Open call for 22 postdoctoral fellowships for researchers of all nationalities to conduct a research project in research centres with distinction of excellence founded by La Caixa! Join the N&N group to find good quality science and nice working atmosphere!
Jan Grzelak attended the award ceremony from La Caixa Fellows in Caixa Forum (Barcelona) and received a diploma for his excellence fellowship supported by La Caixa to perform his PhD at the N&N group on the topic “Mesoporous magnetic nanorods for theranostics”. Two other ICMAB researchers have also been granted with by a PhD grant from La Caixa and also assisted the ceremony.
Miquel Torras, PhD student at the N&N group, travelled to Madrid to attend the 3rd International Conference on Polyol Mediated Synthesis (ICPMS) held at the Instituto de Ciencia de Materiales de Madrid (ICMM). Miquel presented the talk “Fast and Simple Microwave Synthesis of Multicomponent Gold Nanoparticles”.
Coinciding with the World Cup currently taking place in Russia, the N&N group organized its own event! The Catalan selection (left) beat the International team (middle) in a tight match: 12-11! We all thank the captains of the teams Miquel and Jan (right) for organizing this funny activity 🙂
Irene Anton, PhD student at the NN group, attended the World Ophthalmology Congress(WOC 2018) organized by the International Council of Ophthalmology and held at La Fira de Barcelona (16-19 June 2018). In this huge congress, the latest advances in clinical practises and new technologies for eye care were presented. Irene also attended the 3D live surgery offered by the Barraquer Institute.
Jan Grzelak, PhD student at the N&N group, travelled to Madrid to attend the 1st Spanish Conference on Biomedical Applications of Nanomaterials (SBAN) held at the Instituto de Ciencia de Materiales de Madrid (ICMM). Jan presented the poster “Mesoporous silica nanorods as theranostic platforms”.
Congratulations to the authors Martí Gich, Anna Roig (N&N group), Pengfei Niu (former member of the N&N group) and César Fernández‐Sánchez (N&N collaborator form the Barcelona Institute of Microelectronics) for their published paper“Metal Nanoparticle Carbon Gel Composites in Environment in Water Sensing Applications”. The manuscript was published in the journal Chemical Record in a special issue dedicated to Prof. Ruiz-Hitzky.
Abstract: The synthesis of organic‐inorganic nanocomposites that can interact with different environmental pollutants and can be mass‐produced are very promising materials for the fabrication of chemical sensor devices. Among them, metal (or metal oxide) nanoparticles doped conductive porous carbon composites can be readily applied to the production of electrochemical sensors and show enhanced sensitivity for the measurement of water pollutants, thanks to the abundant accessible and functional sites provided by the interconnected porosity and the metallic nanoparticles, respectively. In this personal account, an overview of several synthesis routes of porous carbon composites containing metallic nanoparticles is given, paying special attention to those based on sol‐gel techniques. These are very powerful to synthesize hybrid porous materials that can be easily processed into powders and thin films, so that they can be implemented in electrode fabrication processes based on screen‐printing and lithography techniques, respectively. We emphasize the sol‐gel routes developed in our group for the synthesis of bismuth or gold nanoparticle doped porous carbon composites applied to fabricate electrochemical sensors that can be scaled down to produce miniaturized on‐chip sensing devices for the sensitive detection of heavy metal pollutants in water. The trend towards the miniaturization of electrochemical sensors to be readily employed as analytical tools in environmental monitoring follow the market requirements of rapid and accurate on‐site analysis, small sample consumption and waste production, as well as potential for continuous or semi‐continuous in‐situ determination of a wide variety of target analytes.