Daniel Maspoch

Institut Català de Nanociència i Nanotecnologia (ICN2)

Engineering Sciences

Born in L'Escala (Girona) in 1976. He graduated in chemistry at the Universitat de Girona and obtained his PhD in materials science at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona & Institut de Ciència de Materials de Barcelona. He then moved to Northwestern University, where he worked as a postdoctoral fellow in the group of professor Chad A. Mirkin. He moved back to the Institut Català de Nanotecnologia (ICN) thanks to a Ramón y Cajal contract, where he founded the Supramolecular NanoChemistry & Materials Group. Since September 2011 he is ICREA Research Professor and Group Leader at the Institut Català de Nanociència i Nanotecnologia (ICN2). He is a recipient of an European Research Council (ERC) Consolidator Grant.


Research interests

My research interests are focused on controlling the supramolecular assembly of molecules, metal ions and nanoscale building blocks at the nanometer scale for the design of novel functional architectures and devices. I am therefore interested in using supramolecular chemistry as the underlying approach for exploring new methodologies that enable the synthesis of complex nanoscale supramolecular assemblies (mainly, Metal-Organic Frameworks –MOFs– and vesicles) with unprecedented structures, with interesting physical and biological properties and applications in diverse areas, including energy (e.g. gas storage), environment (e.g. pollutant removal), nanoencapsulation (e.g. long lasting fragrance), and biomedicine (e.g. drug-delivery systems and contrast agents).

Selected publications

– Ayala A, Carbonell C, Imaz I & Maspoch D 2016, ‘Introducing asymmetric functionality into MOFs via the generation of metallic Janus MOF particles’, Chem. Commun., vol. 52, pp 5096-5099.

– Aríñez-Soriano J, Albalad J, Vila-Parrondo C, Pérez-Carvajal J, Rodríguez-Hermida, S, Cabeza A, Juanhuix J, Imaz I & Maspoch D 2016, ‘Single-crystal and humidity-controlled powder diffraction study of the breathing effect in a metal-organic framework upon water adsorption/desorption’, Chem. Commun., vol. 52, pp 7229-7232.

– Rubio-Martinez M, Imaz I, Domingo N, Abrishamkar A, Sotto-Mayor T, Rossi RM, Carbonell C, deMello AJ, Amabilino DB, Maspoch D & Puigmartí-Luis J 2016, ‘Freezing the nonclassical crystal growth of a coordination polymer using controlled dynamic gradients’, Adv. Mater., vol. 28, pp 8150-8155.

– Espín J, Zarzuela R, Statuto N, Juanhuix J, Maspoch D, Imaz I, Chudnovsky E & Tejada J 2016, ‘Narrowing the zero-field tunneling resonance by decreasing the crystal symmetry of Mn12 acetate’, J. Am. Chem. Soc., vol. 138, pp 9065-9068.

– Albalad J, Aríñez-Soriano J, Vidal-Gancedo J, Lloveras V, Juanhuix J, Imaz N, Aliaga-Alcalde N & Maspoch D 2016, ‘Hetero-bimetallic paddlewheel clusters in coordination polymers formed by a water-induced single-crystal-to-single-crystal transformation’, Chem. Commun., vol. 52, pp 13397 – 13400.

– Rodríguez-Hermida S, Tsang, MY, Vignatti C, Stylianou KC, Guillerm V, Pérez-Carvajal J, Teixidor F, Viñas C, Choquesillo-Lazarte D, Verdugo-Escamilla C, Peral I, Juanhuix J, Verdaguer A, Imaz I, Maspoch D & Planas JG 2016 , ‘Switchable surface hydrophobicity-hydrophilicity of a Metal-Organic Framework’, Angew. Chem. Int. Ed., vol 55, pp 16049-16053.

– Falcaro P, Ricco R, Yazdi A, Imaz I, Furukawa S, Maspoch D, Ameloot R, Evans JD & Doonan CJ 2016, ‘Application of Metallic and Metal Oxide Nanoparticles@MOFs’, Coord. Chem. Rev., vol. 307, pp 237-254.