Members

IMMC

Alex Pip
PhD student
Ir. at UCLouvain in 2020
Contact - Personnal web page

Main project: Development of thermo-tensile nano devices operating ex situ or in situ in transmission electron microscopes (TEM)
Funding: ERC - FRIA
Supervisor(s): Hosni Idrissi

The main goal of my research project is to develop modern miniaturized devices dedicated to quantitative small-scale thermo-tensile testing in-situ inside a transmission electron microscope. These unique devices will be used to investigate the effect of T on the plasticity/failure mechanisms in selected materials, nanocrystalline palladium films and olivine. My project builds up on already existing MEMS devices, namely the commercial Push-to- Pull from Bruker.Inc and UCLouvain’s ‘lab-on-chip’ nano tensile testing devices. Currently, those devices are limited to room temperature experiments. My work will be dedicated to the integration of heating systems inside these two devices, in order to heat samples up to hundreds of °C. This will allow performing in-situ TEM thermo-tensile tests on Pd films and olivine samples where the coupling between tensile loading and heating could lead to unprecedented results regarding the effect of T on the mechanical response and the plasticity/failure mechanisms.

This project has a direct application in the field of geology, as one of the selected material is olivine, the material that makes up most of the upper part of the Earth’s mantle. Thermo-tensile testing of olivine at the micro/nano scale will bring crucial data about its rheology under conditions similar to the Earth’s mantle. This part of the project involving olivine will be performed in close contact with prof. Patrick Cordier and his team at UMET (Université de Lille). The other selected material is Pd, a material that is well known by the UCLouvain’s IMMC researchers used here as a benchmark. I will mostly work within the WINFAB platform, where I will develop and build the new thermo-tensile devices using the nanofabrication equipment. As theses devices are expected to be used in-situ inside a TEM, I will also partly work at the EMAT research center (UAntwerpen).

IMMC main research direction(s):
Dynamical and electromechanical systems
Processing and characterisation of materials
Solid mechanics

Keywords:
electromechanical device
geotechnics, soil dynamics
mechanical design
micromechanics
optimization of structures
thin films

Research group(s): IMAP
Collaborations: Jean-Pierre Raskin

Recent publications

See complete list of publications

Journal Articles

1. Pirson, Thibault; Delhaye, Thibault P.; Pip, Alex; Brun, Gregoire Le; Raskin, Jean-Pierre; Bol, David. The Environmental Footprint of IC Production: Review, Analysis and Lessons from Historical Trends. In: IEEE Transactions on Semiconductor Manufacturing, , p. 1-1 (2022). doi:10.1109/tsm.2022.3228311 (Accepté/Sous presse). http://hdl.handle.net/2078.1/268615

Conference Papers

1. Pirson, Thibault; Delhaye, Thibault; Pip, Alex; Le Brun, Grégoire; Raskin, Jean-Pierre; Bol, David. The Environmental Footprint of IC Production: Meta-Analysis and Historical Trends. In: ESSDERC 2022 - IEEE 52nd European Solid-State Device Research Conference (ESSDERC), 2022, 978-1-6654-8497-8, pp. 352-355 xxx. doi:10.1109/essderc55479.2022.9947198. http://hdl.handle.net/2078.1/268900

2. Idrissi, Hosni; Pip, Alex; Raskin, Jean-Pierre. Thermal control for in-situ TEM nanomechanical testing devices. 2021 xxx. http://hdl.handle.net/2078.1/263911

3. Coulombier, Michaël; Baral, Paul; Pip, Alex; Dohmen, Ralf; Raskin, Jean-Pierre; Pardoen, Thomas; Cordier, Patrick; Idrissi, Hosni. Time dependent response of amorphous olivine thin films determined by on-chip nanomechanical testing. 2021 xxx. http://hdl.handle.net/2078.1/269321