Núria López is a Spanish chemist who is Professor of Chemistry at the Institute of Chemical Research of Catalonia (ICIQ). She was awarded the Spanish Royal Society of Chemistry Prize for Excellence in 2015.

Early life and education

López studied chemistry at the

University of Barcelona The University of Barcelona (official name in ; UB), formerly also known as Central University of Barcelona (), is a public research university located in the city of Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain. It was established in 1450. With 76,000 students, ...

. She completed both her bachelor's and doctoral degrees there, earning a PhD in theoretical chemistry in 1999. López joined the

Technical University of Denmark The Technical University of Denmark (), often simply referred to as DTU, is a polytechnic university and school of engineering. It was founded in 1829 at the initiative of Hans Christian Ørsted as Denmark's first polytechnic, and it is today ran ...

(DTU) Center for Atomic-scale Materials Physics, where she worked in the laboratory of Jens Nørskov.

Research and career

In 2001 López returned to

Barcelona Barcelona ( ; ; ) is a city on the northeastern coast of Spain. It is the capital and largest city of the autonomous community of Catalonia, as well as the second-most populous municipality of Spain. With a population of 1.6 million within c ...

and became a ''Ramón y Cajal'' fellow at the

. She established her own research group in the Institute of Chemical Research of Catalonia (ICIQ) in 2005, which studies photo-electro-catalysis. Her research makes use of atomistic simulations using the

Barcelona Supercomputing Center The Barcelona Supercomputing Center () is a public research center located in Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain. It hosts MareNostrum, a 13.7 Petaflops, Intel Xeon Platinum-based supercomputer, which also includes clusters of emerging technologies. , i ...

to understand the fundamental mechanisms that underpin

heterogeneous catalysis Heterogeneous catalysis is catalysis where the Phase (matter), phase of catalysts differs from that of the reagents or product (chemistry), products. The process contrasts with homogeneous catalysis where the reagents, products and catalyst exis ...

. She looks to design more efficient, selective and sustainable materials for heterogeneous catalysis, with a focus in improving selectivity and gold catalysis. In 2015 she was awarded the Spanish Royal Society of Chemistry Prize for Excellence in 2015. She used heterogeneous catalysis to develop new materials for

artificial sweeteners A sugar substitute or artificial sweetener, is a food additive that provides a sweetness like that of sugar while containing significantly less food energy than sugar-based sweeteners, making it a zero-calorie () or low-calorie sweetener. Arti ...

, using renewable and low-cost products such as

arabinose Arabinose is an aldopentose – a monosaccharide containing five carbon atoms, and including an aldehyde (CHO) functional group. Properties For biosynthetic reasons, most saccharides are almost always more abundant in nature as the "D"-form, o ...

. She showed that it is possible to rearrange sugar atoms using a

molybdenum Molybdenum is a chemical element; it has Symbol (chemistry), symbol Mo (from Neo-Latin ''molybdaenum'') and atomic number 42. The name derived from Ancient Greek ', meaning lead, since its ores were confused with lead ores. Molybdenum minerals hav ...

catalyst and a

ruthenium Ruthenium is a chemical element; it has symbol Ru and atomic number 44. It is a rare transition metal belonging to the platinum group of the periodic table. Like the other metals of the platinum group, ruthenium is unreactive to most chem ...

catalysed hydrogenation step. López has performed computational studies to determine the materials and experimental conditions that can improve the efficiency of water electrolysers; devices used for

water splitting Water splitting is the chemical reaction in which water is broken down into oxygen and hydrogen: Efficient and economical water splitting would be a technological breakthrough that could underpin a hydrogen economy. A version of water splitti ...

. In these electrolysers the oxidation of water takes place close to the anode, which conventionally presents a bottleneck to device operation. At this electrode, two oxygen atoms come together to form oxygen gas, which requires a precise alignment of electron spins. By placing a magnet (nickel zinc ferrite) close to the anode, her group were able to show that the evolution of oxygen, and the associated production of hydrogen, could be achieved at low potentials, saving considerable amounts of energy. It is understood that this occurs because the magnetic layer acts to align electron spins close to the anode, which controls the spin state of the electrons in oxygen, ensuring that the spins are correctly aligned for the formation of an oxygen-oxygen bond. For the reaction she used earth-abundant catalysts, including nickel and iron. The magnet required to double hydrogen output cost less than $10.

Selected publications

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References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Lopez, Nuria Living people Year of birth missing (living people) University of Barcelona alumni Academic staff of the Technical University of Denmark Spanish women chemists