Tatiana López del Río holds a degree in Chemistry from the University of Santiago de Compostela and is CEO and managing director of Nanogap, a leading company in the development of technologies such as nanoparticles and atomic quantum clusters (AQCs). We talked to her about the role of Galicia and its innovative business sector in the context of the energy transition.

How has the company grown since its inception and what have the main achievements been?

Technology-based companies with breakthrough technology such as ours have a slow growth in the development stages, which is when most value is generated through patents and acquired knowledge. Today Nanogap has an important family of patents already granted in important offices such as those in Europe, Japan and the United States. Nanogap has also been able to patent not only the process of production and applications of AQCs (Atomic Quantum Clusters, which are sub-nanometric particles), but we also have product patents, as Nanogap is the only company in the world to have achieved this stable product on a large scale.

In addition to patents, major achievements include several awards that we received over the course of the company's history, the most recent being in December last year, 2021, the Heraeus accelerator award, a German company with almost 30 million euros turnover that selected 20 companies/technologies from 12 different countries and chose the 5 with the highest potential, Nanogap being one of those chosen for the excellent catalytic properties demonstrated by the AQCs.

Other achievements include the development of AQC technology for developing pharmaceuticals, results that led to the creation of a new start-up, Arjuna Therapeutics. And more recently, the creation of HySun Energy, a company focused on the design of photoreactors to produce clean hydrogen based on the photocatalytic properties of AQCs. For this last project, funding has been obtained through the CDTI Missions projects of the 2021 round of invitations, having achieved a very high score and on which work has been underway for almost a year with a strong consortium that includes Tewer Engineering, a company with high international recognition in CST (Concentrating Solar Technology).

What does Galicia contribute to the world of new materials and what specific use has it managed to make of nanotechnology?

Today Galicia boasts companies with extremely cutting-edge technology not only in the field of nanotechnology and nanomaterials, but also in the biotechnology sector (proof of this is the great work of Bioga and all the companies that make up the Galician biotechnology association, such as Galchimia or AMS Lab), the energy sector (such as the recently created HySun Energy, producer of clean hydrogen, or all the work being spearheaded by Reganosa in the industrial implementation of technological advances in hydrogen production) or in the digitisation sector (where there are several cutting-edge companies, including Situm). Nanomaterials are the building blocks that make some of the most powerful technological advances of the near future possible in all these sectors. Galicia, from highly disruptive and relatively recently created companies such as Nanogap, to others that are much more consolidated but still maintain innovation in their DNA, such as Gairesa, offers the world the opportunity to solve problems which until now have been unsolvable or which are the gateway to advances in sectors such as health or energy that will have a great impact on our society.

This is the first company in Spain to produce magnetic and metallic nanoparticles and the first in the world to move towards the industrial production of atomic quantum clusters (AQCs). What does the experience of being at the forefront from Galicia bring?

Nanogap is the first company worldwide to produce Atomic Quantum Clusters (AQCs) on an industrial scale. These are sub-nanometric particles with an electronic structure that gives them totally unique properties. It's as if the materials we knew until now, and whose basic elements are listed in the periodic table, were only the tip of the iceberg, and thanks to nanotechnology and even more to the sub-nanometric space, we find that by playing only with their size we discover a third dimension of the periodic table. Being at the forefront from Galicia provides an opportunity for our technologists, doctoral students, post-docs... to stay in the places they live, or return to their homeland to work on highly competitive projects and technology at a global level, and this offers companies like Nanogap a pool of great professionals returning home from abroad or brilliant students entering the world of work. In addition, in Galicia there is very strong support from European, national and Galician funds for this type of initiative, and companies like Nanogap are given institutional visibility that helps us to position ourselves at regional, national and European level.

You have incorporated nanotechnology into the health sector and more recently into the energy sector, where have the best results been achieved?

These are two sectors where nanotechnology and nanomaterials are offering a new world of opportunities for the development of pharmaceuticals or the production of new sources of renewable energy.

As I said, Nanogap has set up two subsidiaries, the first, Arjuna Therapeutics, which is developing a cancer drug with a totally disruptive and unique mechanism that has very high potential. It is still too early to talk about success as it is still in the pre-clinical phase, but the results obtained so far are very promising.

The second, HySun Energy, was recently formed and is an engineering company developing a 100% clean hydrogen production process, totally unique in the world. It is a process that uses sunlight through CST (Concentrating Solar Technology) to separate the water molecule into oxygen and hydrogen through a photocatalytic process, whose economies of scale promise to reach highly competitive prices with 100% clean energy and therefore 0% emissions. This technology is at TRL 4 (within the scales of technological development in which TRL 1 is a conceptual laboratory idea and TRL 10 is a fully developed technology ready for commercialisation).

What role does Galicia and its innovative business fabric play in the framework of the energy transition?

Galicia plays a very important role not only because of its cutting-edge, unique technological contributions such as HySun Energy, which has already piqued the interest of large energy companies, but also because of its natural resources, both wind and solar (reaching more than 3,000 equivalent hours of sunshine in some areas of the region of Galicia). Nowadays, Europe is backing hydrogen as the energy of the future. It is one of the most abundant materials on our planet (number 10 in the ranking), it has 2.7 times the calorific value of petrol, and technology is being developed to be able to extract, store and transport it efficiently. In the case of electrolysis, which is at a more advanced stage than photocatalysis, it could be close to 70% clean energy (depending on the country's energy mix, as electrolysis requires connection to the electricity grid during the absence of renewable energy), and in the case of photocatalysis it could reach 100% clean energy, but this is at an earlier stage of development. Both technologies largely complement one another and it will be the cooperation between the whole industrial sector and all these technologies that will be able to offer tailor-made energy solutions according to the application, the geographical area or the specific market/industrial niche (mobility, transport, industry and households...).

What has been involved in the restructuring process undertaken in 2019?

Nanogap currently has the support of XesGalicia, Repsol Energy Venture (Repsol's investment arm) and a new national investment group, Feynman Technologies, which continue to support Nanogap after some particularly complicated years for the whole economy, such as 2020 and 2021. Today, we are performing better than ever, and with the right financial and strategic support to continue on a path with no shortage of obstacles, but with as much or even more enthusiasm than ever, as each step brings us closer to ensuring that our Galician AQC technology has a direct impact on the benefit of society as a whole.

What doors has having a subsidiary in Silicon Valley opened for you?

Once critical to the overall development of electronics and IoT (Internet of Things) applications, this is not a particularly important strategic point, but is now a good gateway to the entire US market.

Has retaining talent or attracting outside researchers been more important to the company's success?

Both are equally important for companies like Nanogap, where it is very difficult to bring in talent that is essential as the company grows. Scientists and technologists really are the lifeblood of the company and our ability to grow depends on two things: funding, and the ability to solve the unique problems that arise when developing unique technology. And that's why it's just as important to recruit new talent as it is to retain existing talent. We are very proud of each person that makes up the Nanogap team and proud of the low turnover that the company has suffered despite the fact that start-ups go through difficult times which we overcame and celebrated together. Arturo López Quintela, professor of physical chemistry at the University of Santiago de Compostela, continues to be the scientific-technological soul of Nanogap, and he has recently been joined by such powerful scientists as David Buceta and Iria Rodríguez, among others.