Surface du Verre et Interfaces, UMR 125

The joint lab Saint Gobain/CNRS, attached to the Institute of Physics of CNRS, has been created in 1990 at Saint Gobain Recherche in Aubervilliers. The laboratory comprises 12 permanents staff (3 CNRS, 9 SG) and as many PHD – post doctoral students. Its activity is organized according two research axes: one dedicated to heterogeneous reactive materials, including the study of the evolution of bubbles and foams within viscous fluids. The other axis concerns the functionalization of the surface of the glass. This is often achieved by depositing one or more thin layers. The techniques used are liquid based ones, but mostly by magnetron sputtering (PVD), directly in connection with the glass industry.

The porosity of these layers is one of numerous parameters studied because it allows to adjust several properties related to optic, reactivity, mechanical properties ...

For this purpose, the teams of SVI work on the processes with the development of in-situ investigation techniques for the growth of layers by PVD (XPS, stress measurements, reflectometry ...), the fusion of raw materials (tomography at high temperature, etc.). But their activities also concern the advanced characterization of materials, their surfaces and the thin layers to study diffusion phenomena or reactivity at the interfaces.