Arben Merkoçi

Institut Català de Nanociència i Nanotecnologia (ICN2)

Engineering Sciences

ICREA Research Professor and head of Nanobioelectronics & Biosensors Group at ICN2 (Institut Català de Nanociència i Nanotecnologia). He obtained his PhD at University of Tirana working on ion selective electrodes. Since 1992 he has been doing research as postdoctoral fellow and research professor at Polytechnic Univ. of Budapest, Univ. of Ioanina, Univ. degli Studi di Padua, Univ. Politècnica de Catalunya, Univ. Autònoma de Barcelona and New Mexico State Univ. His research is focused on the integration of biological molecules and other species with micro- and nanostructures with interest for the design of novel (bio)sensors. Prof. Merkoçi has been awarded the IAAM Medal 2011 and Nano Award-2013 for outstanding research in the field of nanoscience and nanotechnology by the International Association of Advanced Materials. He has published more than 250 articles and supervised around 25 PhD thesis.


Research interests

1. Nanoparticles study and application in innovative sensing technologies.
2. Development of novel nanostructured, nanochannel flexible platforms based on nanoimprinting and ink-jet printing technologies.
3. Study of graphene related materials and their integration into biosensing platforms.
4. Development of novel paper-based platforms with improved architecture, microfluidics and enhanced detection capabilities.
5. Design and application of lab-on-a-chip devices for biosensing, drug screening and other applications.

Selected publications

– Baptista-Pires L, Mayorga-Martinez CC, Medina-Sanchez M, Monton H & Merkoci A 2016, ‘Water Activated Graphene Oxide Transfer Using Wax Printed Membranes for Fast Patterning of a Touch Sensitive Device’, Acs. Nano, 10, 1, 853 – 860.

– de la Escosura-Muniz A, Baptista-Pires L, Serrano L, Altet L, Francino O, Sanchez A & Merkoci A 2016, ‘Magnetic Bead/Gold Nanoparticle Double-Labeled Primers for Electrochemical Detection of Isothermal Amplified Leishmania DNA’, Small, 12, 2, 205 – 213.

– Chamorro-Garcia A, de la Escosura-Muniz A, Espinoza-Castaneda M, Rodriguez-Hernandez CJ, de Torres C & Merkoci A 2016, ‘Detection of parathyroid hormone-like hormone in cancer cell cultures by gold nanoparticle-based lateral flow immunoassays’, Nanomedicine-nanotechnology Biology And Medicine, 12, 1, 53 – 61.

– Heli B, Morales-Narvaez E, Golmohammadi H, Ajji A & Merkoci A 2016, ‘Modulation of population density and size of silver nanoparticles embedded in bacterial cellulose via ammonia exposure: visual detection of volatile compounds in a piece of plasmonic nanopaper’, Nanoscale, 8, 15, 7984 – 7991.

– Medina-Sanchez M, Mayorga-Martinez CC, Watanabe T, Ivandini TA, Honda Y, Pino F, Nakata K, Fujishima A, Einaga Y & Merkoci A 2016, ‘Microfluidic platform for environmental contaminants sensing and degradation based on boron-doped diamond electrodes’, Biosensors & Bioelectronics, 75, 365 – 374.

– Zamora-Galvez A, Ait-Lahcen A, Mercante LA, Morales-Narvaez E, Amine A & Merkoci A 2016, ‘Molecularly Imprinted Polymer-Decorated Magnetite Nanoparticles for Selective Sulfonamide Detection’, Analytical Chemistry, 88, 7, 3578 – 3584.