Víctor F. Puntes

Institut Català de Nanociència i Nanotecnologia & Vall d'Hebron Institut de Recerca

Experimental Sciences & Mathematics

Born in Barcelona in 1970, Prof. Víctor Franco Puntes studied chemical engineering at the Louis Pasteur University (Strasbourg, France) and chemistry at the Autonomous University of Barcelona (Barcelona, Spain), graduating in 1994. He obtained his PhD in Physics at the University of Barcelona (1998), working on Giant Magnetoresistance in granular alloys. Then he spent more than 3 years in Berkeley (California, USA) as a postdoc, first in the group of Prof. Krishnan Kannan (National Center for Electron Microscopy, Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory) and then in the group of Prof. Paul Alivisatos (College of Chemistry, UC Berkeley). In 2003 he obtained a Ramón y Cajal Fellowship and worked in the Physics Dep. at the University of Barcelona. In 2005, he moves to the Catalan Institute of Nanotechnology (ICN - now ICN2) as ICREA Research Professor and creates the Inorganic Nanoparticles Group. Since December 2014 he holds a double affiliation ICN2 and VHIR.


Research interests

Prof. Víctor Puntes works on the synthesis, characterisation and applications of engineered inorganic nanoparticles (NPs). By controlling the size, structure and shape of the inorganic core, and manipulating the linking of organic molecules to the nanoparticle surface, the group aims to design nanoparticles that interact with a variety of systems (biological, medical, materials, etc.). This allows for the deliberate modification of these systems, or the use of NPs for witnessing and reporting things.

Selected publications

– Schultz CL, Gray J, Verweij RA, Busquets-Fite M, Puntes V, Svendsen C, Lahive E & Matzke M 2018, ‘Aging reduces the toxicity of pristine but not sulphidised silver nanoparticles to soil bacteria’, Environ Sci-nano, 5, 11, 2618-2630.

– Bastus NG & Puntes V 2018, ‘Nanosafety: Towards Safer Nanoparticles by Design’, Curr Med Chem, 25, 35, 4587-4601.

– Makama S, Kloet SK, Piella J, van den Berg H, de Ruijter NCA & Puntes VF et al. 2018, ‘Effects of systematic variation in size and surface coating of silver nanoparticles on their in vitro toxicity to macrophage RAW 264.7 cells‘, Toxicological Sciences vol. 162, 1, 79-88.

– Boraschi D, Swartzwelter B, Melillo D, Marino R, Della Camera G, Barbero F, Puntes V & Italiani P 2018, ‘Evolution of innate immunity, lessons learned for assessing safety and efficacy of nanomaterials and nanodrugs’, Isj-invertebrate Survival Journal, 15, 116-117.

– Russo L, Merkoci F, Patarroyo J, Piella J, Merkoci A, Bastus NG & Puntes V 2018, ‘Time- and Size-Resolved Plasmonic Evolution with nm Resolution of Galvanic Replacement Reaction in AuAg Nanoshells Synthesis’, Chem Mater, 30, 15, 5098-5107.

– Ocal SK, Patarroyo J, Kiremitler NB, Pekdemir S, Puntes VF & Onses MS 2018, ‘Plasmonic assemblies of gold nanorods on nanoscale patterns of poly (ethylene glycol): Application in surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy’, Journal Of Colloid And Interface Science, 532, 449-455.

– Schultz CL, Lahive E, Lawlor A, Crossley A, Puntes V, Unrine JM, Svendsen C & Spurgeon DJ 2018, ‘Influence of soil porewater properties on the fate and toxicity of silver nanoparticles to Caenorhabditis elegans’, Environ Toxicol Chem, 37, 10, 2609-2618.

– Russo L, Puntes V & Merkoçi A 2018, ‘Tunable electrochemistry of gold-silver alloy nanoshells’, Nano Research, vol 11, pp-6336-6345.

– Casals E, Gusta MF, Montana L, Mendoza M, Maiz N, Carreras E & Puntes V 2018, ‘Nanotechnology for Maternal Foetal Medicine‘, Int J Ped & Neo Heal. vol. 2, pp. 57-66.