Aya Azeddioui, a third-year PhD student at LNAR receives the Young Researcher Presentation Award (ICC'11, Sapporo, Japan)

Aya Azeddioui, a third-year PhD student at the Laboratory of Adaptive Nanomaterials for Energy (LNAR) at ICSM, supervised by Xavier Deschanels and Vanessa Proust, received the Young Researcher Presentation Award at the 11th International Congress on Ceramics (ICC'11), held in Sapporo, Japan. The award recognized her work on the behaviour of mesoporous materials (SiO₂, C and TiO₂) under the combined effects of heating and irradiation.

Understanding the structural and thermal evolution of mesoporous materials under ion irradiation is a major challenge for the development of innovative nuclear matrices, radioactive waste management, and the design of materials capable of withstanding extreme environments. As part of her PhD research, Aya Azeddioui investigates the combined effects of irradiation and heating on mesoporous oxide and carbon thin films (SiO₂, TiO₂ and C). The main objective is to understand and model the nanoscale mechanisms governing pore closure and compaction. The results presented at ICC'11 highlight a synergistic effect between thermal energy input and ion energy deposition.

The simultaneous application of heating at 600 °C and an ion beam (35 MeV Ar and 0.5 MeV Au) considerably accelerates the compaction of mesoporous SiO₂ films compared with irradiation at room temperature, with saturation reached at relatively moderate doses. Irradiation with 0.5 MeV Au ions enhances atomic diffusion, thereby accelerating the densification of the mesoporous network through an irradiation-assisted sintering process. To validate this hypothesis, the ANR AUDACE project will investigate irradiation-induced damage caused by alpha decays following the incorporation of plutonium into the mesoporous silica structure.

Aya Azeddioui will defend her PhD thesis on 4 December at 2:00 p.m. in the Godechot Lecture Hall at the École Nationale Supérieure de Chimie de Montpellier (ENSCM)

^{Credit: ICSM}