Active Projects
Principal Investigator: Agustín Mihi
RADIANT (Chiral Light Emitting Diodes based in Photonic Architectures) is an innovative research endeavor with a transformative mission: the production of high-performing and cost-efficient chiral LEDs (light-emitting diodes) that harness the optical properties of scalable chiral metasurfaces, operating seamlessly across the visible to near-infrared spectrum. With a multifaceted approach, the project seeks to endow with chirality three distinct technologies: Organic Light Emitting Diodes (OLEDs), Perovskite LEDs (PeLEDs), and Quantum Dot LEDs (QdotLEDs), promising exceptionally bright output and remarkable degrees of circular polarization. These chiral LEDs find diverse applications in fields such as display technology, communications, sensing, and advanced lighting systems, promising to revolutionize various industries with their enhanced optical properties and broad spectral range. Leveraging the unique chiroptical response of chiral metasurfaces, RADIANT precisely modulates high Photoluminescence Quantum Yield (PLQY) emitters, including perovskite nanocrystals, quantum dots, and organic semiconductors, using advanced nanophotonic architectures that interact with light through optical resonances, thereby enhancing and modulating the light emission. At the core of the project lies a novel, scalable, and low carbon footprint soft nanoimprinting imprinting process that enables seamless integration of photonic nanostructures across different LED technologies in a broad spectral range. RADIANT unlocks the potential of nanophotonics for optoelectronic technologies through cost-effective and scalable chiral metasurfaces produced via soft nanoimprinting lithography while reducing the dependency on critical raw materials currently used in advanced LEDs. RADIANT promises to revolutionize the billionaire LED landscape market, combining technological innovation, economic viability, and environmental sustainability.
More information here.
Principal Investigators: Alejandro R. Goñi and Mariano Campoy-Quiles
PV-MENU aims at significantly contributing to the development of PV technologies that are crafted for each application or use. These include, as described below, agrivoltaics, indoor and multijuntion devices. The strategy to achieve this relies on three pillars. On the one hand, we will produce an open access database of light-source spectra combining calculated, reported and experimental data. This spectral library will include: different air masses (10 different spectra, from outer space to sunset), different water masses (around 20 spectra for different depths and locations), different artificial lighting for outdoor (10 luminaries) and indoor (30 luminaries with different colour temperatures and intensities), different under forestry spectra (field measured, at least 3 different forest x 4 seasons+ under city-abundant trees), different diffused light content (10 spectra), etc. In total, of the order of 100 different spectra. The second pillar consist of reproducing such a large library in the lab in an automatic fashion using an individually addressable light emitting diode array solar simulator and/or a spectrum on demand light source that we recently patented. The third aspect is the extension of high throughput screening methods developed in the group to evaluate the different PV materials and stacks sequentially illuminated under the plethora of spectra included in the database. The main hypothesis is that combining these three pillars we will accelerate the development of the targeted OPV applications by providing and validating databases, lab equipment, advanced screening methodologies and producing large solar cell data sets.
Principal Investigators: Agustín Mihi and M. Isabel Alonso
OUTLIGHT is a research project belonging to the modality “not oriented research” (modalidad de investigación no orientada). The main goal of this proposal is to generate knowledge in the ambit of light emission coupled to nanophotonic architectures. We will study how a photonic structure can be coupled to a thin film of light-emitting material to provide pathways for the trapped light to reach the outside media. We will study different nanophotonic architectures sustaining resonant modes that coupled to different emitters result in enhanced photoluminescence, lasing or chiral photoluminescence. We will use a scalable nanofabrication technique to produce our structures in such a way that our findings will be easily implemented in actual devices. To illustrate this later point, we will test our architectures in real light emitting devices as a demonstration of our technology in real applications.
Principal Investigator: Mariano Campoy-Quiles
Organic photovoltaics (OPV) could significantly contribute to this, as organic solar cells can be manufactured in efficient and low-cost roll-to-roll processes and are already reaching power conversion efficiencies above 19%. However, in order to have a large impact, the long-term stability OPV has to be improved to obtain lifetimes of many years. Therefore, OPVStability aims to develop:
(i) an in-depth understanding of the degradation mechanisms and stability-promoting factors of organic photovoltaic materials and solar cells,
(ii) tools to predict the lifetime of organic solar cells and to identify stable structural motifs as well as device architectures and
(iii) innovative strategies to significantly enhance the stability of efficient OPV of the next generation.
OPVStability combines partners from academia and industry with a strong background in OPV and/or specialized scientific methods including theoretical calculations and simulations, experimental degradation studies on single materials, materials combinations and interfaces, accelerated aging and outdoor stability measurements, advanced synchrotron-based analytics, high-throughput experiments and machine learning approaches. Within OPVStability, ten PhD-students work on this timely and interdisciplinary research project accompanied with an excellent training program comprising scientific skills as well as a comprehensive set of soft and transferable skills.
More information here.
Principal Investigator: Agustín Mihi
ICONIC (Integrated COnversion of Nitrate and Carbonate streams) pursues the development of a new technology to remediate water ecosystems that have been polluted due to intense agriculture, farming, and CO2 emissions, using electrolysis, to generate globally used chemicals. In particular, ICONIC seeks to convert damaging species responsible of eutrophication and ocean acidification (namely nitrates and carbonates from seawater) into urea, the most important globally produced C-N chemical. Powered by renewables, this offers a path to closing the carbon and nitrogen cycles. ICONIC proposes an integrated electrochemical approach demonstrating, for the first time, the co-electrolysis of carbonates and nitrates into urea selectively, and industrial relevant currents, from seawater using scalable prototypes. Our innovation stems on the accelerated discovery of new catalysts that, based on non-critical raw materials, activate and couple C and N species; their bottom-up synthesis and assembly into mesostructured electrodes to program reaction environments at high current densities; and their implementation into membrane electrode assemblies, all informed by operando characterizations that inform predictive models to guide in the rational design of the catalyst and system. ICONIC leverages interdisciplinary expertise in the areas of chemistry, electrochemistry, materials science, spectroscopies, and engineering, spanning all scales from catalyst design to system-level implementation. ICONIC’s findings would also have positive impact on water-based electrolysis with great decarbonization potential, contributing to their potential operation using abundant seawater.
