Research associate Dr. Francois Guillou is offering one Master’s project (plus one optional depending on attendance) starting in September 2019. Since March 2018, he works at the Inner Mongolia Normal University, and more specifically at the Key Laboratory for physics and chemistry of functional materials as professor (Foreign High-level Talents & Professionals) to conduct research and teach materials science and condensed matter physics.
Prior 2018, he participated in research at international level through doctoral (France) and several postdoctoral projects on magnetic and caloric materials. During his postdocs, he joined leading groups in the field of functional magnetic materials for energy of Prof. Dr. E. Bruck (TU Delft, Netherlands) and Prof. Dr. V.K. Pecharsky (Ames Laboratory, USA), and also worked at a state of the art synchrotron facility (ID12 beamline, ESRF, France).
F. Guillou already supervised several BsC students (~10), MsC students (3) and was daily supervisor of one PhD student. All of them successfully defended their work. Within the 10 years from the beginning of his PhD till today, F. Guilloupublished 18 articles as first author in regular peer reviewed international journals, including high impact journals (Advanced Materials, Nature Communication). He also wrote 3 patents for the BASF company, and contributed to 20 additional articles published in regular peer reviewed international journals. It should be highlighted that all the projects F. Guillou was involved in have systematically led to publications at international level. He regularly presented (with vast majority of oral presentation) his work in international conferences. F. Guillou is currently leading one NSFC project and one IMNU project.
Preliminary Master’ project(s) plan, starting September 2019:
1- Developing state of the art thermal measurements for caloric materials.
Making accurate and reliable measurements is an essential precondition in experimental physics. While several commercial solutions exist to perform thermal measurements (temperature, specific heat) the specificities of caloric materials call for home-made probes with particular designs. The first and main goal of this master’s project will be to develop one differentialscanning calorimetry probe and one direct temperature change probe compatible with the versatile environment of the Quantum Design Versalab system. While all the required physical components are already available at Key laboratory, a significant amount of work will be required on building a LabVIEW interface. The second step of the project will consist in performing such measurements on reference materials. Finally, measurements on samples prepared at IMNU and in collaborating laboratories will be carried out.
Main skills going to be developed:Metrology, LabVIEW programming, basis of magnetic and caloric materials, physical measurements in general, independent scientific work.
(2)- Toward rare-earth free permanent magnets deriving from Fe2P (optional)
Our recent discovery of a significant magneto-crystalline anisotropy at room temperature in quaternaries deriving from Fe2P offers great promisesfor creating rare-earth free permanent magnets. However, before such permanent magnets can be produced routinely several challenges need to be tackled: 1-creation of remanence and coercivity by control of defects concentration and particle size reduction ; 2- creation of oriented bonded permanent magnets ; 3- Compositional optimization and formulation of new compounds ; 4- understanding of the structure-properties relationships and origin of the magnetic anisotropy. This project will involve an extensive experimental work from synthesis of magnetic materials, chemical characterizations to magnetic measurements.
Main skills going to be developed:Synthesis of materials by various methods, chemical characterizations including x-ray diffraction and electronic microscopy, physical measurements with emphasis on magnetic measurements, independent scientific work.
English will be the working language for the project(s).
Contact: francoisguillou@imnu.edu.cn