2016 SFC Award

David Portehault, researcher at the LCMCP, is rewarded in June 2016 by the Société Chimique de France, a division of Solid State Chemistry, For his research in the field of Materials Chemistry.

David Portehault, 36, is a CNRS researcher at the Laboratoire Chimie de la Matière Condensée in Paris (LCMCP).

A graduate of the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris, he holds a PhD in Physics and Chemistry from the Pierre et Marie Curie University,UPMC, and holds a thesis in 2008 under the direction of Jean-Pierre Jolivet and Sophie Cassaignon, on the application of soft chemistry to the synthesis of nanoparticles of manganese oxides for lithium-ion batteries. He then joined the Max Planck Institute for Colloids and Interfaces in Potsdam in the department of Markus Antonietti, thanks to the Joint Program of Excellence for Nanomaterials between the CNRS and the Max Planck Society. He took advantage of this scholarship to initiate two years of research into the synthesis of new boron compounds of nanometric size. David Portehault is recruited by the CNRS in 2010 within the Hybrid Materials and Nanomaterials team of Clément Sanchez (UPMC - CNRS - Collège de France).

Back in France, he develops his research activity on the synthesis of inorganic and hybrid nanomaterials to compositions of unprecedented complexity. These materials, with unprecedented potential properties, involve original compounds never obtained on the nanometric scale, but also composites with controlled nanoscale heterogeneities. Thus, this activity is divided into 4 main axes: (1) nano-alloys based on hetero-elements, in particular boron; (2) boron-carbon-nitrogen-phosphorus covalent networks; (3) metal oxides with mixed valences; (4) and transverse the development of original methods of synthesis of nanomaterials, including soft chemistry for complex oxides and inorganic molten salts as high temperature solvents. This work, carried out in an academic context but also in connection with the industry, opens new opportunities in the fields of energy, catalysis and information technologies, thanks to the new and sometimes unexpected properties of these new Nanomaterials.

David Portehault is co-author of two book chapters, three patents and some thirty high-impact publications with more than 800 citations.