Celia Castillo secures an ERC Starting Grant to create a new generation of glasses with applications in energy and sustainability

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Researcher Celia Bastillo Blas, from the Madrid Institute of Materials Science (ICMM-CSIC), has just secured a prestigious and highly competitive grant from the European Research Council (ERC) for emerging young researchers—, an ERC Starting Grant. The goal of her project, which is backed by €1.5 million in funding and spans a five-year implementation period, is to understand the inner workings of a specific type of hybrid material; this will enable her to design a new generation of custom-made glasses with applications ranging from blocking ultraviolet radiation to gas capture.

“My goal is to understand what allows certain hybrid materials, such as MOFs, to melt and transform into a new class of glass known as hybrid glass.” The scientist explains that hybrid materials are those composed of two parts: an organic component (carbon-based) and an inorganic one (containing metal ions). This is the case with the metal-organic frameworks—or MOFs—she mentions: porous, crystalline materials (meaning they have an ordered structure) created from metal atoms and organic molecules.

These are very new materials—so new, in fact, that their lead developers—Susumu Kitagawa, Richard Robson, and Omar M. Yaghi—won the 2025 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. "They are one of the most fascinating families of materials developed in the field of materials chemistry in recent decades," the researcher adds, noting that, given the novelty of this class of structures, many of their internal processes are not yet understood.

“Currently, these hybrid glasses are being discovered through trial and error,” says Castillo-Blas. Consequently, his work is driven by the conviction that if she can understand what determines whether certain materials can melt and form glass while others cannot, “we will be able to design these types of materials much more efficiently and with the desired characteristics for various applications.”

Understanding before creating

Castillo-Blas's research falls within the realm of what is known as basic or fundamental science—research that lays the groundwork for future studies. Therefore, it is crucial to first understand what causes matter to behave the way it does, so that it can be put to use.

The aim is to identify the structural and compositional characteristics that foster this behavior and to use that knowledge to rationally design new hybrid glasses. There are numerous potential applications: “Since these materials can be processed like glass, they could be used as coatings,” explains Castillo-Blas, noting that such coatings would also retain chemical and physical properties—such as porosity—that conventional glass lacks. “For instance, we could develop new transparent coatings capable of blocking ultraviolet radiation or trapping specific gases,” she lists.

The ultimate goal of her project, titled HyGFun, “would be to establish design rules that allow us to predict which materials can melt and form glass, discover new families of hybrid glasses, and demonstrate that some of them can be processed and used in various applications related to energy and sustainability.”

This project entails hiring up to six people: three predoctoral and three postdoctoral researchers. It will allow for continued progress on earlier research into how these materials change. “Based on my initial results—and given that we know some hybrid materials can form glasses—I wondered if we could establish the rules determining whether a hybrid material will melt, and then use those rules to design new materials to specification. That is my starting point, the big question to be answered,” she concludes.