Internship offers

5-6 months - Start in February 2025 - Printed electronics is a promising approach to producing electronic devices, saving energy, solvents and resources compared with microelectronic processes. These processes make extensive use of conductive screen printing inks. The influence of their composition on the structural and functional properties of the final deposits is poorly understood, mainly due to a lack of knowledge of commercial ink formulations. This project aims to identify the mechanisms likely to dominate the rheological behavior of commercial inks.

5-6 months - Start in February 2025 - Printed electronics is a fast-growing field requiring the printing of high-performance conductive and functional inks with new target properties such as sensor functions. The development of low-cost, high-volume gas-sensitive sensors is of great interest because of the wide range of potential applications. These include industrial processes, biotechnology and food packaging. The implementation of printing processes on paper substrates is one strategy for addressing this issue. The collaboration between the LGP2 laboratory and SPRYNGS company, supported by the Tec21 Laboratory of Excellence, aims to explore this approach by combining expertise in printing, functional materials and sensor design coupled with antenna systems.

5-6 months - Start in February/April 2025 - Optically active materials and devices can be found in a wide range of energy, environmental and healthcare applications, including semiconductors, photovoltaics, catalysts, sensors and more. To foster an eco-designed manufacturing strategy for the production of these optically active systems with low energy consumption, it is essential to promote the processing of aqueous functional fluids incorporating highly efficient particles, in order to propose a complete architecture printing approach. To this end, EC-LIPSE proposes to address eco-design and the development of innovative sustainable methods for the fabrication of efficient optically active systems (with a first concrete focus on electrochromic devices (ECD)).

5-6 months - Start in February 2025 - The use of cellulosic substrates for printed electronics is a major advantage, enabling electronic equipment to be recycled and the recovered fractions to be recycled. Electronics are often printed on plastic, which makes recycling difficult if not impossible. In 2019, of the 53.6 Mt of electronic and electrical waste produced worldwide, only 17.4% was properly collected and recycled. Printed circuit boards contain the majority of precious metals (Au, Ag, Pd, Cu, etc.). However, the widely used epoxy resin-based substrate makes it difficult to extract and recycle these metals. This support can be replaced by a paper support. The results of the CircEl-Paper and REVeBIO projects have shown that it is possible to optimise conventional paper recycling processes in order to successfully separate silver inks from cellulose fibres.

5-6 months - Starting in February/March 2025 - Lignin, the second most abundant natural biopolymer after cellulose, represents the largest source of aromatic compounds and holds significant potential for developing materials with antioxidant, antibacterial, and UV-blocking properties. Nevertheless, its application is constrained by its heterogeneity and complex structure, which adversely affect its physicochemical properties and reactivity, thus limiting its applications in materials. Functionalization of lignin through esterification could enhance its solubility and compatibility with hydrophobic matrices. Among the modification approaches, enzymatic functionalization emerges as a more environmentally friendly alternative, offering greater selectivity for the transformation of this biopolymer.

5-6 months - Starting in February/March 2025 - The use of materials derived from plant biomass (cellulose, lignin) for high-value-added applications, such as biomedical or food packaging, is an important part of our laboratory's activities. Characterising the antibacterial properties of these materials is essential. Within our research unit, a class 2 (L2) microbiology laboratory is available and has already enabled us to set up protocols for characterising antibacterial properties in previous projects1–3. Current research projects also require antimicrobial characterisation. These include the Polka project, which aims to formulate antibacterial nanoparticles based on lignin, and the Napkins project, one of whose objectives is to formulate super-absorbent, bio-based polymers for use in menstrual protection.

5-6 months - Starting in February/March 2025 - Today, the need to find more sustainable solutions for materials used in everyday life is opening up new avenues of research in materials science. In particular, one possible direction is to develop more sustainable processes for producing materials from biomass that could replace certain plastic products. In this context, the BioCompUS project is looking at the shaping of materials by ultrasonic compression (UCM), a process derived from ultrasonic welding (US), which enables materials to be joined together by the application of high-frequency acoustic vibration under stress. US welding is already used on an industrial scale to join metals, polymers and thermoplastic composites, but little work has been done on its use for lignocellulosic materials.

5-6 months - Starting in February/March 2025 - Your main aim: to offer alternatives to single-use plastic (and make the world a better place by reducing plastic pollution). You will be focusing on three-dimensional and complex-shaped packaging, such as caps and bottles. This packaging is often made of PP, PET, PE, etc. and its recyclability remains low compared with paper and cardboard (cellulose fibres). One of the main problems is that current paper and cardboard manufacturing processes cannot produce complex cellulose shapes. You will be working on a very recent process involving injection moulding (usually used for thermoplastics or thermosets) adapted to cellulose fibres. This process is protected by two patents.

5-6 months - Start in February - In France, the construction sector is responsible for over 25% of greenhouse gas emissions (mainly due to the production of building materials) and 70% of national waste production (mainly excavated inert waste such as earth, gravel and concrete). The extraction of sand and gravel from quarries also generates large quantities of waste (washing sludge). In the face of the climate emergency, it is imperative to make far-reaching transitions by exploring the possibilities of adding value to these resources. Raw earth materials, whose virtues have been known for millennia, are low-carbon and reversible, and are enjoying a new lease of life. Combining raw earth and plant fibers increases the mechanical strength and reduces the density and thermal conductivity of these materials.

LGP2 internship's opportunity - 5-6 months - Starting in February 2025 - Paper and cardboard recycling has made great strides in recent decades. However, conventional processes cannot recycle more than 90% of the material. The PACkaging, Recycling, Recyclability, Re-use of papers and cardboards (PAC3R) project focuses on cellulose-based packaging. The aim is to develop new and sustainable processes to improve the properties of fibres obtained from the recycling of corrugated paper. To compensate for the loss of quality of recycled fibres, paper mills currently add starch and/or virgin fibres. Objective 1: avoid these additions by increasing the binding potential of the fibres by introducing COOH groups (oxidation) into the fibres or by cross-linking the fibres (esterification). Objective 2: to improve the hydrophobic nature of recycled fibres, a major problem in the textile industry.

5-6 months - Start in February - The packaging sector is the one that generates the most plastic waste per year (143 million tonnes in 2019), and this poses a major environmental problem: indeed, while the majority of packaging is landfilled, a large proportion ends up in nature, particularly lightweight packaging (flexible, foam...). Yet packaging remains important for a number of reasons: product protection, consumer safety, etc. European regulations (PPWR = Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation) now require manufacturers to innovate in order to produce recyclable and/or biodegradable packaging that performs as well as plastic packaging. The aim of the Unipack project - a collaboration between LGP2 and a UK-based multinational - is to replace flexible plastic packaging with fully biosourced, recyclable and biodegradable paper packaging that performs equally well.