Prof. J. Daniel Prades is a Full Professor of Electronic Technology at the Universitat de Barcelona. He has published 90 scientific articles (4000+ citations, h-index 35), and has given 35 invited talks in international conferences. He has coordinated 30 Research Projects and Grants on device development, smart system integration and environmental monitoring; including 11 European/International Projects, 19 National Projects and other Projects with Industry. He is co-inventor of 9 patents, 2 of them under commercial exploitation. In 2018, he founded “ColorSensing” https://www.color-sensing.com, a start-up based in Catalonia devoted to smart packaging for food processing efficiency, quality, and safety. He is the EuroSensors Fellow 2017 and ICREA Academia awardee since 2018.

Research interests

My research domain is sensor technology, with focus on chemical and gas sensors. In the last 5 years I have centered my activities in addressing two of the main challenges in these field: lowering the power consumption and improving the selectivity of the response towards specific molecular compounds. This topic, and the strategies that I have followed, have been supported by the European Research Council with a Starting Grant, and by the European Innovation Council with FET Open grants. As outcomes of this main activity I have developed:

• a new gas sensor principle offering zero-power operation,
• two systematic strategies to lower the power consumption of existing technologies more than 3 orders of magnitude: the self-heating operation and the microLED technology,
• improved the specificity towards selected gases by more than 2000%,
• a new ultra-low-cost sensor concept based on printed disposable sensors and smartphone cameras.

Keywords

sensors, micro and nano devices, low power, selective chemical/gas sensors, low-cost chemical/gas sensors