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IEM
C/ Serrano, 113 bis, 119, 121 y 123.
Madrid 28006 (ESPAÑA).

Tel. +34 91 561 6800

Press Releases

PODCAST of the radio program Por Tres Razones (August 17, 2023, 7:00-8:00 p.m.) of the interview with Dr. Juan Fran Vega about his group's research on the viscoelastic behavior of human tears.

A study led by IEM researchers sheds light on the viscoelastic behavior of human tears.. "Shedding light on the viscoelastic behavior of artificial and human tears.

José A. Sánchez Gil elected Fellow of OPTICA 2023

The researcher Dr Andrea Jungclaus from the Experimental Nuclear Physics Group of the IEM has been elected as Outstanding Referee by the American Physical Society.
The Outstanding Referee program was instituted in 2008 to recognize scientists who have been exceptionally helpful in assessing manuscripts for publication in the APS journals. By means of the program, American Physical Society expresses its appreciation to all referees, whose efforts in peer review not only keep the standards of the journals at a high level, but in many cases also help authors to improve the quality and readability of their articles. This year 153 has been chosen from 34 countries.

A new theory explains superconductivity in spun graphene trilayers. The study, prepared by CSIC scientists with the participation of the IEM, published in the journal Nature Communications, lays the foundations for understanding the mechanisms of certain unconventional superconducting materials.

On May 18, 2023, the President of the CSIC, Eloísa del Pino, visited us and met with the staff. We appreciate the interesting talk and debate generated and we wish her the best in managing it.

A research team with the participation of the Institute for the Structure of Matter (IEM-CSIC) has determined the crystal structure of copper squarate, a metal-organic material. Download pdf.

Towards the elucidation of the hypertriton puzzle Toward Precise Measurement of the Binding Energy and lifetime of Hypernuclei.
An international collaboration led by Takehiko Saito, a chief scientist, from RIKEN and GSI/FAIR facility, and Christophe Rappold, a researcher at the Instituto de Estructura de la Materia, CSIC, has been published in the world-renowned online journal Nature Review Physics, a perspective review on "New directions in hypernuclear physics". The current puzzle of the understanding of the hypertriton is then presented with the current experimental studies that aims to elucidate it.

Prof. Mª José García Borge, form IEM, new Honorary Doctor from the Huelva Univesity.

Carlos Álvarez Nicolás, PhD student of the Department of Molecular Physiscs of IEM, has been awarded the second prize at PhDay Físicas 2021 contest of the UCM, with his Thesis work on Rotational Relaxation and R-T non-equilibrium in CO2. ¡Congratulations!

IEM and IFAE sponsor the ET-Spain Meeting on 8th October 2021, to present the Spanish involvement on the Einstein Telescope, the future observatory for gravitational waves.

The Einstein Telescope, supported by IEM-CSIC, approved for ESFRI 2021 Roadmap.

Mirror symmetry broken in atomic nuclei: Different shapes found in nuclei with interchanged protons and neutrons. Cover and article in Physical Review Letters of an international collaboration led by Kathrin Wimmer.

A collaboration of IEM researchers with the Universidad de Cantabria and the Institute Fresnel (Marseille) demonstrates extremely narrow electromagnetic transparency induced by bound states in the continuum.

Kathrin Wimmer, Ramón y Cajal researcher at IEM-CSIC, awarded with an ERC Consolidator grant.

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DIPC, CFM and IEM researchers find an intriguing link between Kerker conditions and helicity conservation from fundamental principles of light scattering from absorptive or gain particles.

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A collaboration of IEM researchers with the Institute of Materials Research and Engineering (IMRE) in Singapore achieves a room-temperature laser using as a "mirror-free cavity" a bound state in the continuum in a planar nanodisk metasurface, with collloidal nanoplatelets as gain medium.

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New book of Springer edited by Aurora Nogales y Tiberio A. Ezquerra, members of the IEM‐CSIC, entitled: "Crystallization as studied by Broadband Dielectric Spectroscopy".

