Dr. David Écija Fernández
David Écija received a PhD degree in Physics from UAM, with a work on self-assembly of nanostructures on surfaces. He was awarded a Marie Curie Intra European Fellowship and moved to Prof. Barth ́s group at the Technical University of Munich, where he carried out a four-year stay working on functional molecular nanoarchitectures on surfaces amenable to scanning probe microscopies. In January 2014 he joined IMDEA Nanociencia as Researcher and “Ramon y Cajal” fellow.
Dr. Écija has been granted the European Research Council (ERC) Consolidator Grant (CoG) to carry out the project entitled "ELECNANO" (Electrically Tunable Functional Lanthanide Nanoarchitectures on Surfaces) in 2017.
Research Lines
Our group is focused on the visualization and understanding of physico-chemical processes on surfaces, including three main lines of research:
-
Surface-confined metal-organic materials. Our main interest is to rationalize the coordination chemistry of functional metals like lanthanides on surfaces, creating unique architectures with advanced functionalities for sensing, catalysis, light emission and nanomagnetism.
-
On-surface synthesis of functional nanomaterials. Here we focus on the exploration of unprecedented chemical reactions aiming at the design of novel 2D soft materials.
-
Nanocatalysis for energy applications. We pursue the on-surface design and atomistic characterization of metal-oxide nanocatalysts of relevance for water splitting and CO2 reduction.
Relevant publications
Relevant publications as group leader:
Relevant publications as postdoc:
Relevant publications as PhD:
Selected Publications
- Sánchez-Grande, A., de la Torre, B., Santos, J., Cirera, B., Lauwaet, K., Chutora, T., Edalatmanesh, S., Mutombo, P., Rosen, J., Zbořil, R., Miranda, R., Björk, J., Jelínek, P., Martín, N., Écija, D. "On-Surface Synthesis of Ethynylene-Bridged Anthracene Polymers". Angewandte Chemie Inter. Ed. (2019) Vol. 58, Issue 20, 6559-6563. https://doi.org/10.1002/anie.201814154 (Open access)
-
Écija, D., Urgel, J.I., Seitsonen, A.P., Auwärter, W., Barth, J.V. "Lanthanide-Directed Assembly of Interfacial Coordination Architectures-From Complex Networks to Functional Nanosystems" Accounts of Chemical Research (2018) Volume 51, Issue 2, 365-375. DOI: 10.1021/acs.accounts.7b00379
-
Cirera, B., Trukhina, O., Björk, J., Bottari, G., Rodríguez-Fernández, J., Martin-Jimenez, A., Islyaikin, M.K., Otero, R., Gallego, J.M., Miranda, R., Torres, T., Ecija, D. "Long-Range Orientational Self-Assembly, Spatially Controlled Deprotonation, and Off-Centered Metalation of an Expanded Porphyrin" J. Am. Chem. Soc. (2017), 139 (40), pp 14129–14136. DOI: 10.1021/jacs.7b06406
