On July 12, 2018, members of the PSA Group's Scientific Department met with teams from the C2N Photonics Department to launch the PhOVeA Openlab.
The Centre for Nanoscience and Nanotechnology - C2N (CNRS / Paris-Sud University) and the PSA Group have decided to expand their collaboration over several years, by creating a joint research laboratory in the field of optoelectronics and photonics. Several C2N teams will be taking part in this Openlab, called PhOVeA, for "Photonics and Optoelectronics for Vehicles and Automotives".
For the PSA Group, this type of partnership in the form of a « lab without walls » is an opportunity to conduct research on subjects that could lead to technologies over a 10-year horizon, thanks to scientific expertise not present internally. C2N, and in particular the team of Béatrice Dagens, CNRS senior researcher, has already been collaborating for several years with PSA, notably with a Chair in Optoelectronics and Photonics funded between 2012 and 2015. It has enabled the recruitment of several PhD and post-doctoral students. The OpenLab launched this July 2018 is an additional step to strengthen this collaboration.
A key result of this collaboration is the recent publication in the journal ACS Photonics of work on the realization of a "semi-reflective glass mirror based on metallic nanoparticles" which is a step towards a technology applicable to the car industry, the "head-up display".
- Read the article publised in CNRS La lettre innovation in September 2018 (in French) : Ajuster la réflectance d'un verre tout en préservant sa qualité de transparence
The C2N-PSA joint laboratory will address new research topics of interest for automotive applications, with a scientific program with 4 axes:
- Compact and ultracompact holographic systems
- Optimization of surfaces optical properties
- Display, lighting, signaling on transparent, flexible or conformable substrate
- Optics and plasmonics for sensors and connectivity
These themes address all the challenges of the automobile in photonics. We can note the following research work conducted at C2N on these themes:
- Beatrice Dagens, CNRS senior researcher / Benjamin Leroy thesis: compact illuminating plate solution for holographic device
- Aloyse Degiron, CNRS researcher / CIFRE thesis by Faten Ben Chaabane: coherent sources for hologram display - superradiant LEDs
- Anatole Lupu, CNRS senior researcher: Nano-resolution and reconfigurable holograms that could display a digital hologram
- Maria Chernysheva, CNRS researcher: Flexible LED based on nanowires
Figure: Béatrice Dagens introducing her work on the compact solution of illuminating plate for holographic device © C2N / CNRS
