MasterNanosciences, nanotechnologies

Nanofluidics is the science of flows  at the molecular scale. It lies at the frontier between the  continuum of fluid mechanics and the atomic nature of matter. It is a field with many connections between fundamental science and innovation, in particular in the domain of sustainable energies,  desalination, osmotic energy, or electrical-to-mechanical energy conversion (motors) without magnets.

 In our team we have developed unique experiments to study fluid transport at the nanoscale, demonstrating giant osmotic pressures in hydrophobic nanomaterials,  probing nano-hydrodynamics inside electrostatic double layers, or measuring minute flow rates at the scale of a single nanopore.

The internship that we propose aims at studying experimentally the friction of liquids onto solid surfaces.   It is has been recently discovered that friction at the liquid/ solid interface involves quantic coupling between electronic clouds in the solid and charge fluctuations in the liquid. In collaboration with the Quantum Plumbing Lab of Pr Kavokine at EPFL, we plan to extract the liquid friction at walls  from flow rate measurements in pores of nanometric radii. Flowrate measurement will be carried out with a unique sensor of extreme sensitivity that was specifically developed in LIPhy for the exploration of flow in nanopores.

References

B. Coquinot, L. Bocquet and N. Kavokine. Quantum feedback at the solid-liquid interface: flow-induced current and its negative contribution to friction. Phys. Rev. X 13, 011019 (2023)

A Direct Sensor to Measure Minute Liquid Flow Rates Preeti Sharma, Jean-François Motte, Frank Fournel, Benjamin Cross and Cyril Picard, NanoLetters 18, 9 (2018).

Expected skills

This project is appropriate for  students in Master of Physics of Complex Systems - or  Applied Mechanics.
A taste for experiments is required.

International collaboration

The project is proposed in collaboration with Pr Kavokine, Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne. Webpage