Dr Javier Castells-Gil PhD, MRSC

Dr Javier Castells-Gil

School of Chemistry
Leverhulme Early Career Fellow

Contact details

Email
j.castells-gil@bham.ac.uk
View my research portal
Address
Molecular Science Building
School of Chemistry
University of Birmingham
Edgbaston
Birmingham
B15 2TT
UK

Qualifications

  • PhD in Chemistry, Institute of Molecular Sciences (ICMol), University of Valencia (Spain), 2020
  • MSci in Nanoscience and Molecular Nanotechnology, Institute of Molecular Sciences (ICMol), University of Valencia (Spain), 2016
  • 5-Year Degree in Chemistry, University of Valencia (Spain), 2014
  • Member of the Royal Society of Chemistry

Biography

Originally from Valencia, Javier studied Chemistry at the University of Valencia (Spain) from 2009 – 2014. In his final year, he received an Erasmus scholarship to work on Prof. Detlef Bahnemann’s group in Leïbniz Universität Hannover (Germany) studying the photocatalytic reduction of nitroaromatic compounds over TiO2 nanoparticles.

He then completed a MSci in Nanoscience and Nanotechnology 2016 and a PhD in Chemistry in 2020 at the Institute of Molecular Science (ICMol, University of Valencia, Spain), where he studied the synthesis, photocatalytic activity and chemical reactivity of Titanium-Organic Frameworks under the supervision of Prof. Carlos Martí-Gastaldo. During his doctoral work, he carried out a 3-months research stay at the KAUST Catalysis Centre (Saudi Arabia) under the supervision of Prof. Jorge Gascón, where he studied the catalytic activity of MOF-derived nanomaterials for the hydrogenation of CO2 to value-added products.

In November 2020, Javier moved to Birmingham as a postdoctoral researcher with Dr Phoebe Allan and Prof Peter Slater. Here, he studied cation-disordered rock salt materials as Li-ion battery cathodes with a strong focus on in-situ characterisation using Pair Distribution Function analysis. In 2024, Javier took up a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship to study the use of metal-organic precursors for the generation of compositionally complex materials.

Publications

Recent publications

Article

Gómez-Oliveira, EP, de Almeida, VF, Castells-Gil, J, Baldoví, HG, Gándara, F, Almora-Barrios, N, Tatay, S, Navalón, S, Padial, NM & Martí-Gastaldo, C 2026, 'Inducing Reactivity by Cluster Strain in Titanium Frameworks', Journal of the American Chemical Society, vol. 148, no. 1, pp. 734-742. https://doi.org/10.1021/jacs.5c16069

Torres-Cavanillas, R, Chen, H, Castells-Gil, J, Hidalgo, D, Arenós-Amat, M, Allen, CS, Fabi, G, Gramse, G, Coronado, E & Bogani, L 2026, 'Synthesis of Large-Area 2D Prussian Blue as Ion-Transport Channels for Non-Volatile Memristors', Small, vol. 22, no. 15, e12120. https://doi.org/10.1002/smll.202512120

Castells-Gil, J, Zhu, J, Itskou, I, Wolpert, EH, Hunter, RD, Tidey, JP, Pedersen, A, Solvay, E, Tyrrell, H, Petit, C & Barrio, J 2025, 'Impact of N-heterocyclic amine modulators on the structure and thermal conversion of a zeolitic imidazole framework †', Journal of Materials Chemistry A, vol. 13, no. 34, pp. 28006-28018. https://doi.org/10.1039/d5ta04831a

Regueiro, A, Castells-Gil, J, Shen, C, Mikulska, I, Allen, C, Bogani, L & Torres-Cavanillas, R 2024, 'Controlling AxMn[Fe(CN)6] charge transfer pathways through tilt-engineering for enhanced metal-to-metal interactions', Materials Advances. https://doi.org/10.1039/d4ma00262h

Dong, B, Poletayev, A, Cottom, J, Castells-Gil, J, Spencer, BF, Li, C, Zhu, P, Chen, Y, Price, J-M, Driscoll, L, Allan, P, Kendrick, E, Islam, MS & Slater, P 2024, 'Effects of Sulfate Modification of Stoichiometric and Lithium-Rich LiNiO2 Cathode Materials', Journal of Materials Chemistry A, vol. 12, no. 19, pp. 11390-11402. https://doi.org/10.1039/D4TA00284A

