SURFACE

This project concerns the acquisition of an Atomic Force Microscope (AFM) coupled to a scanning electrochemical microscope (SECM) and several additional modes for nanomechanical, electrical characterizations of materials surfaces and interfacial imaging at solid/liquid interfaces. The research group leading the project (ESPCI/IMAP) is a team whose activities are focused on the development and multi-physical characterisation of functional porous materials and their applications in health (drug delivery, biomaterial), energy (batteries, hydrogen,…) and environment (CO2 capture, sensing,…).

Among the different fields of application, we are working on (photo)electrochemical interfaces with electrocatalytic properties with a view to industrial applications in the field of energy (mainly around a set of reactions of high societal interest such as the dissociation of water for the production of green hydrogen, the reduction of CO2 for the production of synthetic fuels and the insertion of lithium for batteries and electrochemical energy storage). As part of various local, national and international collaborations, and in the frame of the national strategy of decarbonation (PEPR H2, PEPR DIADEM…) a major research focus of the team is to construct, characterise and optimise new two-dimensional electrochemical interfaces by controlled deposition of nanostructured electrocatalysts made up of transition metal complexes or nanostructured particles with electro-catalytic properties.

The difficulty lies in mastering the formation of molecular aggregates with a controlled topology, being able to highlight the order structure, and measuring the electrochemical properties in situ and on a local scale so as to be able to correlate structure and properties. Only modern analysis techniques that combine atomic force microscopy and scanning electrochemical microscopy make it possible to work on objects that are sufficiently well structured and characterised to understand the mechanisms of charge transfer between substrate and reaction centres.