I freeze stuff. Lots of stuff. I’m kinda obsessed by freezing, actually. My background is materials science, so for many years, I’ve used freezing as a materials processing route, a process known as freeze-casting or ice-templating. My various areas of interest are therefore related to this peculiar and funny phenomenon.
My main focus now is on understanding how objects interact with growing ice crystals. Objects we look at include particles, micelles, droplets, bubbles or cells. We developed a unique cryoconfocal microscopy approach which let us investigate the dynamics of theses processes in situ, while imaging the various phases in presence. This research covers thus many different domains, from materials science to physics, chemistry, biophysics and earth sciences.
I looked previously at several aspects of the phenomenon, such as:
- Observe the freezing of colloids with optical microscopy, X-rays imaging, which eventually led us to develop confocal microscopy.
- Understand the freezing of colloids both from a theoretical and experimental point of view.
- Control ice growth and the freezing of colloids, with implications in biology in particular (antifreeze compounds).
- Use freezing to template porous or dense materials (ice-templating).
- Characterise the ice-templated materials, structurally and functionally, and try to find some applications for them.
- Use the growth of ice to induce various self-assembly phenomena.
- Eat a lot of ice cream
If you have new ideas about stuff we could freeze, keep in touch.
I still have some interest in processing and optimizing bioinspired ceramic composites, which exhibit a unique damage resistance. More explanations are provided here on this research.
We also experimented with data mining.
