The Institutes of Materials Science in Seville and Madrid (ICMS and ICMM) held Nanoworkshop 2025 this week, the 12th International Workshop on Functional Nanocomposites, in La Rábida (Huelva). The CSIC’s regional representative for Andalusia and Extremadura, Margarita Paneque, and the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Almería (UNIA), José Ignacio García, opened the conference, which was held in Spain for the first time. The poster presentations by Fernando Núñez (ICMS) and María Garrido (ICMM) were the winners of the conference’s poster competition.
The Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), through the Institutes of Materials Science in Seville and Madrid (ICMS and ICMM), brought together more than 50 researchers from over eleven countries this week to discuss the latest advances in the field of nanoscience at the 12th International Workshop on Functional Nanocomposites, held at the Santa María de La Rábida campus of the International University of Andalusia (UNIA).
This international workshop, organised in collaboration with the Spanish Association for Vacuum and its Applications (ASEVA), is a biennial event that brings together leading experts in advanced techniques for the preparation of materials and the study of their new properties, with a focus on the manufacture of new devices and industrial applications. It also covers theoretical simulations of these materials, as well as the use of AI for predicting the behaviour of both materials and equipment.
The conference was attended by Margarita Paneque, the representative of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) in Andalusia and Extremadura, and the Vice-Chancellor of the International University of Andalusia (UNIA), José Ignacio García, who opened the conference alongside the director of the ICMS, Juan Pedro Espinós, and the director of the UNIA campus in La Rábida, María de la O Barroso.
Nanoworkshop 2025
During the opening ceremony, the CSIC’s chief representative in Andalusia noted that the CSIC supports this type of initiative, “where people from different backgrounds and disciplines come together to achieve a common goal, which ultimately results in a product that can be transferred to industry”.
For her part, García highlighted the role of UNIA in promoting high-quality research and the importance of such forums for “discussing ongoing work, which represents scientific advances and innovations, and which, through the interaction over these days, generates synergies – something vital for the advancement of science and the acquisition of skills”.
Nanoworkshop 2025 is being held in Spain for the first time since its inception in 2003 in Germany and following events in Japan, the Czech Republic, Italy, Finland, India and France. On this occasion, the event was organised by researchers Lidia Martínez (CSIC-ICMM) and Ana Borrás (CSIC-ICMS), together with Alexander Vahl from the University of Kiel (Germany).
The line-up of guest speakers included Stefan Schröder, a researcher at the University of Kiel (Germany); Francesca Borghi, from the University of Milan (Italy); Daniil Nikitin from Charles University in Prague (Czech Republic); Elvira Paz from the Iberian International Nanotechnology Laboratory (Portugal); as well as Alberto Palmero, a researcher at ICMS-CSIC, and Pablo Ares from the Institute of Condensed Matter Physics at the Autonomous University of Madrid.
The guest researchers were among the more than 50 members of the scientific community who, from last Monday to Wednesday, discussed and presented the latest findings on new techniques for manufacturing nanomaterials using green physics and chemistry technologies, as well as their applications for the production of new, more efficient and sensitive devices in the fields of energy, optics, sensors and brain-inspired electronics, amongst others. Advanced characterisation techniques, such as near-field microscopy, and new capabilities of the ALBA synchrotron were also presented.
Awards for the best posters
During the conference, in addition to the various oral presentations, the PhD students attending the conference had the opportunity to present their ongoing research at a poster session held in the Newspaper Library at the UNIA headquarters.
In this session, a six-member jury awarded prizes to three of the posters: two prizes of €150 each and a runner-up prize of €100.
The winners at Nanoworkshop 2025 were Fernando Núñez Gálvez, a PhD student at the University of Seville and a member of the ICMS, for his work ‘SLIPS -TENGs: triboelectric nanogenerators with liquid-infused porous surfaces as highly slippery drop energy harvesters, and María Garrido from the Complutense University of Madrid for the poster entitled Sputter-deposited gold–iron nanostructures for magnetoplasmonic applications. Furthermore, the runner-up prize in this category went to Jaime del Moral, a PhD student at the CSIC, who is also completing his final year of his thesis at the ICMS and who presented his poster entitled ‘Enhanced acoustic de-icing through thin film technology: exploring the link between acoustic waves and surface properties for energy-efficient ice protection’.