PhD student on Photocatalysis revealed by Electrochemiluminescence

Employeur

The University of Bordeaux is a great dynamic and responsible university that cares about the well-being of its staff. Joining us means working in a privileged environment within a particularly diverse and open professional community, benefiting from welcome and inclusion schemes, training and internal mobility. It means participating in an academic, scientific and human adventure. It means committing to meeting the challenges of the 21st century.

Join the Institute of Mechanics and Engineering (I2M) – of the University of Bordeaux! The I2M is a joint research unit, under the supervision of the University of Bordeaux, CNRS, ENSAM, Bordeaux INP, INRAE, which covers the entire spectrum of solid, fluid and energy mechanics.

It currently employs 340 people and has an annual budget of more than 5 million euros. The laboratory is organized into 6 research departments and is also a member of the Carnot ARTS Institute.

As part of the Priority Research Program and Equipment funded by the National Research Agency LUMA VISIBLE, we are recruiting a PhD student whose work will focus on numerical modeling of radiation and its interaction with the microfluidic photocatalyst.

This VISIBLE project aims to develop a new imaging method to accelerate the development of photocatalysis and solar fuel production. The two main objectives of VISIBLE are imaging the reactivity of unique photocatalysts suspended in a solution (a fundamental advance that has never been reported until now) and fast, high-throughput optical mapping of photocatalytic reactivity (which will be directly applied to the optimization of photocatalysts).

Votre mission

The conversion of light into chemical bonds is at the origin of life on Earth thanks to natural photosynthesis. However, the deployment of man-made artificial photocatalytic systems to achieve reliable synthesis of solar fuels (such as H2) has so far been a failure. Indeed, photocatalytic systems are extremely difficult to study because often the only data that can be extracted to understand their mechanisms is the final analysis of products. This significantly limits our ability to elucidate the mechanisms that occur within the photocatalyst and at the photocatalyst/liquid interface.

This PhD project aims to model and numerically simulate the radiation transfer and its interaction with the suspended photocatalyst in a microfluidic system. The latter will be designed to control and study reactions in photocatalysis using imaging techniques:

-        UV-visible spectroscopic analysis of the photocatalyzed solution (PC-ECL)

-        imaging the electrochemiluminescence effects of the solution.

You will work from a theoretical framework based on the formalism of path integrals that facilitate the consideration of multiphysical and non-linear couplings encountered when different scales of physical descriptions come into play in photoreactive systems [1,2].

You will rely on the Monte Carlo method to solve these models in path integrals [3, 4] and will be led to take charge and develop calculation codes allowing to numerically generate [5] the measured images from the microfluidic device.

[1] Supplis, Caroline, et al. "Radiative analysis of luminescence in photoreactive systems: Application to photosensitizers for solar fuel production." Plos one 16.7 (2021): e0255002.
[2] Dauchet, Jérémi, et al. "Addressing nonlinearities in monte carlo." Scientific reports 8.1 (2018): 13302.
[3] Tregan, Jean Marc, et al. "Coupling radiative, conductive and convective heat-transfers in a single Monte Carlo algorithm: A general theoretical framework for linear situations." PLoS One 18.4 (2023): e0283681.
[4] Villefranque, Najda, et al. "The “teapot in a city”: A paradigm shift in urban climate modeling." Science Advances 8.27 (2022): eabp8934.
[5] Bati, Mégane, et al. "Coupling conduction, convection and radiative transfer in a single path-space: Application to infrared rendering." ACM Transactions on Graphics (TOG) 42.4 (2023): 1-20.

Vos atouts / Vos talents

Holder of a Master’s degree or an Engineering degree in physics or energy engineering, you know a strong motivation for research and an appetite for the application of photoprocesses.

Good communication skills are required, including fluent scientific English for writing and presenting research work.

•       You have strong skills in radiative transfer, optical imaging and a particular interest in photoacatalysis and/or electrochemistry

•       You have an interest in the modeling of a concrete study object and scientific computing: programming in C language, Python, etc.

•       You have excellent interpersonal skills and know how to communicate in English (level C1/B2) in order to present your work

•       You like to work in a multicultural and multifaceted context

Do you recognize yourself? Apply!

More information:

By joining this research project, you will work closely with the partner laboratories: the Institute of Molecular Sciences (ISM) in Bordeaux, the Institute of Chemistry and Processes for Energy, Environment and Health (ICPEES) in Strasbourg, the Institute of Physics of Rennes (IPR) and the multidisciplinary network EDStar for the interface between physics and computer science (development of free software tools).

You will be supervised by Stéphane CHEVALIER, Teacher and researcher in energy, and fully integrated into the TREFLE team.

Based in Talence, Gironde FRANCE.

The laboratory is near the city-centre of Bordeaux and about 60 Km of the Atlantic coast – access by tramway line B (stop « Peixotto ») buses, bike.

36-month fixed-term contract

Gross monthly salary: 2300€

NB: the position is based in a laboratory in the Restrictive Zone, which requires an investigation prior to hiring, which can take up to 8 weeks.

Job Benefits:

50 days of annual leave from the first year

75% of the cost of a Gironde public transport pass covered

Contribution to private healthcare insurance of 15€ / month

Subsidised meals

Leisure, sports and cultural activities for all staff

Disabled-friendly establishment

Possibility of staff parking

Sustainable mobility package for commuting between home and work

Welcome programme and training courses

Recruitment process: Applications are reviewed as they arrive.

Candidates selected for an interview will be contacted by the Recruitment Officer for a first pre-qualification phone conversation. An interview with the supervisor will then be organised by videoconference.