Our research

ICN2 Groups and Units

Oxide Nanophysics

Group leader: Gustau Catalán

Website

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.

Read more

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.

Head of advanced AFM platform

Neus Domingo Marimón

CSIC Distinguished Researcher

A key experimental facility of the Oxide Nanophysics group is the Advanced Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) Lab, an ICN2 Research Platform led by Dr Neus Domingo. She obtained her degree in physics and her PhD at the University of Barcelona in 2000 and 2005 respectively. Later on, she joined the Istituto di Struttura della Materia (CNR) in Rome, Italy (2005-2007). In 2008, she started working at the CIN2 as a Juan de la Cierva Researcher and in 2011 she became a member of the ON group holding a Ramon y Cajal Research Grant.

Read more

Dr Domingo can count on a strong materials science background, from molecular magnetism and nanoparticles to piezo- and ferro-electricity and nanoscale electromechanical phenomena, with special emphasis on surface science. She considers herself a nanotechnologist and an AFM enthusiastic. Her current research interest lies in the field of scanning probe microscopy of functional materials and ferroics, and physical chemistry of ferroelectric surfaces.