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The proposal to include the Einstein Telescope in the European Strategic Forum for Research Infrastructures (ESFRI) roadmap has been submitted, supported by IEM-CSIC.

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The IEM-CSIC already has brochures of the Institute's presentation that will give us more visibility.

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Interview with Guillermo Mena Marugán, researcher of the IEM-CSIC, in the documentary video "The Big Bounce, sigs in the CMB?"

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An international team with participation of J. M. Fernández and T. Ezquerra from IEM has investigated by X-ray diffraction with synchrotron light the crystallization of Ar and Kr blends in supercooled liquid jets. This study offers new perspectives to better understand the complex crystallization behavior of blends and alloys. This work has been published in Nature Materials.

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A collaboration of IEM researchers with the University of Regensburg demonstrates an unprecedented control of the photoluminescence of very thin semiconductor nanowires, achieving an efficient suppression of non-radiative (unwanted) recombination.

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Dr. Álvaro Rodríguez Rodríguez, former PhD student of the SOFTMATPOL group, has been awarded with the best PhD thesis prize for the 2017-2018 period by the Spanish Association of Synchrotron Radiation Users (AUSE) in recognition of the work performed in Spain by young scientist using synchrotron radiation

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Cosmology: Guillermo Mena Marugán, interviewed about the Nobel Prize in Physics 2019.

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An international study with participation of IEM researchers has shown how transparent metals can be obtained

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Rafael Molina, scientist at the IEM, comments on the simulations of a new state of matter made by scientists at Edimburg University in El PAÍS.

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Researchers of CSIC -including José González Carmona of IEM- explain the superconductivity observed in the moiré superlattices of twisted bilayer graphene.

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The book called Laboratory Astrophysics, edited by CSIC researchers, with wide participation of members of the Instituto de Estructura de la Materia, has just been published on the Astrophysics and Space Science Library collection of Springer Publishing. More information can be found at the Springer link.
2018 Springer Nature Switzerland AG. Part of Springer Nature.

A team of scientists working in Spain and in the UK has derived new formulas for the description of quantum fluctuations in non-equilibrium processes when there are conserved quantities. These results may be of great importance for improving the design of quantum machines, using the presence of these conserved quantities for improving their efficiency.
This work was published in Nature Communications.
Press release in CSIC page.
Press release in Oxford University page.

Juan Margalef Bentabol, who is completing his PhD at the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid and the Instituto de Estructura de la Materia (CSIC) under the advice of Eduardo Sánchez Villaseñor and Fernando Barbero, has won the latest edition of the scientific monologues contest Famelab 2018. He will be the Spanish representative in the internacional edition of the contest to be celebrated in Cheltenham (United Kingdom) in June 5th-7th, 2018.

TeatrIEM on the radio program Einstein in Malasaña of Radio M21.
Podcast (mp3 format).

CSIC and Guillermo Mena in El País Semanal. Read in PDF format.

Guillermo A. Mena Marugán, Scientific Researcher of the IEM, writes in El Cultural about Stephen Hawking's contributions to Physics.

An international team including researchers from IEM has shown that water can remain liquid at -43 C, the lowest temperature ever recorded.
Water's anomalous properties, which affects Earth's climate and were crucial to preserve life during glaciation periods, are more pronounced when it is undercooled, i.e., cooled below 0 C without freezing. But, how cold can liquid water get? An international team including the researchers from IEM José M. Fernández and Guzmán Tejeda has demonstrated a new technique for measuring the temperature of micrometer-sized water drops. Using this technique, they showed that the liquid can exist down to −43 C, the lowest water temperature measured to date. The results of this work are published in the journal Physical Review Letters.
Nota de prensa del CSIC
Press Release in EL PAÍS

Mercedes Martín-Benito, former PhD student of the IEM, awarded the Bronstein Prize in Loop Quantum Gravity.

