SYCAMORE recommended for funding
Project SYCAMORE (Surface reactivitY of moleCular plAsMas for CO2 REcycling) was recommended for fundig by Labex Plas@Par hosted by Sorbonne Universités, Paris, France. SYCAMORE awards a PhD grant for a work to be developed at LPP, Ecole Polytechnique, in co-supervision by Olivier Guaitella and Vasco Guerra.
SYCAMORE will seek new mechanisms of plasma surface interaction at mid-range pressure (1-250 mbar) favorable for high vibrational excitation of molecular gases. The investigation of surface reactivity of highly excited molecules and radicals over model surfaces will open the way to a new type of plasma/catalysis of great importance for CO2 conversion and platform molecules synthesis. To achieve this goal, Sycamore is built around two twin PhD projects: a) one PhD will be devoted to the development of self-consistent kinetic model under the supervision of Vasco Guerra from IPFN at IST Lisbon and is already funded within the project PREMiERE funded by the FCT in Portugal, b) the other PhD in SYCAMORE is the matching project at LPP from an experimental point of view, under the supervision of Olivier Guaitella, to provide suitable experimental data to validate and improve the models. New infrared time resolved infrared spectroscopic methods will be used to provide good constraint of CO2/CO vibrational kinetic models allowing as a final goal to exhibit the contribution of model surfaces.