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.
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 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.
Natalia and Belen have recently been awarded a Juan de La Cierva Formación Fellowship and FPU Scholarship, respectively. These are quite competitive calls funded by the Spanish MINECO that highlight their excellent scientific and academic performance. Congratulations!
Funimat was present at the 6th European Conference in Molecular Magnetism held in Bucharest. Carlos delivered an invited talk on Ultrathin films of layered coordination polymers: charge transport and spin-crossover at the nanoscale. For more details see here.
Belen is Valencia born and bred. She earned a degree (2016) and Master (2017) in Chemistry at the Universidad de Valencia and now joins the team as PhD Student. Her research will focus on the development of high-throughput methodologies for the synthesis of biomimetic MOFs that feature high-stability and increasing pore complexity
Neyvis Almora-Barrios is original from La Havana, Cuba, and earned her Ph.D. in 2010, working in the group of Prof. Nora de Leeuw at the University College of London, UK. She next joined Prof. Nuria Lópezs group at the Institute of Chemical Research of Catalonia (ICIQ). She will be in charge of computational modelling to study structure-properties relationships in the porous materials developed @Funimat
Víctor Rubios Chem. Mater. paper reports on the controllable doping of Ni-MOF-74 with Fe to produce a MOF material which combines porosity and ferrimagnetic ordering. This validates metal doping as a useful strategy to modify the magnetism of other archetypical families of MOFs. For more info see here