Researchers of the Experimental Nuclear Physics Group at the IEM demonstrate that in some cases the electromagnetic interaction can compete with the strong interaction although it is much weaker.

A work about diffusion of wave packets in quantum interferometers, with the participation of Rafael Molina (IEM--CSIC) has been highlighted in the JPhys+ blog, the Journal of Physics news and views blog.
The article studies the diffusion of an electronic wave packet through a quantum interferometer and is a collaboration with researchers at Harvard University and the Zuse Institut in Berlin. The large scale simulations needed rely on the computational power of Graphic Processing Units (GPU).

Guillermo Mena Marugán, chairman of the conference on gravitational waves by David Reitze in the BBVA Foundation.

New quantum effect in the interaction of light and matter in Dirac and Weyl semimetals. José González and Rafael Molina, researchers from the IEM-CSIC have discovered a new quantum effect of the interaction between light and matter. The phenomenon appears in Dirac and Weyl semimetals (tridimensional analogues of graphene) and could help in the design of new high-frequency apparatuses interconecting electronic and optical devices. The results of the study have been published in the journal Physical Review Letters.

The structure of nitric acid trihydrate ice in polar stratospheric clouds. Researchers from IEM and other European institutions have studied the formation and structure of nitric acid and water ices in polar stratospheric clouds. For the first time, the structure of a long-predicted phase is revealed: the metastable phase of nitric acid trihydrate ice.

Weekly journal Ahora interview with Guillermo Mena on Loop Quantum Gravity.

Interview to Dr. Mari Cruz García Gutiérrez, President of the Spanish association of synchrotron users (AUSE), in the ALBA News Magazine.

Protagonists of science. Twenty conversations with scientists, a new book with intervention of Dr. José Vicente García Ramos.

Special issue of the magazine El Cultural in the centennial of General Relativity, with the collaboration of Guillermo Mena (IEM-CSIC) and Luis Garay (UCM e IEM-CSIC).ión de Guillermo Mena (IEM-CSIC) y Luis Garay (UCM e IEM-CSIC).

Dr José Vicente García Ramos will sign issues of his book "Las moléculas: cuando la luz te ayuda a vibrar" in the "Feria del Libro" of Madrid. This event will be on Friday june 12, 2015 at 18,30 h in the stand 349 of the editorial "Los libros de la catarata". More details in: http://www.loslibrosdelacatarata.org/noticia/mostrar/id/213

Prize to the best PhD thesis in Synchrotron Radiation awarded to Ignacio Martín-Fabiani.
The board of directors of the AUSE (Spanish Synchrotron User Association) has awarded Dr. Ignacio Martín-Fabiani with the prize to the best PhD thesis 2015 for his dissertation on "Nanostructuring of Polymer Materials with controlled Morphology" presented on December 18th 2013 at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid . The PhD thesis has been supervised by Dr. A. Linares and Prof. T.A. Ezquerra. The most relevant results of the work will be presented in the VII AUSE Congress and II ALBA User's Meeting – 2015. 17 June. (https://indico.cells.es/indico/event/24/overview)

María José García Borge, new Honorary Doctor from the Chalmers University of Technology (Gothenburg, Sweden).
Maria José García Borge has a position as Professor de Investigación at Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas (CSIC) in Madrid. Since 2012 she is heading the physics group of the ISOLDE facility at the particle physics laboratory CERN, Geneva. Having this outstanding scientific position, professor Borge has as well been recognised beyond traditional academic circles..
Maria José García Borge has exceptionally strong merits within nuclear and atomic physics, in particular concerning experimental studies of very exotic subatomic systems. Her expertise within the field of beta-delayed particle emission is world leading. The researchers within Subatomic Physics at Chalmers University of Technology are since decades collaborating very closely with Maria José García Borge and her research group.

THE JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL CHEMISTRY special issue by AMOC2015 workshop: "Spectroscopy and Dynamics of Medium-Sized Molecules and Clusters: Theory, Experiment and Applications", edited by María Luisa Senent.

