Institut Néel - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique

About Institut Néel - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique

Institut Néel is a CNRS laboratory dealing with both fundamental and applied aspects of condensed matter physics, with activities at the interface with engineering, chemistry and biology. Its 450-strong staff includes 125 scientists, 50 (associate) professors from UGA, 130 support staff and 145 non-permanent members (PhDs, post-docs, visitors). The lab has established expertise in the development of energy-related materials including permanent magnets, magneto-caloric materials and hydrogen storage materials.

Role in project

PhD student 9 will join Dr Nora Dempsey and Dr Thibaut Devillers at Institut Néel to carry out a combinatorial search for materials with optimized properties for thermomagnetic power generation. Thin film libraries of compositionally graded thermomagnetic materials will be used to study the impact of composition and preparation conditions on structural and magnetic properties using high throughput scanning characterization techniques (EDX, XRD, MOKE) supported by machine learning (secondment @ DUK), together with detailed analysis (VSM-SQUID, SEM, TEM, specific heat) of select samples (secondment @ CNR). PhD student 9 will also contribute to the development of miniature-scale power generators at KIT, through the fabrication and patterning of thick films of optimised thermomagnetic and hard magnetic materials. PhD student 2, 3 & 10 will visit Institut Néel for secondments.