The talk will address solutions to supply sustainable energy sources for small-sized electronic products and to develop digital sensing devices with minimal electronic content as a promising path within the circular economy to meet the technological needs of current society without compromising future generations.
Juan Pablo Esquivel is currently a Tenured Scientist at the National Microelectronics Center in Barcelona, Spain, where he co-leads the Self-Powered Engineered Devices Group. He is also co-founder and Scientific Advisor of the spin-off company Fuelium. He has a PhD in Electronics Engineering from the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB) and was a Senior Fellow at the Bioengineering Department of the University of Washington, under a Marie Curie Fellowship from the European Community Framework Programme. His work is focused on the development of paper-based fuel cells and batteries for autonomous diagnostic devices, combining engineering, electrochemistry, paper microfluidics and printed electronics technologies with sustainability principles and a strong product oriented approach. He has received several international prizes and distinctions for his work, such as the Catalonia Ecodesign Prize and the TR35 award from MIT Technology Review, as one of the top 10 mexican young innovators. He has authored more than 90 scientific contributions published in international journals and conference proceedings and is inventor in 11 patents.
The Instituto de Microelectrónica de Barcelona IMB-CNM (CSIC) is the largest public microelectronics R&D center in Spain with the aim of supporting the scientific community and industry. The Self-Powered Engineered Devices Group is a multidisciplinary research group combining engineering, paper microfluidics, printed electronics and electrochemistry. The group has a long experience in the development of miniaturized power sources, such as fuel cells, batteries, redox flow cells and capacitors, as well as their integration into fully autonomous electronic systems. The startup company Fuelium commercializes a paper-based battery technology emerged from the group.