"Pero entonces… ¿qué es la luz?"
José Vicente García Ramos outreach contribution (Spanish).

"Collisions at the laboratory below zero". Accurate measurements of the collisional cross section between water molecules and helium atoms at very low energies were achieved for the first time, tuning the quantum predictions and providing experimental data from the laboratory. (Spanish).

The popular science portal Naukas reports on the recent work on the spectroscopy of the ArH+ ion performed in the laboratory of high resolution infrared spectroscopy. This molecular ion was detected in space by the Herschel satellite, now decomissioned, so future studies on will rely on ground-based infrared telescopes (Spanish).

"The Molecules: When Light Enhances Vibrations" by José Vicente García Ramos. An ideal book for those which want to be introduced in the grounds of spectroscopy. (Spanish).

Observation of crystallization slowdown in supercooled quantum liquid mixtures.
An international team led by scientists of IEM-CSIC has measured the crystallization kinetics of supercooled liquid mixtures of two hydrogen isomers: para-hydrogen (pH2) and ortho-deuterium (oD2). It is shown that, in a wide range of compositions, the crystallization rate is significantly reduced with respect to the pure substances. These results provide the first experimental evidence for crystallization slowdown of quantum origin.
Press Releases in SINC and CSIC (Spanish).

"Sólido, líquido, gaseoso, plasma… ¿Hay más estados de la materia?"
José Carlos Canalda outreach contribution (Spanish).

José Vicente García Ramos interview in "Hablan los científicos" (Spanish)

"¿De dónde viene el nombre de los elementos químicos?"
José Vicente García Ramos outreach contribution (Spanish).

Observation of the decay of very neutron-rich isotopes (Spanish).
Press Release from CSIC (Spanish).

Silver: more transparent than glass

Researchers of the surface spectroscopies and surface plasmon photonics group (Institute for the Structure of Matter - CSIC) have demonstrated in a theoretical study that it is possible to build transparent electrical wiring. The work was published in the Optics Express Journal.

Crystallization of CO2 ice and the absence of amorphous CO2 ice in space

Article published in "PNAS".

A multidisciplinary research team by the Center for Astrobiology and the Institute for Structure of Matter has detected the ammonium ion, NH4+, for the first time in space. Review published in sinc.

Researchers at the Institute for Structure of Matter designed a new metamaterial with a property "unnatural". Review published in sinc.

Approved the construction of CALIFA, a spectrometer for FAIR (Facility for Antiproton and Ion Research) in whose design IEM researchers have had an important participation.

A thorough review of all aspects of ice in the Universe. An article has just been published in Reviews of Modern Physics, signed by 17 researchers, among which several CSIC scientists, with participation of this Institute.

Mª José García Borge, researcher of the IEM, will become director of a facility at CERN

Interview to Dr. Guillermo Mena about time travel in the news program "Las Noticas" of the Spanish TV channel "La 2".

Interview to the Director of the IEM in Radio 5, a Spanish Broadcasting Corporation Radio Station.

"The infrared analysis of protein structures in peripheral blood mononuclear leukocytes allows one to differentiate, with sensitivity and specificity around 85% between healthy controls and Alzheimer patients in the early stages of the disease, with advantage for effective treatment." Research conducted by Dr. Pedro Carmona of IEM-CSIC

Gold Nanostars for Attacking Cancer: a recent work carried out by IEM researchers Rogelio Rodríguez-Oliveros and José A. Sánchez-Gil, highlighted in Science News.

Flexible and robust touch screens: The revolution of graphene. Interview to Pablo San José y Elsa Prada in El Mundo newspaper.

The Nobel Prize in Physics 2011 awarded to three cosmologists. Interview to Guillermo Mena in La Razón newspaper.

Scientists from IEM observe the crystallization of deeply cooled liquid para-hydrogen in real time.

"Plasma, el cuarto estado de la materia", a new book by Teresa de los Arcos and Isabel Tanarro.

