In Donostia-San Sebastian today, José María Arias-Mosquera, Chairman of the Barrié Foundation, and Jose Maria Pitarke, CEO of CIC nanoGUNE, signed an agreement which will allow nanoGUNE to implement the methodology that the Barrié Foundation has developed through its Science Fund for the transfer of scientific and technological results to the market.

This week Petronor has presented the first appraisal of the agreement with the Department of Economic Development and Competitiveness of the Government of the Basque Autonomous Community (region), and has announced the three award-winning projects in the Inspire open innovation programme. They include the CENTINELA project developed by the CIC nanoGUNE, Materials Physics Center and the University of Burgos.

NanoGUNE is set to participate in the Urbanzientzia event. The event organised by TEKNAHI within the framework of OLATU TALKA, which is part of the DSS2016 (Donostia-San Sebastian Capital of Culture) programme, is aiming to take science into the street.

Researchers at the Materials Physics Center CSIC-UPV/EHU, the DIPC, and CIC nanoGUNE, in the framework of an international collaboration, have for the first time imaged and identified the bond configuration of the intermediates in a complex sequence of chemical transformations of enediyne molecules on a silver surface, thus resolving the microscopic mechanisms that account for their behaviour. This piece of research has
been published in the latest issue of the journal Nature Chemistry.

NanoGUNE researchers in collaboration with the Autonomous University of Madrid and the Institut Néel of Grenoble have shown for the first time that the simple absorption of a hydrogen atom on a layer of graphene magnetises a large region of this material. By selectively manipulating these hydrogen atoms, it is possible to produce magnetic graphene with atomic precision. The work has been published in the prestigious journal Science.

Oihana Txoperena, Pre-doctoral Researcher at the Nanodevices Group at CIC nanoGUNE, received her PhD at the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU) after the defense of her thesis project on 8th April 2016. Her research work, entitled “Spin injection in two-dimensional layered materials", has been developed under the supervision of Dr. Fèlix Casanova, Ikerbasque Research Professor at the Nanodevices Group.

Researchers from CIC nanoGUNE, in collaboration with ICFO and Graphenea, visualised for the first time how light is trapped by nanostructures made of graphene.

The 10ALaMenos9 Festival is aiming in an enjoyable and exciting way to bring all sectors of the public closer to the nanometric scale and its effects.

The Enrique Pérez-Payá Prize of the Spanish Biophysical Society has been awarded to Raul Perez-Jimenez, leader of CIC nanoGUNE’s Nanobiomechanics Group, “for his studies of the mechanical properties of biological macromolecules”.

Researchers from CIC nanoGUNE, in collaboration with ICFO and Graphenea, have demonstrated how infrared light can be captured by nanostructures made of graphene. This happens when light couples to charge oscillations in the graphene. The resulting mixture of light and charge oscillations – called plasmon - can be squeezed into record-small volumes – millions times smaller than in conventional dielectric optical cavities. This process has been visualized by the researchers now, for the first time, with the help of a state-of the-art near-field microscope and explained by theory. Particularly, the researchers identified two types of plasmons - edge and sheet modes - propagating either along the sheet or along the sheet edges. The edge plasmons are unique for their ability to channel electromagnetic energy in one dimension. The work - funded by the EC Graphene Flagship and reported in Nature Photonics - opens new opportunities for ultra-small and efficient photodetectors, sensors and other photonic and optoelectronic nanodevices.