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ESPCI Paris - PSL
ESPCI Paris - PSL is a major institution of higher education (a French "Grande École d’ingénieurs"), an internationally renowned research center, and a fertile ground of innovation for industry. Founded by the City of Paris in 1882, for over a century the School has attracted leading scientific innovators like Nobel Prize laureates Pierre and Marie Curie, Paul Langevin, Frédéric Joliot-Curie, Pierre-Gilles de Gennes, and Georges Charpak, who continue to contribute to the institution’s international reputation. The School’s culture of excellence remains as vibrant as ever. Fully 60% of (...)
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Welcome to PSL University! By joining ESPCI paris- PSL, you also join PSL university and its 17 000 students. You get access to an exceptionnel education in sciences, arts, litterature and culture. From Bachelor to PhD, academic programs cover all the fields from sciences, human and social sciences, engineering and arts. PSL targets high-potential students, from every horizon, an accompagnies them towards excellence. Your education will be operated by ESPCI paris - PSL, and your degree delivered by PSL University. Discover the education programs of PSL University Ingénieur ESPCI Paris - (...)
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ESPCI Paris - PSL is home to 10 research laboratories (all of them being endorsed and jointly sponsored by CNRS) operating at the frontiers of scientific knowledge and experimental know-how, extending from fundamental research to innovation, and covering areas ranging from polymers to telecommunications, from nanobiophysics to organic synthesis, from environmental science to biomedical imaging, from neurobiology to microfluidics, from soft matter to quantum physics, and from colloids to prototyping for industry. ESPCI researchers publish around 500 scientific articles in leading (...)
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ESPCI: generating innovation and jobs ESPCI is also known for its capacity to encourage major innovations. Did you know that as well as radium, polonium, actinium and lutecium, many other objects from our everyday lives were first discovered or created at ESPCI, like the neon tube, the black box, the quartz watch, sonar, wireless technology, self-healing rubber or even ultrafast ultrasound imaging? An entrepreneurial culture More and more graduates create their own companies after graduation or after their PhD. This capacity to innovation is highly valued today. ESPCI courses (...)
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The Department of International Relations is pursuing the intellectual globalisation in postgraduate education and interdisciplinary research, ambitioned since the foundation of our institution, and welcoming the most talented people from around the world. We are focusing on branding of the iconic French elite engineering education and boosting european and international mobilities throughout the world-distinguished institutions. French Engeering Degree webpage Master Programme webpage Doctoral Study (...)
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ESPCI Paris is at the center of a large network of partnering agreements. These are three-way institutional partnerships - notably with the City of Paris, and ParisTech -, as well as academic, scientific and industrial partnerships enriched by the School’s energy, expertise and creativity. The commitment to transdisciplinarity extends beyond the School’s Paris campus. Today’s complex scientific and technological issues often demand a broader view and collaboration, with the deployment of complementary, hybrid approaches and the sharing of best practices in order to pool resources and (...)

Fluodamage: an ERC-POC project at ESPCI

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22/01/2020

The ERC-POC FLUODAMAGE project of Costantino Creton, CNRS Research Director at the SIMM laboratoryand Dean of Research at ESPCI Paris, has just been selected among the 76 winning projects of the third ERC Proof of Concept call. A first step to help researchers to test the potential applications of their discovery. FLUODAMAGE is a project to study materials close to rupture, using molecular markers and non-invasive optical imaging techniques.

When the material is broken, a fluorescence phenomenon is observed, linked to chemical bond scission at certain locations in the material (in the presence of molecular markers). © Juliette Slootman (recent doctoral thesis on this subject) Fluorescent molecules to detect weaknesses in a material.

Costantino Creton’s team has developed an experiment that relies on the incorporation of fluorescent molecules to track how certain materials fail due to mechanical stress.
"Our laboratory experiments work fairly well with model systems, but we know that industrial problems are more complex," says Creton. For industrialists, it is above all a question of service life: how can we predict the service life of a soft material (rubber, tyre, sealant or adhesive), without beaking it?

The SIMM laboratory team hopes to be able to detect a low level of damage by non-destructive testing. The project, which is expected to last 18 months, is also funded with 150,000 euros. The researchers will be able to develop a longer test and verify their hypothesis in conditions close to actual use.
"This is very good news, we are going to be able to take our tests further thanks to this original call for projects, for the preparation of which the CNRS Innovation team has been of invaluable assistance"

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