Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1 (UCBL)

University Claude Bernard Lyon 1 (UCBL) is a multidisciplinary university in the primary fields of physics, chemistry, technical and material sciences, life sciences, medicine and pharmacy. It is part of the Université de Lyon, the most important French University site outside the Paris region. The University has 67 state-funded research units in which more than 2900 professors and assistant professors - of which 700 are also hospital practitioners – are involved in both fundamental and applied research. This leads to the involvement of ULyon in more than 4500 internationally published articles and 40 patents per year, making UCBL the 41st most innovative university in Europe in 2019).
UCBL is involved through 2 of its major research units:

Team 1: The Institute of Light and Matter

The Institute of Light and Matter is concerned essentially with the study of matter and its physico-chemical properties from a fundamental point of view but always keeping in mind applications in the fields of health, energy and environment. The 'Luminescence' team of ILM has a longstanding experience on the study of optical properties of solids, nanoparticles and plasma. The team develops as well material synthesis and has therefore skill in crystal growth as well as Laser Ablation in Liquid for nanoparticles synthesis. Among all activities of the team scintillating materials preparation as well as scintillating processes analysis and modelling enters fully in the scope of the team research areas. The team has been developing now since a few years an activity in nano-optics aiming to analyze the optical properties of nanoparticles down to single particle level.

Team 2: The Chemistry Laboratory

The Chemistry Laboratory is a joint unit operated by the CNRS, the École Normale Supérieure of Lyon and Université Lyon 1. It is currently managed by C. Andraud with this organization. It used to be directed by P. Sautet up to January 2011. The Chemistry Laboratory spans a range of specialties in chemistry and physical chemistry. It develops interdisciplinary research projects at the frontiers with biology, material sciences and physics. The research themes cover a wide spectrum of expertise in experimental chemistry (organic, inorganic and materials synthesis) together with characterization and modeling. The scientific interdisciplinary projects of the laboratory, which are partly related to societal issues (environment, health, defense, information and communication technologies, textiles) are centered on three themes:
-   systems for biology: imaging, diagnosis and therapy;
-   systems with specific properties: properties for applications related to optics, magnetism, to supramolecular heterogeneous catalysis, to the detection of gaseous molecules, to chiral recognition or to the development of functional textiles;
-   computational modeling: reactivity (exploration of reaction pathways in heterogeneous catalysis), spectroscopy (modeling of excited states for magnetic or optical systems), and development of models for enzymatic and biomolecular systems.

These projects are developed within three axis:
-   Supramolecular Chemistry and Chemical Biology
-   Theoretical Chemistry
-   Functional Materials and Photonics
In the latter axis we aim to bring together multidisciplinary expertise involving Molecular Chemistry, Materials Science and Photonic to develop innovative systems based on functional nanomaterials. Interest is important in application areas relating to health care, energy, optics, communications, environment and textiles. The “Functional Materials” team of this axis develops activity in the field of the synthesis of molecular precursors of materials, the preparation of materials of various shapes (particles, films, porous and non-porous monoliths) using colloidal chemistry and soft-chemistry routes (sol-gel), the design of plasmonic structures (metal nanoparticles, plasmonic composite films and monoliths), composite inorganic or hybrid materials, and the surface modification. Among the expertise, the control of interfaces is crucial both on inorganic and hybrid materials.

Principal investigators

Christophe Dujardin holds a full professor position since 2004, is the leader of the ILM team “Luminescence” since 2007. Christophe Dujardin obtained his PhD at the University of Lyon in Physics in 1993. He obtained an assistant professor position in Lyon in 1993 and a NATO fellowship to carry research on scintillator for Positron Emission Tomography in Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory in 1995. He has been appointed as full professor since 2004.
His research is centered on light matter interactions, with a particular focus on luminescence. Three aspects are particularly developed: luminescent nanostructures & nano-optics, scintillating materials & processes as well as Pulsed Laser Ablation in Liquids. He is a physicist, mainly experimentalist in optics, working in close connection with chemists, particularly for the elaboration of inorganic solids as crystals, thin films and nanoparticles as well as for the fine understanding of the structure – optical properties relations.
Since 2006, he leads the “Luminescence” research group at ILM involving about 30 researchers (15 of them holding a permanent position) along several research topics combining material chemistry, optical spectroscopy and the physics of the interaction between light and matter. The group is operating several experiments in laser spectroscopy, nano-optics, laser ablation in liquids, crystal growth and colloidal chemistry. He is a co-funder of the spin-of company ICOHUP also involved in the SPARTE project. His work lead to 190 publications more than 90 in the last 10 years (from 2009) and 2 patents. The total amount of citations is over 6000, leading to a h-index of 37 (WOS) and 43 (Google Scholar). He gave presentations in more than 20 invited conferences these last 10 years. He is the chairman of the international Advisory Committee of the conference series SCINT (Inorganic Scintillator and their Applications).

After graduating as an engineer at Ecole Nationale Supérieur de Céramique Industrielle (Limoges, France), Frédéric Chaput obtained a PhD in Science of Ceramic Materials at Ecole Polytechnique (Palaiseau, France) on a theme that deals with dielectric materials used in microelectronics. He then spent part of his professional career (20 years) at the Ecole Polytechnique as a researcher in the field of hybrid organic-inorganic nanomaterials for different applications (optic, mechanics, electronics…). In addition, he held a one-year postdoctoral position at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) on the preparation and characterization of aerogels for applications in the field of lithium batteries. Frédéric Chaput worked in several French high-tech companies (Essilor, Varioptic, Mathym) as a guest scientist or scientific advisor. He co-founded Mathym SAS in September 2013. Within these companies, he developed nanoparticles in the form of colloidal solutions for various applications, including optical, mechanical, electronic or biomedical. He is currently director of research at the CNRS at the Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon, Chemistry Laboratory. His main scientific interests are currently in the preparation, shaping and characterization of ceramic materials from nanoparticles for a wide range of applications including scintillators. His skills allow him to go as far as studying the components that result from the assembly of these ceramic nanomaterials. He is co-author of more than 200 scientific publications. In recognition of his research, he has received numerous awards. He has filed several patents in various fields. He has a H-index = 39 (WOS) and 44 (Google Scholar).