arquerlab
arquerlab
Parts of this site are drawn by JavaScript, which is not running here. If you opened it from an e-mail or a file preview, please open it in a web browser to see all pages in full.
Designing emerging decarbonization technologies
Burning fossil fuels fills the air with CO₂, which traps heat and warms our planet. We need to act, and act fast.
The cloud is an artist’s impression, not measured data. Earth imagery: NASA Earth Observatory. Land outlines: Natural Earth.
Decarbonizing starts with electrifying what we use every day. Renewable power is intermittent, so we must learn to store it.
Industrial processes release CO₂ into the air and wastewater into the sea. Converting these pollution streams to something renewable and useful is paramount for the long-term sustainability of our planet.
Powered by renewable electricity, electrolysers make green hydrogen from water and turn CO₂ into fuels and chemicals, for a greener society.
The carbon that left a chimney can come back as ethylene, and from ethylene as a bottle.
Ethanol made from CO₂ can already fuel cars, and it can be turned into sustainable fuel for planes.
Interdisciplinary teams of physicists, chemists and engineers work side by side, to guide reactions across scales: from nanometres to metres and from nanoseconds to hours.
On the catalyst’s surface, CO₂ picks up electrons and hydrogen from water and is rebuilt into new molecules, here ethylene.
With spectroscopies and microscopies, we follow the reaction on the catalyst as it happens, to learn how to make it faster and more selective.
By changing the catalyst and what we feed it (CO₂, nitrate, water), we steer the reaction towards specific chemicals or fertilisers.
Reactions we are working on
Robots run experiments around the clock and AI learns from every result in a high-throughput fashion.
arquerlab
Designing emerging decarbonization technologies
Institute of Photonic Sciences, Castelldefels, Barcelona
Meet our teamsPostdocs, PhD and Master's students: see the openings in the group.
From the group leader's Google Scholar profile. Titles link to the paper through its DOI.
The tenth edition of the prize, created with BIST, went to the group leader on 7 July 2026 for nanomaterials and quantum dots in optoelectronics and electrochemistry.
Named by Clarivate among the world’s most cited researchers every year from 2020 to 2025.
One of seven new members chosen from 142 candidates for the Academia Joven de España; the group leader took his seat on 10 July 2024.
Spain’s national award in Physics, Materials and Earth Sciences, for contributions that cross physics, chemistry and materials science.
Awarded to the group leader in the physics category of the foundation’s grants for researchers.
A postdoctoral Junior Leader fellowship from the “la Caixa” Foundation’s 2021 call.
The Royal Spanish Physics Society’s prize in experimental physics, for leadership in materials science across optoelectronics and clean energy.
After the seed phase listed under Collaborative projects, BREATH-CO₂ won the BIST Ignite Award at the BIST Forum 2026: €50,000 for a second phase of the chiral, spin-enhanced CO₂ electrolysers that Viktoria Golovanova co-leads with ICN2 and ICIQ.
Every group has an org chart; ours also has a Chief Snack Officer. A catalyst is not consumed by the reaction; it lowers the barrier so that the reaction happens at all. A stocked snack drawer does the same for a laboratory at 3 a.m. Marinos keeps ours stocked, and many of the good ideas here started in front of that drawer, with someone’s mouth full.
Come and work on decarbonisation twenty minutes from the Mediterranean.
We welcome researchers whose expertise or questions complement the work of the group.
Propose your own direction, particularly for MSCA and other portable fellowships. Several of us came this way, and we will help you build the application.
We take students year-round, but fellowship deadlines are fixed, so write early.
Projects are available in all six teams, through ICFO’s Master in Photonics and partner programmes, or through Erasmus+ from your own university. Several of our current PhD students started this way.
If you make electrolysers, catalysts, membranes or the chemicals they produce, we can help before you commit to a production line.
Operando spectro-electrochemistry shows what your catalyst does while it operates, rather than how it looked before and after. Many failure modes appear only under load.
Gas-diffusion electrodes, ionomer coatings and the triple-phase boundary between them, designed for your operating conditions rather than for a paper’s.
Our self-driving laboratory automates synthesis, measurement and the choice of the next experiment, which can turn a year of screening into weeks.
High current densities, real electrolytes, stacked cells and long-duration stability: the regime where laboratory results often stop holding.
A first conversation is most useful when it starts from a concrete technical problem. No NDA is needed for an initial discussion.
ICFO, The Institute of Photonic Sciences
Mediterranean Technology Park
Av. Carl Friedrich Gauss 3
08860 Castelldefels (Barcelona), Spain
