Tuning colloidal gels with ultrasound (PhD contract, M/F)

The PhD candidate will work within CoCoGel, a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Industrial Doctoral Network (DN) (HORIZON-MSCA-2022-DN-01-01) dedicated to Controlling Colloidal Gels for Novel Sustainable Materials.
CoCoGel aims to provide integrated training for early career researchers, enabling them to achieve scientific excellence and set the foundations of their future careers.

Applicants must hold a Master's Degree in Physics/Chemistry/Chemical Engineering/Materials science or other relevant disciple. A very competitive EU funding is offered for 36 months. To qualify for the positions, the applicant cannot have resided or carried out your main activity (work, studies, etc.) in the France for more than 12 months in the 36 months preceding the recruitment start date.

High-power ultrasound has long been known to disrupt particulate aggregates with applications to resuspension, filtration and cleaning, optimization of food products, and drug delivery. However, the underlying physical mechanisms remained unclear. Recently, we quantified the impact of high-power ultrasound on model colloidal gels, revealing substantial softening under ultrasonic vibrations associated with the nucleation of micron-sized cracks within the gel network [Physical Review X 10, 011028 (2020)].

Within “CoCoGel” (https://cocogel.iesl.forth.gr/), a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Industrial Doctoral Network, a PhD position is available at École Normale Supérieure de Lyon in collaboration with Valeria Garbin at the university TU Delft and Fabrice Toussaint at the Holcim Innovation Center.

The PhD candidate will investigate the properties of “rheo-acoustic” gels, i.e., colloidal gels that are mechanically responsive to ultrasound. Experiments will consist in tracking the system response to ultrasound through structural characterization (microscopy and light or X-ray scattering) and mechanical measurements (rheology and microrheology).

The PhD candidate will also explore some applications of the above concepts to industrial systems. In particular, the PhD candidate will spend about 15 months at the Holcim Innovation Center (Saint-Quentin-Fallavier, Fr) to use high-power ultrasound in order to control and tune the flow properties of cement pastes, a major current issue to reduce the carbon footprint of concretes. The PhD candidate will also explore application in Food science for 3 mounts at Unilever's global Foods Innovation Centre (Wageningen, NL)