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Javier Castillo, a Ph.D. student on the 3DScavengers team, has been awarded first prize, valued at 10,000 euros, in the 13th Edition of the Ebro Food 2022 awards, whose objective is to promote the young research talent of CicCartuja researchers. The award has rewarded one of the latest results of the 3DScavengers project published in the journal Advanced Materials paper entitled Highly Anisotropic Organometal Halide Perovskite Nanowalls Grown by Glancing-Angle Deposition.

In this article, Javier Castillo, together with the team from the Surface and Plasma Nanotechnology research group, who signed the article, has manufactured a new type of highly anisotropic hybrid perovskite nanostructures of organometallic halides (MAPbI3) with nanowall morphology oriented preferentially in one direction. These structures have been developed using a pioneering two-stage vacuum manufacturing method that presents great technological interest due to its versatility and possibility of industrial scaling, in addition to the elimination of the use of solvents and its consequent generation of waste. The tank consists in a grazing angle evaporation of the first precursor, PbI2, (changing the angle of incidence of the material flow with respect to the substrate) and its subsequent exposure at normal incidence to methylammonium iodide (MAI) vapors, giving rise to the complete transformation to perovskite phase.

These nanostructures present highly anisotropic optoelectronic properties of great interest in the field of polarized light emission, a main element in a wide variety of applications such as the screens of electronic devices in which a highly inefficient system is currently used due to the optical losses associated with the use of polarizers.

The Ebro Food awards are organized annually between CicCartuja and the Ebro Food Foundation to encourage and make visible young research talent. To achieve this, in the first phase of the contest, each month, researchers present their work with the greatest impact and the one with the highest scientific quality is chosen. Subsequently, among the 12 chosen works, the best one is awarded in the second phase and between two and three second prizes are given. Javier Castillo has obtained this award thanks to the quality of his work, and above all for the impact it has on the improvement and scientific progress in the energy efficiency of screens.