[20111000] PhD position in experimental condensed matter physics, Montpellier, France

PhD position in experimental condensed matter physics -- 2011 in Laboratoire Charles Coulomb, CNRS - University of Montpellier 2, FRANCE

Elastic properties of glasses under high pressure

Because of their dominant brittle character, glasses experience plasticity only under very high pressure or high stress concentration conditions. For example, the plastic properties of glasses condition their resistance to surface damage. For reasons which are both theoretical (the absence of a crystalline lattice
does not allow the use of dislocations to explain plasticity) and practical (the micrometric scale of the plastic zone makes difficult the measurements of deformations) the plastic behaviour of oxide glasses remains ill understood. Glasses are furthermore subjected to a mechanical ageing effect, i.e. hardening: the plastic criterion depends on the history of mechanical loading. We propose to use high resolution Brillouin spectroscopy to study the effect of plastic deformation on the glass structure and to progress toward the identification of the plastic constitutive law for glasses. Diffraction experiments hardly give information at the mesoscopic length scale in glasses, i.e. a few nanometers, where disorder comes into play. Though indirect, vibrational spectroscopy has proven to be a powerful alternative. We develop in Montpellier our own world-class spectrometers (hyper-Raman and high resolution Brillouin spectroscopies) together withs trong collaborations with other experimental groups or large-scale facilities.

See http://www.coulomb.univ-montp2.fr/-Theme-Structure-vibration-
Requirements: candidates should have solid background in solid state physics and be interested in experimentation.

For more information, contact: Marie.Foret@univ-montp2.fr / Coralie.Weigel@univ-montp2.fr
(send a detailed c.v., the results of 1st and second year of Master's degree and a letter of recommendation of the professor responsible for the Master's degree)

Thesis grant : 1684,93 euros monthly gross (from October, 2011 till October, 2014)