News

  • October 21, 2022. Long time no news ! There’s been a couple of papers published since the last update, check it out here. We also secured funding from the ANR for a 5-years collaborative project which I am very excited about ! Equally exciting is the arrival of Bastien Isabella, starting a PhD on a fun and cool topic in the lab. Stay tuned !
  • February 10, 2021. Multiple objects interacting with a solidification front, aka the second paper from Sidhanth’s PhD is out in Scientific Reports today. More awesome confocal microscopy work, to be read here . Congratulations Sidhanth !
  • January 28, 2021. Congratulations to Hassan Saad, who succesfully defended his PhD yesterday, in front of an international jury. Best wishes for your next endeavors !
  • January 4, 2121. Welcome to Matheus Dorneles, starting a PhD today, for a work shared between the LSFC at Saint-Gobain Research Provence, and ILM. The beginning of a 3 years adventure !
  • December, 29, 2020. Our latest paper is out. In collaboration with spanish colleagues, experts in nanoindentation: Anisotropy effect of bioinspired ceramic/ceramic composites: Can the platelet orientation enhance the mechanical properties at micro- and submicrometric length scale? Published in the J Eur Ceram Soc and available here. Part of Hassan Saad’s PhD, that is just about to finish.
  • December 15, 2020. Happy to welcome Michael Chastnitsky in the lab for a postdoc. He’ll be the first one to play with the cryoconfocal in Lyon. Happy freezing !
  • December, 5, 2020. Our latest paper is out! I collaborated with the MPIE group in Stuttgart, who are experts in atome probe tomography. This is the first report of atom probe tomography on ice. Excited by what this enables ! The paper was published in Science Advances and is available here.
  • October 12, 2020. Todays was a big day for Sidhanth Tyagi, who successfully defended his PhD after three years in the lab. Excellent defense and Q&A session with an outstanding jury. Congrats Sid ! Fantastic three years and awesome science!
  • October 12, 2020. New paper out: Effect of microstructure heterogeneity on the damage resistance of nacre-like alumina: Insights from image-based discrete simulations, in Scripta Materialia. Work done through an ANR collaboration with colleagues in Grenoble.
  • September 3,2020. New paper out: Determination of interface fracture properties by micro- and macro-scale experiments in nacre-like alumina, in the Journal of the Mechanics and Physics of Solids. Work done through an ANR collaboration with colleagues in MATEIS lab in Lyon.
  • August 25, 2020. New paper out: Unveiling cells’ local environment during cryopreservation by correlative in situ spatial and thermal analyses, in the J. Phys. Chem. Lett. A fantastic collaboration with very fine people from the LCMCP. We are now freezing cells and looking in situ at their environment. This is just the beginning.
  • July 1, 2020. New preprint out. I’m unreasonably excited by the possibilities offered here! Enabling near-atomic scale analysis of frozen water, by the atom probe wizards at MPIE in Stuttgart
  • July 1, 2020. New paper out: A simple approach to bulk bioinspired ceramic. The first first-author paper of Hassan Saad, congratulations ! The result of a long lasting collaborations with colleagues from MATEIS in Lyon and SIMAP in Grenoble. A loooooong time in the making.
  • also June 23, 2020. Two papers published the same day. Solute strongly impacts freezing under confinement was published today in Applied Physics Letters. The hard work of Félix Ginot during his PhD and Théo Lenavetier during his 6 months internship with us.  A nice AIP Scilight coming with it: Combined impact of confinement and solute on freezing is greater than the sum of the parts
  • June 23, 2020. Latest paper out ! Objects Interacting with Solidification Fronts: Thermal and Solute Effects is the first paper coming out of Sidhanth’s PhD. Awesome confocal microscopy work !
  • June 18, 2020. Latest paper out. Nacre-like alumina composites based on heteroaggregation, published today in the J Eur Ceram Soc, is a nice collaborative work with our colleagues from IRCER in Limoges.
  • May 31, 2020. Interface failure in nacre-like alumina was just published in the J Eur Ceram Soc. Some beautiful FIB and micromechanics work by Ronan Henry.
