This thesis will take place between two main laboratories. Laboratoire Hubert Curien in Saint-Etienne and Surface du verre et interfaces, a joint unit between Saint-Gobain and the CNRS within the Saint-Gobain Research center in Aubervilliers. The student will be based in St Etienne and will travel to Aubervilliers when needed.

This PhD is part of the ANR ULTRAZO project, whose goal is to intimately understand and master the local laser modification dynamics at different time scales in out-of-equilibrium inorganic metal oxides. The idea is to deliver precise amounts of energy with precise spatial and temporal widths to control the transformations and strongly reduce undesired processes.

Thesis objectives:
- Implementing pump-probe characterization techniques in regimes of reversible or non-reversible modifications of the AZO thin films.
- Characterizing the evolution of the excess carrier density and the recombination time in the different samples and contributing to the optimization of the AZO film properties.
- Characterize the permanent modifications induced by ultrafast lasers.

The student will interact with a second student (to be hired) studying permanent modifications induced by lasers in sputtered AZO films, but also with a postdoc (to be hired) carrying out atomistic simulations.