LEDNA (Laboratoire Edifices Nanométriques) is a research laboratory with 18 permanent staff and a dozen PhD students, post-docs and fixed-term contracts.
Focused on fundamental nanoscience research, its expertise focuses on the bottom-up development of methods for the synthesis and elaboration of original nano-objects or nanostructured materials. The aim is to develop applications with a high societal impact in the fields of energy, the environment, health and functional composite materials.
LEDNA’s main scientific objective is to study the physico-chemical phenomena involved in the design of high-performance synthesis processes (yield, efficiency, etc.) in the gas or liquid phase, and to analyze their intrinsic physical, chemical and mechanical properties as a result of their small size, or after they have been shaped into materials or devices, with a view to their application.
This research is organized around several themes:
- Gas-phase synthesis:
- Gas-phase synthesis (laser pyrolysis, CVD, PVD, etc.) of nanoparticles or nanocomposite thin films,
- Synthesis of carbon nanostructures (e.g. aligned carbon nanotubes, nanodiamonds)
- Development of nanostructured electrocatalysts,
- Liquid synthesis:
- Gold nanoparticles for plasmonics and nanomedicine,
- Synthesis of nanoporous oxide materials
- Electrochemical synthesis of nanostructured oxide thin films
LEDNA is also involved in cross-disciplinary work on surface functionalization and nano-object shaping. It is interested in the societal impacts of these nano-objects by studying their toxicity, in collaboration with biologists.
To carry out these studies, the LEDNA is developing instrumentation:
- aerodynamic lenses to generate nanoparticle jets for synthesis and analysis (in the laboratory and on synchrotron)
- synthesis devices dedicated to in situ analysis (laboratory and synchrotron)
- on-line process analysis techniques (mass spectrometry, LIBS, etc.)
and has high-performance characterization equipment adapted to the study of nanoobjects:
- FEG-SEM,
- Raman Spectroscopy,
- Photon Correlation Spectroscopy, etc…
and measurements of chemical, physical or mechanical properties:
- electrical,
- electrochemical measurements
- etc..
LEDNA also works with major instruments (SOLEIL, ESRF, etc.), submitting projects and collaborating on internal beam time.
One of the specific features of the LEDNA team is the balance between academic and applied research: for systems that have reached a level of maturity that enables them to be proposed for industrial use, LEDNA works on joint R&D projects to transpose the synthesis processes and devices developed in the laboratory to the next pre-industrial scale (prototypes, TRL 2 to 5). To achieve this, LEDNA relies on existing partnerships: (Sté Nawatechnologies, Sté Ethera, RTE-France…) or those under construction, and collaborates with numerous national research teams (ICMO and LPS d’Orsay, CEA-LITEN, ICGM Montpellier, LNIO UTT-Troyes…) or international teams (NTU Singapore, Karlsruhe-KIT, University of Birmingham…).