Gómez-Oliveira, EP, Castells-Gil, J, Chinchilla-Garzón, C, Uscategui-Linares, A, Albero, J, Almora-Barrios, N, Tatay, S, Padial, NM & Martí-Gastaldo, C 2024, 'Integrating Compositional and Structural Diversity in Heterometallic Titanium Frameworks by Metal Exchange Methods', Journal of the American Chemical Society, vol. 146, no. 45, pp. 31021-31033. https://doi.org/10.1021/jacs.4c10444

Padial, NM, Chinchilla-Garzón, C, Almora-Barrios, N, Castells-Gil, J, González-Platas, J, Tatay, S & Martí-Gastaldo, C 2023, 'Isoreticular Expansion and Linker-Enabled Control of Interpenetration in Titanium-Organic Frameworks', Journal of the American Chemical Society, vol. 145, no. 39, pp. 21397-21407. https://doi.org/10.1021/jacs.3c06590

Dong, B, Castells-Gil, J, Zhu, P, Driscoll, L, Kendrick, E, Allan, P & Slater, P 2023, 'Synthesis, structure and electrochemical properties of a new cation ordered layered Li-Ni-Mg-Mo oxide', Materials Advances. https://doi.org/10.1039/D2MA00981A

Tatay, S, Martínez-Giménez, S, Rubio-Gaspar, A, Gómez-Oliveira, E, Castells-Gil, J, Dong, Z, Mayoral, Á, Almora-Barrios, N, M. Padial, N & Martí-Gastaldo, C 2023, 'Synthetic control of correlated disorder in UiO-66 frameworks', Nature Communications, vol. 14, no. 1, 6962. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-41936-w

Rodriguez-Gomez, A, Ould-Chikh, S, Castells-Gil, J, Aguilar-Tapia, A, Bordet, P, Alrushaid, MA, Marti-Gastaldo, C & Gascon, J 2022, 'Fe-MOF Materials as Precursors for the Catalytic Dehydrogenation of Isobutane', ACS Catalysis, vol. 12, no. 7, pp. 3832-3844. https://doi.org/10.1021/acscatal.1c05303

Rojas, S, García-González, J, Salcedo-Abraira, P, Rincón, I, Castells-Gil, J, Padial, NM, Marti-Gastaldo, C & Horcajada, P 2022, 'Ti-based robust MOFs in the combined photocatalytic degradation of emerging organic contaminants', Scientific Reports, vol. 12, no. 1, 14513. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-18590-1

Piñeiro-López, L, Valverde-Muñoz, FJ, Trzop, E, Muñoz, MC, Seredyuk, M, Castells-Gil, J, da Silva, I, Martí-Gastaldo, C, Collet, E & Real, JA 2021, 'Guest induced reversible on-off switching of elastic frustration in a 3D spin crossover coordination polymer with room temperature hysteretic behaviour', Chemical Science, vol. 12, no. 4, pp. 1317-1326. https://doi.org/10.1039/d0sc04420b

Letter

De Bolòs, E, Martínez-Abadía, M, Hernández-Culebras, F, Haymaker, A, Swain, K, Strutyński, K, Weare, BL, Castells-Gil, J, Padial, NM, Martí-Gastaldo, C, Khlobystov, AN, Saeki, A, Melle-Franco, M, Nannenga, BL & Mateo-Alonso, A 2022, 'A Crystalline 1D Dynamic Covalent Polymer', Journal of the American Chemical Society, vol. 144, no. 34, pp. 15443-15450. https://doi.org/10.1021/jacs.2c06446

Martín-Arroyo, M, Castells-Gil, J, Bilbao, N, Almora-Barrios, N, Martí-Gastaldo, C & González-Rodríguez, D 2021, 'Crystalline supramolecular organic frameworksviahydrogen-bonding between nucleobases', Chemical Communications, vol. 57, no. 13, pp. 1659-1662. https://doi.org/10.1039/d0cc07707k

Review article

Castells-Gil, J, Almora-Barrios, N, Lerma-Berlanga, B, Padial, NM & Martí-Gastaldo, C 2023, 'Chemical complexity for targeted function in heterometallic titanium-organic frameworks', Chemical Science, vol. 14, no. 25, pp. 6826-6840. https://doi.org/10.1039/d3sc01550e

View all publications in research portal