Oxide Nanophysics

Group leader: Gustau Catalán

Overview

Main research lines

Flexoelectricity and piezoelectricity: fundamentals and devices
Electronic and electromechanical properties of oxide thin films
Domain wall nanoelectronics
Ferroelectrics, antiferroelectrics, multiferroics, metal-insulator transitions
Surface science on ferroelectric materials
Physical chemistry of ferroelectric surfaces

Group leader

Catalán Bernabé, Gustau

ICREA Research Professor and Group Leader

Prof. Gustau Catalán earned his degree in physics at the Universitat de Barcelona in 1997 and his PhD, also in physics, at Queen’s University of Belfast in 2001. He has held research positions at the Institut Mediterrani d’Estudis Avançats in Mallorca (2002-2004), the University of Groningen (2004-2005) and the University of Cambridge (2005-2009). In 2009, he was appointed ICREA Research Professor and joined the ICN2 as leader of the Oxide Nanophysics Group. At the ICN2, with the help of an ERC Grant, he set up one of the world’s first laboratories of flexoelectricity.

Prof. Catalan’s scientific interests cover a variety of physical properties of oxides, from ferroelelectricity to metal-insulator transitions, and from flexoelectricity to domain wall physics, with emphasis on how these properties are affected by reduced size.