Consortium

Albert Tarancón

Coordinator

Alex Morata

Researcher

Nerea Alayo

Research Scientist

Kosova Kreka

Research Scientist

Federico Baiutti

Research Scientist

Prof. Judith Driscoll is Professor of Materials Science at Cambridge and Royal Academy of Engineering Chair in Emerging Technologies. Judith holds B.Sc. Eng from Imperial College and PhD in Materials Science from the University of Cambridge (1987, 1991) She is a visiting Faculty at Los Alamos National Lab in the US, and has held this position for 17 years. Judith is Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, APS, MRS, IOP and IOM3. She authored more than 300 peer-reviewed articles (h = 68, +19000 citations) and hundreds of oral presentations in congresses including many plenaries. Judith currently holds more than 6 M€ in funds across a broad spectrum of oxide film related research, including in the areas of superconductivity, magnetics, magnetoelectrics, ionics, semiconductors. She has supervised more than 50 PhD theses. Currently, she leads a group of 20 people devoted to oxide thin films for low power electronics and energy technologies.

Dr Matthew Wells is a postdoctoral research scientist at the University of Cambridge. Having gained an Meng in electronic engineering from the University of York, he then earned his PhD studying new materials for plasmonicapplications at Imperial College London (2015-2018). He has since developed his key research interests in novel oxide thin films for energy applications at Cambridge, working on the development of high-performance vertically aligned nanocomposite materials for Solid Oxide Fuel Cells.

Dr. Ahmed Kursumovic is a senior research fellow at the University of Cambridge. His research interests are on oxide electronic thin films. He holds a PhD in Engineering and Materials Science from the University of Sarajevo in 1981. He has worked at ICTP, Italy, University of Sussex, and Unversity of Oxford, and has worked in Cambridge since 1997. He is author or co-author of more than 100 papers in international specialized journals, and holds >10 patents. He has participated in more than 20 different research projects (being PI on 5 of them).

Prof. Horst Hahn is the Executive Director of the Institute for Nanotechnology at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) since 2004. He obtained his Ph.D. from the TechnischeUniversität Berlin in 1982. After a postdoc at Universität des Saarlandes, he moved to the United States and held several positions at Argonne National Laboratory, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and Rutgers University. He has been a full professor at the Technische Universität Darmstadt since 1992. Since 2011, he is Principal Investigator and head of a research group on nanoglasses at the Herbert Gleiter Institute of Nanosciences at Nanjing University of Science and Technology. He is Distinguished Professor at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras, and has received Honorary Professorships at the University of Hyderabad in India, Lanzhou University and Xi’an Jiaotong University in China. His research is focused on defects and diffusion in metals and ceramics, nanostructured and amorphous materials, tailored and tunable properties of nanostructures, energy materials and printed electronics. Horst Hahn is Elected Member of the German National Academy Leopoldina, Member of the National Academy of Engineering, the National Academy of Inventors, and the European Academy of Sciences, and Fellow of the Materials Research Society. He received the Mehl Award of TMS and the Heyn Denkmünze of Deutsche Gesellschaft für Materialkunde. He is coauthor of more than 450 papers and of 75 patents on nanomaterials, including materials for electrochemical energy storage and printed electronics.

Dr. Miriam Botros is a senior researcher at the Institute of Nanotechnology. She has 6 years of experience in the field of inorganic solid electrolytes. She acquired her Ph.D. from TechnischeUniversität Darmstadt (TUD) in 2017. During the Ph.D. she gained experience in ceramic synthesis and processing, e.g. using field assisted sintering, as well as structural and microstructural characterization using different techniques. Electrochemical characterization of solid electrolytes, e.g. using electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS), as well as their integration in full Li-ion battery cells was an integral part of her Ph.D. work. She was awarded a DAAD full scholarship to pursue her German Diploma in Materials Science and Engineering at TUD. She worked with several thin film deposition techniques like chemical vapor deposition and magnetron sputtering for the fabrication of thin film solar cells at Zentrum für Sonnenenergie- und Wasserstoffforschung (ZSW) in Stuttgart as well as on shape-selected Pt nanoparticles for PEM fuel cells. In her position as a group leader she is responsible for the activities on solid electrolytes, including the use of high entropy materials. She is supervising three PhD candidates. She co-authored 12 peer-reviewed publications and won the outstanding poster award at the 20th International Conference on Solid State Ionics.