Researchers of the IEM identify a stable state of the amino acid alanine

A patent based on a work carried out at the SOFTMAT group is presented by CSIC in the International Nanotechnology Exhibition and Conference held in Japan, on Feb 16-18 2011.

A pencil lead is enough to study 'God's particle'. A study performed by a group of Spanish scientists, which includes Dr. Pablo San-José and Dr. José González Carmona, from the IEM, uncovers a parallelism between graphene rippling and the Higgs boson.

Gas-phase carbonic acid isolated. An international investigation including Dr. Óscar Gálvez from IEM, published in Angew. Chem. Int. Ed.

New structure in exotic nuclei. An international collaboration including the IEM researcher Andrea Jungclaus, published in Nature (*).

"Spectroscopy of the atmospheres", new book edited by Rafael Escribano and Isabel Tanarro of the IEM, published by the CSIC (*).

"Superteflon for the home of the future", article published in EL MUNDO about fluorographene.

"Misterios científicos a pie de calle", the press highlights the activities organized by the IEM for the 2010 Science Week. Article published in EL PAÍS.

"Plasmas fríos moleculares en el Universo y en el laboratorio", article on cold plasma physics by Isabel Tanarro, published in Revista Española de Física.

On March the 22 th the new Spanish Synchrotron ALBA was officially inaugurated in Barcelona. The press highlighted the opinion of the IEM researcher MariCruz García-Gutiérrez on this respect.

CSIC recently highlighted the research done by members of the IEM about the modification of the physical properties of a polymer at nanometer scale.

"Mapping the Nuclear Landscape: 50 years of the Karlsruher Nuklidkarte" Historic note by Christophe Normand and Mª José Gª Borge on the evolution of the Karlsruhe´s chart of the nuclides, published in the Revista Española de Física.

"Una mirada a la física de polímeros en España": article by Javier Martínez-Salazar and Juan Francisco Vega on the state of the art of polymer physics in our country, published in Revista Española de Física.

Cristina Garmendia and Patxi López present the Spanish headquarters of the European Spallation Source.
Picture

The records of the "Litte Astronomical Serenade" and the conference by Olalla García on "Hipatia, the first woman conjugating Science and Philosophy" are available on the CIENCIATK webpage of CSIC. These events took place the 12th and 13th of November 2009, and they were organized in the context of the "Science Week 2009".

Interview on quantum gravity and quantum cosmology with Mercedes Martín-Benito (IEM, CSIC) in the program " Parallel Universe " of Radio Círculo.

The photographic exhibition " The CERN through the eyes of Peter Ginter " has arrived to Spain organized by CPAN, with participation of IEM.

" Many Questions for the Great Canary Telescope ". Article of Almudena Alonso in EL PAÍS.

" There are so many black holes left that I will never get bored ". Interview with Luis Colina in EL PAÍS.

Participation of the Institute of the Structure of Matter in the Great Canary Telescope.

Researchers of the Institute of the Structure of Matter involved in the first infrared detection of a supernova by adaptive techniques with the Gemini telescope.

Spatial research at the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas. In InfoEspacio, No 17.

"Press release" for the Gemini Observatory in which results of the PhD thesis by Tanio Díaz Santos of the IEM are described.

"Granting of the "Gabriel Alonso de Herrera" award to Prof. José Cernicharo."

"The Director of the Institute of the Structure of Matter, José Vicente García Ramos, visits the CERN laboratories in Chile."

"Research led by Prof. Javier Bermejo, of the Institute of the Structure of Matter of CSIC, succeeds in storing hydrogen in a stable manner."

"A team participated by the IEM discovers "super heavy" water in space."

"The C.S.I.C., through the Institute of the Structure of Matter, participates in the construction of moderators of the second target station of the source of ISIS (ISI-TSII) Pulsed Neutrons of the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory."

Interview with Dr. Juan Ramón Pardo in the program "Archimedes dream ", of Radio Nacional de España.