  • April 23, 2020. Yet another lockdown preprint. This time a terrific collaboration with colleagues from UPMC in Paris, where we used our cryoconfocal setup to look at cells freezing and their environment. “Unveiling cells’ local environment during cryopreservation by correlative in situ spatial and thermal analyses“. Available for you on biorXiv.
  • April 9, 2020. More preprints ! The lockdown doest not help, but we’ve managed to finalise a few projects. The first paper from Sidhanth’s PhD is here: Objects interacting with solidification fronts, thermal and solute effects, with a nice contribution from the internship of Hélène Huynh with us. Two more preprints related to Hassan Saad’s PHD and the corresponding ANR project with colleagues from Lyon, Limoges and Grenoble: Interface failure in nacre-like alumina, with some nice FIB and micromechanical testing, and Nacre-like composites based on heteroaggregation, aka a new approach to prepare our flagsghip bioinspired ceramic. Happy reading. Stay safe at home if you can.
  • March 1, 2020. Our latest preprint is out: A simple approach to bulk bioinspired tough ceramics. The hard work of Hassan Saad and many colleagues.
  • January 2, 2020. New year, new lab! After 13 years in Cavaillon, I’m officially moving to ILM, in the Liquids and Interfaces team. Expect more physics and less materials science in the coming year. Onto a new adventure !
  • January 1, 2020. Our latest paper, Strength and toughness trade-off optimization of nacre-like ceramic composites, is out in Composites B. A collaborative work with my mountain-lover colleagues from Grenoble.
  • November 5, 2019. Sidhanth Tyagi gave a took at Okinawa Colloids about his PhD work on freezing emulsions. Lots of attendees !
  • September 30, 2019. Hélène Huynh is leaving the lab, after an excellent intership with us. Best wishes for your new endeavours !
  • September 26, 2019. I wrote an editorial for the special issue on ice templating I coordinated in Ceramics (open access).
  • August 1, 2019. Latest preprint out. I helped Chinese colleagues ice-templating tungsten and tungsten carbides.
  • July 24, 2019. Our latest preprint (Solute effects in confined freezing) is out. That’s what Félix Ginot has been up to here. Terrific results, very excited about it ! Congrats Félix.
  • June 17, 2019. I talked to metallurgists about freezing emulsions and they like it. Great conference.
  • June 16, 2019. Hassan Saad gave a talk at ECERS about his ceramic composites. First talk at a conference, well done Hassan !
  • June 7, 2019. I wrote about preprints with FX Coudert in l’Actualité Chimique (in french). You can read it here.
  • May 5, 2019. Our latest paper out in PRE: Boundary-induced inhomogeneity of particle layers in the solidification of suspensions. The latest in a serie of 3, with colleagues from Marseille.
  • April 15, 2019.  Hélène Huynh joined us for a 6 months internship in the lab for a, guess what?, freezing project. Welcome Hélène !
  • March 19, 2019. I gave a seminar (in french) at the Institut Jean d’Alembert and it’s been recorded. You can watch it here if you want to learn more about freezing.
  • March 7, 2019. I gave an outreach talk at the CRPP in Bordeaux. Really nice place. I gave them 37 reasons to freeze and hopefully convinced a few.
  • February 22, 2019. I gave a talk (in french) at the College de France, on a symposium on porous materials, at the end of a lectures cycle of Clement Sanchez. It’s been recorded and you can watch it here. All the other talks are available, plenty of good stuff to watch (some in English).
  • February 19, 2019. Want to design properly bioinspired brick and mortar materials? Our latest paper will help you.  A collaborative work with fine people in Grenoble.
  • January 15, 2019. PeerJ is launching a Materials science journal and I’m joining as an editor. More here.
  • December 7, 2018. Our latest paper with Chris Bowen’s group in Bath, now published in Soft Matter.
  • November 18, 2018. A short perspective paper I wrote for National Science Review. Free access here.
