dr. Anna Laromaine from the Group Nanoparticles and Nanocomposites at the Institut of Materials Science in Barcelona (ICMAB) and in collaboration with the Group of Bacterial pathogens and plant cell death from the Center for Research in Agricultural Genomics (CRAG), was awarded by Els Fons Europeus de Desenvolupament Regional i el Departament d’Empresa i Coneixement de la Generalitat de Catalunya with a grant of 20.000€. The PLANT HEALING 2016 LLAVOR 00052 project will work to offer a novel material that could be implemented in current grafting protocols with no extra time or effort to significantly improve graft efficiency. PLANT HEALING will make an agricultural breakthrough, by developing a new nanocomposite material containing silver nanoparticles linked to bacterial nanocellulose.

Carlos and Miquel attended a TEM course

Written by Irene Anton on March 26, 2018. Posted in General News, Group activities.

Miquel Torras and Carlos Moya attended the Transmission Electronic Microscopy (TEM) course given by UAB Microscopy service. During this training they learned fundamentals and modes of electronic microscopy. They also focused on the preparation of both materials and life science samples. In practical seasons, they learned how to align an electronic microscope for low and high resolution imaging. In addition, they did diffraction mode and also Electronic Dispersive Spectroscopy (EDS).

Negative Staining TEM image of viral envelopes

Ma attended the Technologies for Oxide Electronics School 2018

Written by Irene Anton on March 22, 2018. Posted in Conferences, General News, Group activities.

Ma (middle) with other students from ICMAB and ICN2 at the Technologies for Oxide Electronics School 2018

The PhD student Ma Zheng participated in the Technologies for Oxide Electronics School 2018. This course was organized by the ICMAB and was held in Hotel Eden Roc, Sant Feliu, Spain 15-17th March 2018. The school focused on the new opportunities for oxide-based thin films technologies in data storage and computing, energy harvesting, optical and high frequency telecommunications.

Hot off the press: paper about magnetic wood

Written by Irene Anton on March 19, 2018. Posted in General News, New publications.

Congratulations to the authors: Jana S. Segmehl, Anna Laromaine, Tobias Keplinger, Anna May-Masnou, Ingo Burgertab and Anna Roig for their new publication entitled: Magnetic wood by in situ synthesis of iron oxide nanoparticles via a microwave-assisted route. The paper was first published on 9th of March 2018 in the Journal of Materials Chemistry.

Abstract:
Functional materials with high porosity and hierarchical structures are highly demanded for numerous material applications. In this study a magnetic hybrid material derived from wood and superparamagnetic iron oxide nanoparticles (SPIONs), was synthesized by microwave-assisted thermal decomposition. This novel in situfunctionalization approach resulted in a homogeneous distribution of the integrated inorganic component within the entire complex wood cell wall structure, which was previously not achieved. In a detailed investigation based on confocal Raman microscopy imaging, transmission electron microscopy, and optical microscopy the precipitated phase and the resulting hybrid structure were characterized. Magnetic measurements revealed the impact of the anisotropic wood scaffold on the integrated magnetic functionality and confirmed the isotropic superparamagnetic characteristics of the in situ precipitated nanoparticles. Therewith, it is clearly demonstrated, that the anisotropic properties of the obtained hybrid material result from the particle organization in the given spruce wood structure and no alteration of particle properties is induced by the presence of the lignocellulosic material.

Anna Roig was an invited speaker at the International nanoComposites Conference

Written by Irene Anton on March 16, 2018. Posted in Conferences, General News, Group activities.

Thursday 15th of March 2018 Anna Roig gave an invited talk at the first edition of the International nanoComposites Conference, which is part of the largest European event in Nanoscience & Nanotechnology: ImagineNano2018. This congress was held at Bilbao (Spain) and Anna’s talk was about “Bacterial Nanocellulose: Surface Microstructuration and Composites”.

Two recently published papers about Carlos’s previous work

Written by Irene Anton on March 12, 2018. Posted in General News, Group activities.

Carlos Moya, a postdoc in the N&N group, had a good start into 2018 in terms of publications!

On January he was coauthor of the paper “Probing the variability in oxidation states of magnetite nanoparticles by single-particle spectroscopy“ about his previous work at University of Barcelona. It was published on the Journal of Materials Chemistry.

Published paper about Jan’s work in Warsaw

Written by Irene Anton on March 9, 2018. Posted in General News, Projects News.

Congratulations Jan! Today we announce that the previous work of the PhD student Jan Grzelak has been recently published on the journal Nanomaterials . This work is based on the Bachelor’s project he did in Warsaw under the supervision of Dr. Wiktor Lewandowski.

Paper abstract: By coating plasmonic nanoparticles (NPs) with thermally responsive liquid crystals (LCs) it is possible to prepare reversibly reconfigurable plasmonic nanomaterials with prospective applications in optoelectronic devices. However, simple and versatile methods to precisely tailor properties of liquid-crystalline nanoparticles (LC NPs) are still required. Here, we report a new method for tuning structural properties of assemblies of nanoparticles grafted with a mixture of promesogenic and alkyl thiols, by varying design of the latter. As a model system, we used Ag and Au nanoparticles that were coated with three-ring promesogenic molecules and dodecanethiol ligand. These LC NPs self-assemble into switchable lamellar (Ag NPs) or tetragonal (Au NPs) aggregates, as determined with small angle X-ray diffraction and transmission electron microscopy. Reconfigurable assemblies of Au NPs with different unit cell symmetry (orthorombic) are formed if hexadecanethiol and 1H,1H,2H,2H-perfluorodecanethiol were used in the place of dodecanethiol; in the case of Ag NPs the use of 11-hydroxyundecanethiol promotes formation of a lamellar structure as in the reference system, although with substantially broader range of thermal stability (140 vs. 90 °C). Our results underline the importance of alkyl ligand functionalities in determining structural properties of liquid-crystalline nanoparticles, and, more generally, broaden the scope of synthetic tools available for tailoring properties of reversibly reconfigurable plasmonic nanomaterials

Anna Roig participates in debates about research and development in Catalonia

Written by Irene Anton on March 5, 2018. Posted in General News, Group activities, Science outreach.

3rd March 2018 Anna Roig participated in the debate “Coneixement i Recerca” held at the University of Vic in the context of the “Congrés Participatiu Catalunya i Futur”. This project is supported by the platform exigents.cat. The day before, she appeared on the local TV from Esplugues del Llobregat, on the program “Catalunya segle XXI-Recerca i Desenvolupament“.

Author: Irene Anton