Professors Guillermo Iglesias Salto and Silvia Ahualli Yapur, from the Department of Applied Physics at the University of Granada, welcomes postdoctoral candidates interested in applying for a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowships (MSCA-IF) in 2020 at this University. Please note that applicants must comply with the Mobility Rule (more information: http://sl.ugr.es/0aNV).

Brief description of the institution:

The University of Granada (UGR), founded in 1531, is one of the largest and most important universities in Spain. The UGR has been awarded with the "Human Resources Excellence in Research (HRS4R)", which reflects the UGR’s commitment to continuously improve its human resource policies in line with the European Charter for Researchers and the Code of Conduct for the Recruitment of Researchers. The UGR is also a leading institution in research, located in the top 5/10 of Spanish universities by a variety of ranking criteria, such as national R&D projects, fellowships awarded, publications, or international funding.

UGR is one of the few Spanish Universities listed in the Shanghai Top 500 ranking (http://sl.ugr.es/0aw0). The Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) places the UGR in 268th position in the world and as the 4th highest ranked University in Spain, reaffirming its position as an institution at the forefront of national and international research. From the perspective of specialist areas in the ARWU rankings, the UGR is outstanding in Documentation (ranked in the 36th in the world) or Food science technology (ranked 37th in the world), Mathematics and Computer Science (ranked among the top 76-100 in the world).

The UGR has 4 researchers at the top of the Highly Cited Researchers (HCR) list in the Computer Science area. With regard to broader subject fields, the UGR is ranked in 45th position in the universities worldwide in the discipline of Engineering. It is also well recognized for its web presence (http://sl.ugr.es/0a6i) taking 36th place in the top 200 Universities in Europe. Internationally, we bet decidedly by our participation in the calls of the Framework Programme of the European Union. For the duration of the last two Framework Programmes, the UGR has obtained a total of 66 projects, with total funding of 18.02 million euros, and for H2020, 80 projects with total funding around 20.6 million euros.

Brief description of the Centre/Research Group

The research activities of the group have focused on different lines, always regarding the physical properties of the solid/liquid interface and their implications in the characteristics of dispersed systems and their engineering applications. Additionally, the group has also tried to transfer their knowledge to industrial partners

Project description

Specifically, under the project RyC-2014-16901, my interest has mainly dealt with the project “New technologies based on nanoparticles systems”, Renewable Energy Applications. Specifically in two aspects: Fundamental and implementation. These applications are related with:

1. Renewable Energy Application. The challenge is to introduce innovations in the method used and any possible new method by using and testing new materials. The possibility will be explored that surface chemical treatment by charged polymer coatings may contribute to reduce the losses and increase the efficiency of the system. Carbon nanotubes, engineered nanochannels and grafene oxide derivatives appear as promising candidates for these tasks.

2. Desalination processes. Based on the use of active carbon (as “electrode”) with surface chemical treatment by charged polymer coatings appear a promising and low cost technique to be implemented.

The importance of the search of new, efficient sources of clean, renewable energy is recognized both in the H2020 Program of the EU and in the Spanish National Research Plan. Among them, energy production by salinity gradient has appeared as a realistic alternative route, in spite of the fact that the degree of development required to make it profitable has not yet been reached. The absence of exploitation techniques for this kind of energy may be explained by the necessity of using electromechanical devices as turbines and alternators, or, at least, ion—exchange membranes. It has recently been shown, both theoretically and experimentally, that the Capmix methods make it possible to directly extract electrical energy from the exchange of sea and river waters in the presence of capacitive electrodes. These methods are based on the changes experienced by the electrical properties of the interface between a charged solid and variable salinity solution.

The studies performed to this moment are based on activated carbon electrodes. Although some advances have been reported, the efficiency remains lower than that obtained with other renewable sources. For this reason, the challenge is now to introduce innovations in the method be using new materials, making it possible to achieve a qualitative advance in the power available. The possibility will be explored that surface chemical treatment by charged polymer coatings may contribute to reduce the losses and increase the efficiency of the system. Like in other fields, the advances in Capmix techniques will come from the use of controlled or hierarchical porosity or from materials with high conductivity and specific capacitance.

Research Area

Information Science and Engineering (ENG) and Physics (PHY)

For a correct evaluation of your candidature, please send the documents below to Professor Guillermo Iglesias Salto (iglesias@ugr.es) or Silvia Ahualli Yapur (sahualli@ugr.es):

• CV
• Letter of recommendation (optional)