Sergio is Valencian born and breed. He earned his Ph.D. in 2008, working in the group of Prof. Eugenio Coronado at the Universidad de Valencia. She next joined the Unité Mixte of Physicque CNRS/THALES. He received a Ramón y Cajal Fellowship in 2017 and will be leading the development of electronic devices based on conductive MOFs @Funimat.
Justine is originally from Lille, France. She joins the team as a visiting Erasmus Student. Her research will focus on controlling defects in the family of titanium MOFs MUV-10.
25 Jun: BAND-GAP ENGINEERING IN A NEW FAMILY OF HETEROMETALLIC TITANIUM(IV) METAL-ORGANIC FRAMEWORKS
Javier Castells & Natalia M. Padials work has just been published as a Very Important Paper in Angewandte Chemie Int. Ed. The work describes a new family of heterometallic Titanium(IV)-based Metal Organic Frameworks, namely MUV-10, that can be produced in gram quantity and show remarkable stability in water. Moreover, the paper shows how the electronic structure of these materials can be tuned through the heterometallic centres by means of metal doping, which is further supported by theoretical calculations and by photocatalytic H2 production from water, in collaboration with Hermenegildo Garcías group at ITQ. For more info see here
Javier Castells paper in ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces demonstrates the formation of robust catechol coatings for enhanced moisture tolerance by one step reaction of HKUST crystals with synthetic catechols. In collaboration with D. Ruiz-Molinas grout @ICN2 we show that the use of fluorinated catechols results in hydrophobic, permeable coatings that protect HKUST from water degradation whilst retaining close to 100 % of its original sorption capacity. For more info see here
Víctor Rubios work has just been accepted in Advanced Materials. This paper reports on the convenience of a solution-based bottom-up method, which combines the use of the Langmuir-Blodgett technique, Layer-by-Layer and self-assembled monolayers to transfer high-quality ultrathin films of a semiconductive 2D MOF in a controlled fashion. This versatile methodology enabled us to fabricate MOF-based electronic devices and study the electrical conductivity on the thinnest MOF films (10 nm thick) reported so far. For more info see here
Funimat was present at the 2nd European Conference in Metal-Organic Frameworks held in Delft. Carlos delivered a talk on Peptide MOFs for enantioselective separation of chiral drugs and Javi & Natalia presented posters featuring our most recent work.
We have been awarded a 3 years project financed by MINECO that also includes a PhD Scholarship to develop Metal-Organic Frameworks of Biological Inspiration (CTQ2017-83486-P).
Maria graduated in Chemical Engineering in 2015 at the University of Valencia and worked with an internship at the plastic technology institute, AIMPLAS. She joins the team as a Master Student. Her research will focus on controlling mass transport and reactivity in stable MOFs by defect engineering.
Carolina Ruiz-Ganivet is original of Madrid and earned her Ph.D. in 2015, working in the group of Prof. Tomás Torres at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. She next joined Prof. Luis Echegoyens group at the University of Texas at el Paso (USA). She will responsible for most of the organic aspects of the synthesis of the MOFs developed @Funimat.
Funimat was present at the XXXVI Bienal de la Real Sociedad Española de Química held in Sitges. Carlos and Victor delivered keynote and flash presentations at the MOF symposium highlighting most recent results of the team in Peptide-based porous materials and Conductive ultrathin MOF films. For more details see here.