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Coarse-grained simulations and viscoelastic behavior of polymeric photoactuators: a bottom-up strategy


Thesis topic details

General information

Organisation

The French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA) is a key player in research, development and innovation in four main areas :
• defence and security,
• nuclear energy (fission and fusion),
• technological research for industry,
• fundamental research in the physical sciences and life sciences.

Drawing on its widely acknowledged expertise, and thanks to its 16000 technicians, engineers, researchers and staff, the CEA actively participates in collaborative projects with a large number of academic and industrial partners.

The CEA is established in ten centers spread throughout France
  

Reference

SL-DAM-26-0537  

Direction

DAM

Thesis topic details

Category

Condensed Matter Physics, chemistry, nanosciences

Thesis topics

Coarse-grained simulations and viscoelastic behavior of polymeric photoactuators: a bottom-up strategy

Contract

Thèse

Job description

Mechanical actuators, like muscles, are materials that can change their own macroscopic shape to perform mechanical work when submitted to an external stimulus, such as light irradiation. The resulting photoactuators (PA) are based on a variety of photoactive materials including gels, crystals, liquid crystal elastomers (LCE) or polymer films forming polymeric PA (PPA). This project focuses on PPAs, usually made of elastomers in which photoactive molecules are inserted. To optimize the PPA properties, a precise understanding of the behavior of these materials at all scales is necessary. PPAs are viscoelastic by nature and therefore the continuous scale modeling of their behavior requires the knowledge of some specific mechanical properties, like the time-dependent relaxation moduli G(t) and K(t). At the supramolecular scale, these relaxation moduli can be obtained by Molecular Dynamics (MD) simulations using the Green-Kubo relation [3]. However, for these materials, the G(t) and K(t) timescales far exceed the accessible timescales of MD (on the order of thousands of seconds vs. microseconds). This PhD work has thus two main objectives to reduce this gap :(i) temperature-accelerated dynamics, (ii) anisotropic coarse-grained (CG) simulations.

University / doctoral school

Physique en Île-de-France (EDPIF)
Paris-Saclay

Thesis topic location

Site

DAM Île-de-France

Requester

Position start date

01/09/2026

Person to be contacted by the applicant

Pineau Nicolas nicolas.pineau@cea.fr
CEA
DAM/DPEM//DPEM
CEA DAM Ile de France
Bruyères-le-Châtel
91297 Arpajon
0169264000

Tutor / Responsible thesis director

Lemarchand Claire claire.lemarchand@cea.fr
CEA
DAM/DPEM//DPEM
CEA DAM Ile de France
Bruyères-le-Châtel
91297 Arpajon
0169264000

En savoir plus

https://www-lmce.cea.fr/team/condensed_matter_physics/lemarchand.html
https://www-lmce.cea.fr/