  • September 18, 2018 – Sidhanth is out to his first conference/summer school in Bulgaria: ECCG6, with his first poster. Way to go !
  • September 1, 2018 – I am guest-editing a topical issue on ice-templated ceramics for the open-access journal Ceramics. Deadline: January 31, 2019. Check it out !
  • August 23, 2018 – Our latest preprint out.: Ice-templated poly(vinylidene fluoride) ferroelectrets. A collaboration with Chris Bowen’s group in Bath.
  • August 21, 2018 – Our latest paper out in Ultramicroscopy: how to build your own temperature gradient stage for confocal microscopy and what to do with it. Dmytro’s work, essentially.
  • June 8, 2018 – The latest episode of the CNRS YouTube Channel, Zeste de Science, is about our work on freezing emulsions. Watch it here ! [in french]
  • May 18, 2018 – I’ve joined the editorial board of Ceramics. Happy to help an openaccess journal with reasonable APC.
  • April 20, 2018 – Our latest paper on freezing emulsions, out in Science today. Great collaborative work with Cécile Monteux from ESPCI. Check the YouTube explainer we prepared. Massive congrats to Dmytro Dedovets for this beautiful piece of work, done during his postdoc in the lab ! Chemical & Engineering news reports on it. The ERC and the CNRS too (in french).
  • April 13, 2018 – Hassan Saad is off to his first conference next week in Santiago to present his first poster, after just a few months of his PhD, and with cool results to show already! A truly excellent conference.
  • April 10, 2018 – The CNRS writes about research in ceramic science in France, including some of our work (in french)
  • April 9, 2018 – Katy Dickinson, from the University of Edinburgh, is visiting us for two weeks to take advantage of our fancy cryoconfocal setup. Cool stuff !
  • February 14, 2018 – Our latest paper is out in the Journal of the European Ceramic Society (Multiphase imaging of freezing particle suspensions by confocal microscopy)
  • December 27, 2017 – New preprint: A temperature-controlled stage for laser scanning confocal microscopy and case studies in chemistry of materials. Where we make a case for chemists to use confocal microscopy.
  • December 25, 2017 – New preprint: Multiphase imaging of freezing particle suspensions by confocal microscopy. We used our brand new setup to look at the physics of ice templating. Dmytro’s work. Check it out ! The figures are on Figshare for easier reuse.
  • December 6, 2017 – Angewandte Chemie issued a nice press release about our latest paper with @LabGibson
  • November 17, 2017 – Science Post and La Provence writes about our Angew Paper on polyproline (in French)
  • November 15, 2017 – Our latest paper on drying is out in Physical Review Materials. This work was done during the postdoc of Cécile Noirjean and Moreno Marcellini. Looking at particles movement during drying with the confocal.
  • October 24, 2017 – The CNRS writes about our latest paper (in french). I’m also discussing it on the french radio show La Tête au Carré, on France Inter (also in french!).
  • October 18, 2017 – Our latest paper is out in Angew Chem. We helped Matt Gibson and his team investigates the cryopreservation performances of polyproline. Very cool. Moreno did the cryoconfocal imaging during his postdoc in the group.
  • October 3, 2017 – New preprint on arXiv, on the freezing of emulsions. This is what Dmytro was up to the last two years.
  • October 3, 2017 – Welcome to Sidhanth Tyagi, starting a PhD in the group on the freezing of emulsions (and more)
  • October 1, 2017 – Welcome to Hassan Saad, starting a PhD in the group, on bioinspired ceramics
  • June 21, 2017 – New paper out, in Scripta Materialia. A discussion of the possible future of ice-templating.
  • May 15, 2017 – Brice’s latest paper is out in Langmuir. An important one, a long time in the making.
  • March 2017 – Moreno’s latest paper is out, on freezing with zirconium acetate, in the Journal of Chemical Physics.
  • January 17, 2017 – Jordi’s latest paper on ice-templated tubes is out, in the Journal of the European Ceramic Society
  • January 15, 2017 – My book is published ! Phew. Get it here.