The French National Centre for Scientific Research
The CNRS (National Centre for Scientific Research) is a government-funded research organization under the administrative authority of the French Ministry in charge of research. The missions of CNRS, defined by governmental decree, are to evaluate and carry out research capable of advancing knowledge and bringing social, cultural, and economic benefits to society; to contribute to the application and promotion of research results; to develop scientific information; to support research training and to participate in the analysis of the national and international situation of science and its perspectives for evolution in view of contributing to the development of the national research policy. As the largest fundamental research organization in Europe, CNRS is involved in all fields of knowledge. CNRS is organized in more than 1100 research units spread throughout France. The CNRS laboratory of Crystallography and Materials Science (CRISMAT) involved in this project is a joint research unit (JRU6508) between CNRS, UNICAEN and ENSICAEN. CRISMAT is a materials science laboratory specialized in the search of new materials with targeted properties. It has acquired an international fame for its works on HTc superconductors in copper oxides, colossal magneto-resistance in manganese oxides, thermoelectric properties in cobalt oxides and more recently on multiferroics. CRISMAT is also a crystallography laboratory that has long experience and state of the art equipment in both X-ray and electron crystallography.
Key Research Facilities
The CRISMAT laboratory is equipped with 4 TEM (JEOL F200 CFEG, JEOL ARM 200F CFEG double-corrected, FEI Tecnai G30 LaB6 and JEOL 2010 LaB6). The JEOL F200 will be mostly used for this project. This microscope is equipped with state of art devices for electron crystallography: a P1000 Nanomegas Digistar device for precession electron diffraction and texture analysis, a MediPix single electron detection camera, a 4kx4k RIO16 CCD, a single tomography holder, a double tilt analytical holder, a liquid nitrogen cryo-transfer single tilt tomography holder and a JEOL Centurio SDD detector for microanalysis. CRISMAT has a TEM sample preparation lab with 2 JEOL EM-09100IS Ion Slicer. CRISMAT is equipped with several state-of-the-art x-ray diffractometers that will be used for the project.