Dr. Ben Breitung is a senior researcher at the Institute of Nanotechnology. He received his Ph.D. in Inorganic Chemistry from the Institute for Inorganic Chemistry/Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) in 2013. After postdoctoral years spent at the BASF/KIT Joint Laboratory BELLA (Battery and Electrochemistry Laboratory), he started his habilitation at TU Darmstadt under the supervision of Prof. Horst Hahn. Since 2017, he has been a group leader at the Institute of Nanotechnology (INT) of KIT. His work comprises of the preparation and characterization of high entropy materials for electrochemical applications as well as the development of materials and processes for printed electronics. He is author of over 30 publications in peer-reviewed journals (h-index 12) and holder of 4 patents. He is PI at the INT and he obtained financial support over the KIT talent management program. His research was featured by Journal of Materials Chemistry A in the special issue of “Emerging Investigators 2019”. He is editorial board member of “Springer Nature Applied Sciences” and executive board member of the KeraSolar Project. In the last 3 years he successfully participated in several calls for funding and raised funding in EU projects and industry cooperations and 7 fellowships for PhD positions (DAAD, CSC, MERAGEM, etc.

Dr. Simon Schweidler is currently a post-doctoral researcher at the Institute of Nanotechnology. His research focuses on the development of novel high entropy materials for energy storage, catalysis and fuel cells. In 2020 he obtained his PhD in Physical Chemistry from the Physical Chemistry Institute/Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen. The practical part of the doctoral thesis was carried out at the BASF/KIT joint laboratory BELLA (Battery and Electrochemistry Laboratory) under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Jürgen Janek (JLU Gießen) and Dr. Torsten Brezesinski (KIT). During his PhD he gained experience in the structural and electrochemical characterization of battery active materials. In particular, operando XRD was an essential characterization method during his PhD. He is author of 16 publications in peer-reviewed journals and holder of 1 patent.

Dr. Luis Fonseca is the Head of the MicroEnergy Sources and Sensors Integration group. He received his Ph.D. degree in Physics from the Autonomous University of Barcelona in 1992.  He has developed his whole professional career in the National Center of Microelectronics (CNM). After a first research period on thin dielectrics, he worked as a process engineer, being in charge of the diffusion and deposition areas of the CNM production facilities, till he joined the Microsystems department as a full senior researcher in 2001. His research interest are infrared gas sensing and Si-based thermoelectricity. He has authored or co-authored more than 80 works in international specialized journals. He has participated and led tens of research projects (national and international) and recently has coordinated the EU project SiNERGY GA nº 604169.

Dr. Marc Salleras is a researcher fellow of the MicroEnergy Sources and Sensors Integration group. His main expertise is on the design, modelling, fabrication and characterization of MEMS devices. He holds a M.Sc. and PhD in Physics from the University of Barcelona (1999 and 2002) and an M.Eng. in Electronics Engineering from the same university (2007). Subsequently he joined the MicroSystems Laboratory at the University of California Irvine (UCI) where he worked on MEMS gyroscopes for two years. Since 2009 he’s a researcher at National Center of Microelectronics (CNM) where he has focused his research on thermoelectric microgenerators based on Silicon nanowires and micromachined gas sensors.

Dr. Iñigo Martin is a researcher at the MicroEnergy Sources and Sensors Integration group at the Institute of Microelectronics of Barcelona (IMB-CNM-CSIC). He holds MSc in Mechanical (2004) and in Electrical, Electronic and Control Engineering (2005) from the Universidad de Navarra. He holds a PhD in Electronic Engineering from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (2010). His thesis addressed the growth and the integration of carbon nanotubes into electrode and transistor like devices. He was a postdoctoral researcher at Berkeley Lab (USA, 2011-2012), where he demonstrated a technology for the direct growth of graphene nanoribbons. At the National University of Singapore (213-2016) he explored novel routes for the production and processing of graphene and towards its commercialization. In 2017, he joined IMB-CNM-CSIC to work on graphene related technologies. He is currently focused on developing smart engineering solutions to enable energy related microdevices.

Marta Fernández-Regúlez is a researcher of the MicroEnergy Sources and Sensor Integrated Group at IMB-CNM (CSIC). She holds a degree in Physics from the University of Valladolid (Spain) and PhD in Electronic Engineering from the Autonomus University of Barcelona, for which she got the extraordinary annual PhD award in 2012. She carried out a postdoc at CEA-LETI (Grenoble, France) for two years, and research stays at the University of Berkeley in California and the University of Lund (Sweden). She has more than ten years of experience in material science, surface chemistry and the development advance micro and nanofabrication technologies.

Prof John Irvine (male) led the five year European Science Foundation Programme on the Optimisation Of Solid State Electrochemical Processes For The Oxidation Of Hydrocarbons. Irvine also led EU Research Training Networks on Novel Anodes For Hydrocarbon Oxidation and the HIT-Proton Network that focused on the utilisation of protonic conductors in fuel cells and other high temperature electrochemical applications. John Irvine FRSE has made a unique and world-leading contribution to the science of energy materials, especially in fuel cell and energy conversion technologies. This research has ranged from detailed fundamental to strategic and applied science and has had major impact across academia, industry and government. The excellence is in fundamental materials studies seen in publications, in the application of new insights in new technology seen in patents and in public policy/strategy. In this, there are clear impacts in academia, industry and government. Energy Materials is an area that is of the utmost global importance if the Earth is to avoid disruptive climate change. Irvine’s science is highly interdisciplinary extending from Chemistry and Materials through Physics, Bioenergy, Geoscience, Engineering, Economics and Policy. The quality and impact of Irvine’s research has been recognised by a number of national and international awards, including the Lord Kelvin Medal from the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 2018, the Schönbeim gold medal from the European Fuel Cell Forum in 2016, the RSC Sustainable Energy Award in 2015, with earlier RSC recognition via Materials Chemistry, Bacon and Beilby awards/medals.

