Professor Ismael Díez-Pérez

Isma is currently a Professor in the Department of Chemistry at King’s College London. He received his MSci (2001) and a PhD in Physical Chemistry (2006) from the University of Barcelona (UB) in the study of nanoscale semiconductor/electrolyte interfaces. During this early career period, he developed novel approaches to study reactivity at electrode/liquid interfaces exploiting electrochemical Scanning Probe Microscopes.

His PhD work was awarded by the International Society of Electrochemistry (ISE Electrochemical Materials Science prize) in 2008. He joined the group of Professor Nongjian Tao at the Electrical Engineering Department (Arizona, USA) in 2007 as a postdoctoral research associate. At the beginning of this period, he won the prestigious Outgoing Marie Curie fellowship (2008) to design complex electrical behaviours in a single-molecule electrical wire including the use of biological molecular moieties.

After his postdoc period, he gained an EU Reintegration Grant as Senior Researcher at the Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia to develop an ambitious project combining bioengineering and single-protein electrical junctions to understand hybrid bioelectronic interfaces. In 2012, he obtained an assistant professorship at the UB physical chemistry department, where he later got his tenured associate professorship in 2015. His novel contributions in this field were endorsed by the prestigious senior ISE Molecular Electrochemistry Prize. His original single-molecule junction approach brings a new perspective in understanding charge transport through complex hybrid bio-interfaces and, in 2017, he was awarded a Consolidator ERC Grant to continue in this direction.

Research interests

Professor Díez-Pérez's research interests include understanding charge transport in synthetic as well as biological molecular architectures at the nanoscale with a twofold objective: (i) disentangle the most important mechanisms of electron/energy transfer that regulate essential functions in life (e.g. respiratory chain and/or photosynthesis), and (ii) understanding and optimizing the biomolecule-electrode interface towards the design of novel bio-electronic devices.

The interests of the BioMolecular Electronics group (Isma’s group) at King’s revolve around understanding charge transport in synthetic as well as biological molecular architectures at the nanoscale with a twofold objective: (i) disentangle the most important mechanisms of electron/energy transfer that regulate essential functions in life (e.g. respiratory chain and/or photosynthesis), and (ii) understanding and optimizing the biomolecule-electrode interface towards the design of novel bio-electronic devices.

Among our technical capabilities, we can precisely control the formation of electrical contacts with individual (bio)molecules between two metal electrodes, which allow us characterizing their charge transport signatures at an unbeatable resolution. In combination with a variety of other experimental approaches, we are tackling into several cutting-edge scientific questions that constitute the main core of our current projects (see Research Group section below).

Further information

• The Biomolecular Electronics