More information here.
Principal Investigators: Mariano Campoy-Quiles
FOTOPINVER is a collaborative public–private project led by Solaris Vita and CSIC aimed at developing next‑generation greenhouse materials that combine agriculture and renewable energy. The project focuses on creating semi‑transparent organic photovoltaic (OPV) films that can be directly integrated into standard greenhouse plastics, enabling structures that both protect crops and generate electricity.
These innovative OPV materials are designed to selectively absorb parts of the solar spectrum that plants do not use, while allowing the wavelengths needed for photosynthesis to pass through. This approach ensures that energy production does not compromise crop growth, addressing a key challenge in agrovoltaics and offering a more efficient use of land and sunlight.
Building on previous laboratory validation, the project aims to scale up the production of organic semiconductor “inks” and integrate them into low‑density polyethylene (PEBD), the most widely used plastic in greenhouse covers. This step is critical to enabling large‑scale, cost‑effective manufacturing and real‑world adoption in agriculture.
FOTOPINVER will validate the technology in operational greenhouse environments, assessing both energy generation and crop performance. The ultimate goal is to provide farmers with a practical solution to reduce energy costs, improve sustainability, and comply with emerging European agrovoltaic regulations.
By combining advances in materials science, organic electronics, and plant biology, the project positions itself at the forefront of agrovoltaic innovation, supporting the transition toward more resilient, energy‑efficient, and sustainable food production systems.
Principal Investigator: Mariano Campoy-Quiles
The possibility to control electronic properties through doping is a defining property of semiconductors. As the surge in interest in doped organic semiconductors over the last decade was mainly driven by an interest in thermoelectric applications, focus lay largely on optimizing steady-state electronic properties of bulk materials. Here, we target spatio-temporal control over doping and combine this with a holistic view of doping, exploring the relation between doping and ‘all’ material properties, including thermal, mechanical and biological aspects. Not only allows this to solve urgent problems (contact resistance), it also enables completely new (switchable, reconfigurable) devices.
The topic is inspired by a combination of scientific curiosity and a strong feeling of practical urgency, as reflected by the consortium composition of 8 universities, 4 research institutes and 4 companies. The latter jointly cover all major application areas of organic electronics, including light emission, photovoltaics, logic circuitry as well as instrumentation/modeling – each a multi-billion-euro market. The strong company involvement allows us to expose all doctoral candidates to academic and commercial working environments through a balanced secondment plan. Likewise, the training program complements the transfer of scientific skills (much beyond the specific topic, incl. open science) with personal and entrepreneurial skills, including communication to various audiences, career development, intellectual property and startup-founding, etc.
On short to intermediate time scales, the impact of FADOS will be to enhance European competitiveness in major, growing markets–and beautiful science. On longer time scales, we expect that FADOS will open new fields in which the unique possibilities of soft semiconductors in terms of solution-based local and dynamic tuning of (opto)electronic, thermal, mechanical and biological properties are explored for truly new and green functionalities.
More information here.
Principal Investigator: Agustín Mihi
Many products and devices depend on imaging technology, from projection displays to remote sensors. The EU-funded DYNAMO project hopes to achieve a new paradigm in imaging techniques by creating spatial light modulators which can operate simultaneously. Conventional spatial light modulators operate sequentially: a beam of light is shaped into different patterns, and the time interval between patterns is governed by the refresh rate of the device. Instead, researchers propose sending all patterns in one short nanosecond pulse, creating a dynamic spatiotemporal light modulation device. This will result in ultra-fast imaging with a refresh rate for dynamic pixels equivalent to that of the GHz range.
Imaging technologies form the basis of a vast range of products and devices and improvements would have a huge impact both scientifically and commercially. We have identified a key bottleneck, how light is modulated in the imaging system, that we can unlock to achieve a new paradigm in imaging technologies. Spatial light modulators, and similar components, operate sequentially: the light beam is shaped in different patterns but the time interval between patterns is limited by the refresh rate of the device. We will remove this limitation, thereby creating a technological breakthrough; our advance will be to send all possible patterns of the device simultaneously, and encoded in a short nanosecond pulse, creating the concept of parallel beam shaping or dynamic spatio-temporal light modulation device. In Dynamo, we will shape optical beams in two spatial dimensions plus the temporal one. The equivalent refresh rate of the dynamic pixel will start at GHz, although we are confident it will become much higher by the end of the project. To give an idea of our ambition, we compare this improvement in the time to process images with the improvement in the clock frequency of computers: the first general-purpose electronic computer, the ENIAC, had a clock frequency of 100kHz in 1945. It was not until 2000 where AMD reached 1 GHz in their computers. Processing images is broadly similar to processing data so this is indicative of the fifty-year acceleration in the realm of imaging that we will achieve. DYNAMO is an ambitious and integrated project that begins by studying the fundamentals of acoustic wave scattering and ends by developing ultra-fast imaging applications in optics. The success of this pathway requires the synergy of the disciplines of physical acoustics, photonics and imaging. The outcomes from this project offer to accelerate imaging technologies and place European science and industry at the forefront of the inventions and advances that will follow.
More information here.