Prof. Stephen Skinner (male) leads the electroceramics research group within the Department of Materials where research is focused on understanding key ionic and electronic transport processes in electrochemical devices including fuel cell and electrolysis applications. His research involves developing in-situ correlative approaches to understanding transport and degradation phenomena in devices. His work involves the use of isotopic labelling to study proton and oxygen diffusion in ceramics, and in using secondary ion mass spectrometry and low energy ion scattering techniques, in combination with X-ray and neutron scattering approaches. He has supervised 25 PhD students and 20 postdoctoral researchers and has hosted several Marie Curie Fellows. Stephen was recently appointed as the CeresPower/RAEng Research Chair in Electrochemical Devices for a Zero Carbon Economy. He is the Director of Centre for Doctoral Training in the Advanced Characterization of Materials (www.cdt-acm.org), which is leading PhD training in this area collaboratively with UCL and TCD. Stephen was awarded the IoM3 Kroll Medal and Prize in 2017 and the Daiwa Adrian Prize in 2016. He has published over 150 papers, 7 book chapters and edited 2 books. He is an Associate Editor for the Journal of Materials Chemistry A

Dr Mónica Burriel is a CNRS Research Scientist and leads the Oxides for Nanoionic Devices group at the Laboratoire des Matériaux et du Génie Physique (LMGP/CNRS) in Grenoble (France). After her PhD in the ICMAB Institute (Barcelona, Spain), she worked in the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (Germany), Imperial College London (UK) and IREC (Barcelona, Spain). She recently obtained her Habilitation degree by the Grenoble Alpes University (2021). She has an extensive expertise in the effect of the structure, microstructure and composition on the functional properties of oxide thin films. She is specialised in in situ Raman spectroscopy at high temperatures and under polarization, and in the measurement of the oxygen mass transport coefficients by the isotope exchange technique and by electrical conductivity relaxation. Her current research on thin films for electrochemical and memristive micro-devices focuses on the deposition (by ALD and MOCVD), structure/microstructure control and optimization of the electronic and ionic transport of functional oxides. She is and has supervised or is supervising a total of 8 PhD students, 11 Masters/Engineering students, 1 Engineer and 5 postdocs. She has published 54 peer reviewed papers (h-index 23, >2000 citations), many of them in high impact journals.

Dr. David Muñoz-Rojas received his degree in organic chemistry in 1999 and master’s degree in chemical engineering (2000) from the Instituto Químico de Sarrià (IQS, Barcelona, Spain), obtaining the P. Salvador Gil, S.I. 2000 prize. He did his PhD in materials science (2004) at the Instituto de Ciencia de Materialesde Barcelona (CSIC-UAB). Thereafter, he worked as a postdoc at the Laboratoirede Réactivité et Chimie des Solides in Amiens (France), the Research Centre for Nanoscience and Nanotechnology in Barcelona, and the University of Cambridge (Device Materials Group, UK). Dr. Muñoz-Rojas is currently a permanent CNRS researcher (Research Director) at the Laboratoire des Matériaux et du GéniePhysique in Grenoble, France where he leads the SALD team. He has been awarded two Marie Curie Fellowships (IEF in 2008 and CIG in 2014). His research research focuses on using and developing cheap and scalable chemical approaches for the fabrication of novel functional materials for different applications. In particular, he has pioneered the development of the novel spatial atomic layer deposition (SALD) technique for the deposition of active components for optoelectronic devices. He is currently aiming at further developing SALD to extend the possibilities and fields of application of this exciting technique. Dr. Muñoz-Rojas has published 82 articles in peer-review journals (h-index 29, >2000 citations), edited 1 book and  co-authored 6 book chapters. He’s co-inventor of 6 patents and 2 patent submissions. HE has given 33 invited talks and 25 seminars, and (co)organized 11 conferences, including a symposium on ALD at the EMRS and another one on CVD & ALD at the MRS. To date he has supervised 13 PhD students (currently 4 PhDs) and 9 postdocs (currently 4), 1 engineer and several master and exchange students.

