IREC: The Catalonia Institute for Energy Research, IREC, is a young research institute participated by the Catalan and Spanish governments, 3 Universities and several private companies from the energy sector. Within IREC, the Advanced Materials for Energy Department is equipped with new laboratories that incorporate state of the art technologies and new equipment for the synthesis and characterization of functional nanomaterials, the development of energy conversion and storage devices and the evaluation of their performance.