Research Activities

Structure - property and crystal chemistry in minerals and natural, industrial and archaeological glasses

The research I'm involved in is devoted to a better understanding of the physical and chemical properties of terrestrial
materials taking into account the pressure, temperature and composition conditions, they encounter. The knowledge
of the structural properties gives access to the crystal chemistry of major, minor and trace elements and is a way to
better understand the geochemical properties of minerals. In the case of natural glasses, the knowledge of the
structure - property relationships help predict their chemical behavior, their formation conditions and the
mechanisms of nucleation/crystallisation in magmas. I'm also involved in studying the evolution of uranium distribution and speciation in mill tailings and the post-mining evolution of waste rocks.

A multi-scale approach is used for these studies, which combined, ICP-MS bulk rock analyses, powder X-ray diffraction, Scanning Electron Microscopy, Focused Ion Beam — Transmission Electron Microscopy, X-ray Absorption Spectroscopy and EPR, Raman, FT-IR and optical spectroscopies.

This approach is applied to industrial materials (industrial and nuclear glasses, ceramics, cement, concrete...) as the structure-property relationships may help rationalize the development of high-performance materials.

Concerning archeological materials, the knowledge of the physical and chemical properties of these materials
can help understand their nature, their alteration conditions and the origin of the sources of the materials.