Carmen Jiménez graduated in Applied Physics at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid and obtained her PhD degree in Physics in 1991 from the same university. Her main activity concerns the deposition and characterisation of thin films, with strong expertise in the synthesis of films by MOCVD and ALD. She is author or co-author of around 125 publications. She worked as research engineer in MOCVD process for Jipelec for the development of evaporators and MOCVD reactors. Since 2002, she jointed the CNRS as research engineer at LMGP, where she is involved in the MOCVD activity of functional oxides.

Matthieu Weber obtained a double M.Sc. in Material science Engineering and Nanotechnologies in 2009 from the University of Technology of Troyes (UTT). He completed his M.Sc. studies at the Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin (Germany), where he worked on the development of ZnO thin films for solar photovoltaics. He then carried out his doctoral research work focusing on atomic layer deposition (ALD) of noble metal nanoparticles and thin films, in the Kessels group (Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands), and obtained his Ph.D. in 2014. As a postdoctoral researcher at the European Institute of Membranes of Montpellier (France), he then focused his work on the ALD synthesis of oxides, nitrides and metallic nanomaterials for water filtration and gas separation membranes, within the scheme of several national research projects (ANR, SATT).  He joined the LMGP in 2021 as a research engineer. His main activities concern the preparation of thin films by ALD and MOCVD, and their characterization. His research interests include as well the synthesis of nanostructured functional materials such as transparent conductors, membranes and sensors. He is a member of the Marie Curie Fellows Association (MCFA) and he is also a committee member of the yearly French ALD conferences (RAFALD).

Prof. Roger A. De Souza (PI) is a Professor of Physical Chemistry at the Institute of Physical Chemistry, RWTH Aachen University. After obtaining a BEng in Material Science and Engineering in 1992 and a PhD in Materials Science in 1996 from Imperial College London (UK), he conducted postdoctoral studies at the Technical University of Karlsuhe(DE), and at the Max-Planck Institute for Solid State Research in Stuttgart (DE). He joined RWTH Aachen University in 2002, completed his professorial degree (Habilitation) in Physical Chemistry in 2011, and was made a Professor in 2017. His research, encompassing experimental, computational and theoretical approaches, focusses on materials for energy and information technologies, and in particular on characterising and understanding transport processes in these materials and at their interfaces. Recent efforts have been directed towards tuning ion transport through high electric fields, strain or interface proximity.

Alexander Bonkowski is a PhD student at the Institute of Physical Chemistry, RWTH Aachen University. Alex studied Chemistry in Aachen, completing his Bachelor’s degree in 2018 and his Master’s in 2021. During his studies, he completed internships abroad at the University of Bath (UK) and University Paris-Est Créteil (FR), and his master’s thesis took him to the Université catholique de Louvain (BE). His previous research areas include transport processes in Hafnia (BSc thesis) and phononic properties of thermoelectric materials (MSc thesis). His PhD is focussed on simulating transport processes in electrode materials and electrolytes using Molecular Dynamics (MD) simulations and Density-Functional-Theory (DFT) calculations.

Raimund Förg graduated 1998 with a diploma degree in physics at the University of Regensburg. He joined Siemens AG semiconductor in 1998 as a physicist with the responsibility in process development in thermal oxidation, LPCVD, PECVD and PVD at the Munich semiconductor production site Munich Perlach.

In the year 2000 he took over the responsibility of the semiconductor manufacturing department in Munich focussed on thermal and CVD processes.

In 2002 Mr. Förg was send as a delegate to Ericsson Semiconductor Sweden/Kista. At Ericsson he was responsible for all unit process engineering groups at the two Swedish manufacturing sites. Within his area of work, he transferred several technologies and products to the Infineon sites in Regensburg, Munich, and Villach. After returning to Germany 2003 he took over (and developed from the beginning on) the unit process development department within the sites Regensburg, Munich and Villach focussing on thermal-, CVD-, wet chemistry- and implant- processes. Disruptive research like laser activation and proton implant found the way to production in semiconductor industry, which was and is till now a valuable advantage for IFX in comparison to other competitors. From 2010 on he was responsible for all research activities at the site Regensburg. His experience from former positions leads him and his research group to a leading funding organisation. He set up a new research lab on new materials for semiconductor applications. One of the main topics was to bring graphene and high k materials (like HfO₂) to electronic application – so new gas sensors and dielectrics were developed.

Within Siemens/Ericsson and Infineon Raimund held about 30 patents.

In 2013 he joined the University of Applied Science in Deggendorf as a professor on Micro System Engineering and New Materials. In addition to the professorship, he took over the responsibility as the head of the Technology Application Centre (TAZ) in Spiegelau. Focus of his work in Spiegelau is to find and develop new applications in, and out of glass. In 2019 he organized the founding and set up of the new Technology Campus Teisnach Sensors focussing on sensors/assembly/new materials. In the last 10 years, he applied for several funding projects dealing with sensors, new materials, assembly, and precise moulding technology.