Permanent positions
Young researchers potentially interested in applying to the CNRS in 2025 with the Soft Matter Team should contact us rapidly, preferably before end of September 2024.
Please email Luca.Cipelletti [at] umontpellier.fr.
Postdoc & PhD
We always encourage applications from highly motivated, intelligent and hard-working students and postdoctoral fellows. Note that poorly written, obscure, and mass-mailed applications will not be considered. Concerning the PhD opportunities of the lab, only a few of them are dedicated to Soft Matter and/or Biophysics. Depending on the period of the year, you may found some of the open positions below.
PhD position: Coupled evolution of the physical properties of filled
elastomers
for smart damage detection
We seek to fill a PhD position at the physics department (Laboratoire Charles Coulomb, U Montpellier), in collaboration with IMP Lyon, on the characterization of dynamical features in filled elastomers as smart tools for early, in-situ, non-destructive detection of fatigue damage. Material failures may have catastrophic consequences, with significant management, repair, and recycling costs. A promising strategy to reduce the environmental impact is to develop new predictive maintenance methods with the aim of extending the operating time. Our project proposes the development of a methodology for the real-time electrical detection of damage in filled elastomers.
The starting date for this position is October 2024, with an application deadline on the 12th of May. More information and contact information can be found in the following PDF file.
PhD position: Brittle-to-Ductile Yielding Transition in Colloidal Gels and Glasses
Understanding the response of soft materials under stress is of paramount importance, both fundamentally and in applications. Very often, the mechanical response of the material is dictated by its interactions with surfaces. To overcome this issue and probe the intrinsic properties of materials, we will produce unique spherical beads of gel and glasses of millimetric size. The gels and glasses are based on colloidal particles. The gels consist in a homogeneous porous stress-bearing network structure and the glasses consist in a dense packing of the particles. Our objective is to rationalize the fate of the beads under a mechanical compression, and especially understand how they yield. We want to investigate the complex interplay between the flow of liquid through the pores (the poroelasticity), the plasticity and fracture of the structure. We expect to unveil the physical mechanisms that control whether a bead of gel or glass yields in a brittle or ductile manner.
We will use a multiscale approach that combines mechanical measurements under compression, image analysis, and time- and space-resolved light scattering. We will explore several strategies to produce unique beads of colloidal gels and glasses with tunable toughness and brittleness. We will build an optical set-up to measure with a space and time resolution the microscopic rearrangements of the colloids in the bead during compression. We will measure concomitantly the mechanical response of the bead to the compressive stress and image the overall behavior of the bead.
The work will be performed under the supervision of Laurence Ramos and Luca Cipelletti, in close collaboration with Christian Ligoure. The expecting starting time is September 2024, more details about the application process can be found in the following PDF file.