Internship Adhesion at carbon fibres/polymers interfaces

Job description

General Information

Location:

·  City:Saint-Fons
·  Country:France
·  Region:Europe

Job Category: Research & Innovation
Job Type: Internship
Type of Contract: Other
Working time: Full-time
Work schedule: Day shift

Solvay is a science company whose technologies bring benefits to many aspects of daily life. With more than 24,100 employees in 64 countries, Solvay bonds people, ideas and elements to reinvent progress. The Group seeks to create sustainable shared value for all, notably through its Solvay One Planet plan crafted around three pillars: protecting the climate, preserving resources and fostering better life. The Group’s innovative solutions contribute to safer, cleaner, and more sustainable products found in homes, food and consumer goods, planes, cars, batteries, smart devices, health care applications, water and air purification systems. Founded in 1863, Solvay today ranks among the world’s top three companies for the vast majority of its activities and delivered net sales of €10.2 billion in 2019. Solvay is listed on Euronext Brussels (SOLB) and Paris and in the United States, where its shares (SOLVY) are traded through a Level I ADR program.

The Research & Innovation function (R&I) leads Solvay into new growth territories with breakthrough innovation to generate new products, applications and processes in the field of sustainable chemistry. Partners with the GBUs to deliver more value and leverages the Group’s capabilities to improve competitiveness and create new business opportunities for Solvay and its customers.

The adhesion strength between two different surfaces - either metal/polymer, polymer/polymer or carbon fibers/polymer in composites – stems from complex intertwined mechanisms. Among them, one can find energy dissipation, wettability of polymer during application, molecular bonds, surface energy and interactions or inter-diffusion of polymer chains when applicable. The mechanical tests are a classical routine test in industry to assess adhesion as it is close to the final application, though it can be somehow difficult to identify the precise limiting mechanism to optimize. This is why a quantification of the surface energy and interactions alone can contribute to the global understanding. Indeed, measuring the contact angle of solvents on surfaces can characterize these interactions in a very quick and efficient way to boost adhesion understanding (Surface Energy Theory). The first question is to what extent and to which systems we can apply this method to interfaces met in Solvay activities. The second question is to develop new materials with enhanced adhesion thanks to this new approach.

Job Overview and Responsibilities

The intern will be in charge of:

·  defining the most precise and reliable set-up to do so, adapting it to the specific interfaces family we want to study
·  highlighting the added value of this approach of this family of interfaces from experimental results
·  and finally developing a proof-of-concept on new treatments of interfaces to increase adhesion.

This paid internship is in our R&D centre in Lyon (Saint-Fons), in a team devoted to material development with multiple expertise ranging from simulations, material mechanics to polymer synthesis and physical chemistry. A more specific team is currently working on interfaces properties for development of new materials. The intern will be supervised by two persons with a physical-chemistry background. A support from another team is scheduled for the set-up definition.

Education and Experience

M2 ou M1 in physical-chemistry, material science

Skills

The intern will ideally have an education in material science or physical-chemistry (Master1, Master2), especially in polymers, she/he will have a curiosity for building new simple set-ups, and be proactive on technical solutions, ideas and bibliography.