Alejandro R. Goñi

Institut de Ciència de Materials de Barcelona (CSIC - ICMAB)

Engineering Sciences

I was born in Córdoba, Argentina, and graduated in physics in 1985 from Balseiro Institute in Bariloche, Argentina. In 1986 I moved to Germany for my PhD at the Max-Planck Institute FKF in Stuttgart with Prof. M. Cardona, which I finished in 1989. It followed a two-years postdoc at AT&T Bell Labs in Murray Hill, USA, and back to the MPI Stuttgart for three years. In 1996 I switched to the Technical University of Berlin for an appointment as Research & Teaching Associate. In 1999 I was awarded the Karl-Scheel Prize of the Physical Society of Berlin for my contributions to the field of high-pressure semiconductor physics. In November 2003 I became ICREA Research Professor and joined the Optoelectronic Properties of Nanostructured Materials group at ICMAB-CSIC. I created a facility for optical spectroscopy with micro and nanometer-scale resolution and I further set up a laboratory for high-pressure physics. I am also leading the group activities on thermoelectricity.


Research interests

I am an experimental physicist with broad interests and expertise in solid-state physics, optical spectroscopy (Raman scattering, photoluminescence, etc.), nano-science and technology, thermoelectricity, the physics of low-dimensional materials (superlattices, quantum wires and dots), highly correlated electron systems, and high-pressure techniques. Essentially, I use light as a probe of the physical properties of all kinds of organic and/or inorganic molecular and nano-materials, searching for new behaviors or phenomena that emerge as a direct consequence of the reduced dimensionality and/or size of the material system under study. Although I am principally pursuing basic research, almost all my lines of investigation have a clear application in mind, such as to improve the performance of optoelectronic devices based on nano-materials, enhance thermoelectric and/or photovoltaic properties, boost piezo-resistive coefficients, develop ultra-sensitive spectroscopic techniques, etc.

Selected publications

– Vezie MS, Few S, Meager I, Pieridou G, Dörling B, Ashraf RS, Goñi AR, Bronstein H, McCulloch I, Hayes SC, Campoy-Quiles M & Nelson J 2016, ‘Exploring the Origin of High Optical Absorption in Conjugated Polymers’, Nat. Mater., 15, 746-754.  

– Dörling B, Ryan JD, Weisenberger MC, Sorrentino A, El Basati A, Gomez A, Garriga M, Pereiro E, Anthony JE, Goñi AR, Müller C & Campoy-Quiles M 2016, ‘Photoinduced p- to n-type switching in thermoelectric polymer-carbon nanotube composites’, Adv. Mater., 28, 2782–2789.

– Leguy AMA, Goñi AR, Frost JM, Skelton J, Brivio F, Rodríguez-Martínez X, Weber OJ, Pallipurath A, Sibik J, Zeitler A, Alonso MI, Campoy-Quiles M, Weller MT, Nelson J, Walsh A & Barnes PRF 2016, ‘Dynamic Disorder, Phonon Lifetimes, and the Assignment of Modes to the Vibrational Spectra of Methylammonium Lead Halide Perovskites’, Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys., 18, 27051-27066.

– Robert C, Pereira Da Silva K, Nestoklon MO, Alonso MI, Turban P, Jancu JM, Even J, Carrère H, Balocchi A, Koenraad PM, Marie X, Durand O, Goñi AR & Cornet C 2016, ‘Electronic Wavefunctions and Optical Transitions in (In,Ga)As/GaP Quantum Dots’, Phys. Rev. B, 94, 075445/1-11.

– Yaccuzzi E, Khachadorian S, Suárez S, Reinoso M, Goñi AR, Strittmatter A, Hoffmann A, & Giudici P 2016, ‘Investigation of Proton Damage in III-V Semiconductors by Optical Spectroscopy’, J. Appl. Phys., 119, 235702/1-5.

– González Cuxart M, Reyes-Herrera J, Sics I, Goñi AR, Moreno Fernández H, Carlino V & Pellegrin E 2016, ‘Remote Plasma Cleaning of Optical Surfaces: A Study of Cleaning Rates of Different Carbon Allotropes as a Function of RF Powers and Distances’, Appl. Surf. Sci., 362, 448-458.


Selected research activities

– Project MAT2015-70850-P (HIBRI2), MINECO, Spain, 01/2016-12/2018, 149,314 € + 1 FPI grant.

– International application according to Patent Cooperation Treaty, ref. PCT/EP2016/078459, presented on 2016-11-22 at European Patent Office: A process of obtainment of an n-type or a p-type organic semiconductor by UV-VIS irradiation, on behalf of CSIC.