Consolidation of the Severo Ochoa Research Project 2016-2019: Smart Functional Materials for Social Grand Challenges (FUNMAT)
The ICMAB became a Severo Ochoa Centre of Excellence in 2016, becoming one of the top research centers in Spain in Materials Science. The associated research programme brings together the institute’s eight research groups in five priority research lines:
RL1: Sustainable energy conversion and storage systems
RL2: Superconductors for power applications
RL3: Oxide electronics
RL4: Molecular electronics
RL5: Multifunctional nanostructured biomaterials
These 5 RL are integrated into the three social grand challenges of the 21st Century, aligned with the main European Social Challenges in H2020:
CLEAN AND SECURE ENERGY
SUSTAINABLE AND LOW COST ELECTRONICS
SMART NANOMEDICINE
The general objectives of the FUNMAT Severo Ochoa project are:
Achieving a high scientific and technological impact.
Strengthening the international ICMAB leadership in the functional materials area.
Enhancing the fundraising capabilities of the ICMAB.
Enhancing the activities related to outreach and the exploitation of research outcomes.
Improving the training and recruiting activities of ICMAB to attract the best talent.
Implementing a specific Gender Action Plan aimed to promote gender equality.
Application areas
CLEAN AND SECURE ENERGY
The Energy sector is facing a new worldwide paradigm with 20 % renewables and 20 % decrease of greenhouse emission for 2020. This requires new ways of producing, storing, transporting and stabilizing electricity. The ICMAB undertakes this challenge reinforcing our expertise in smart functional materials research and strategically developing cost-effective upscalable technologies, from materials choice all along the value chain process to proof-of-concept devices. Our roadmap promotes greener and cost-effective technologies strengthening materials growth from chemical methods and highlighting additive manufacturing technologies for large area materials at high performance/low cost.
SMART AND SUSTAINABLE ELECTRONICS
Current needs in big-data handling are demanding new solutions for the dramatic energy consumption of current computing and data storage devices. Power dissipation and miniaturization are fundamental challenges for nanoelectronic circuits. We envisage sustainable and energy-efficiency approaches to electronics by working along two fronts: exploiting dissipation-less storage and information control by electric fields and involving spin-only currents, rather than charge transport. The use of organic materials/molecules in devices will also provide important guidance towards a new-generation of memories. Great perspectives are expected for the development of devices exploiting the charge as well as the spin of the molecules.
SMART NANOMEDICINE
Academia and the innovative industry have directed its interests towards nanomedicine, whose technological breakthrough potentiality is widely acknowledged. It is envisaged that the unique properties of nanomaterials will make a strong impact contributing to solve some of the challenges of Health and Societal Wellbeing. FUNMAT will contribution to Nanomedecine, through improvement of drugs and medicines making them more selective, less toxic, and more efficient. It will also contribute to the advance of medical diagnosis by developing new contrast agents for medical imaging techniques. Further, the use of advanced materials and nanotechnology concepts in synergy with molecular biology will allow the generation of new tools for tissue engineering meaning a giant step for regenerative medicine.
Institut de Ciència de Materials de Barcelona Campus de la UAB 08193 Bellaterra, SPAIN
