Annick Loiseau (born 1957) is a French physicist who is a researcher at the

French National Centre for Scientific Research The French National Centre for Scientific Research (, , CNRS) is the French state research organisation and is the largest fundamental science agency in Europe. In 2016, it employed 31,637 staff, including 11,137 tenured researchers, 13,415 engi ...

Laboratory of Microstructure Studies and Mechanics of Materials. She was the first woman to be appointed to the French national aerospace laboratory,

ONERA The Office National d'Études et de Recherches Aérospatiales ( English: National office for aerospace studies and research) or ONERA, dubbed ''The French Aerospace Lab'' in English, is the French national aerospace research center. Originally f ...

. Her research considers low-dimensional materials such as

carbon nanotubes A carbon nanotube (CNT) is a tube made of carbon with a diameter in the nanometre range (nanoscale). They are one of the allotropes of carbon. Two broad classes of carbon nanotubes are recognized: * ''Single-walled carbon nanotubes'' (''SWC ...

graphene Graphene () is a carbon allotrope consisting of a Single-layer materials, single layer of atoms arranged in a hexagonal lattice, honeycomb planar nanostructure. The name "graphene" is derived from "graphite" and the suffix -ene, indicating ...

, and

boron nitride Boron nitride is a thermally and chemically resistant refractory compound of boron and nitrogen with the chemical formula B N. It exists in various crystalline forms that are isoelectronic to a similarly structured carbon lattice. The hexago ...

. In 2006 she was awarded the

CNRS Silver Medal The CNRS Silver Medal is a scientific award given every year to about fifteen researchers by the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS). It is awarded to a researcher for "the originality, quality and importance of their work, re ...

Early life and education

Loiseau studied at

Chimie ParisTech Chimie ParisTech, officially École nationale supérieure de chimie de Paris (; "National High School of Chemistry of Paris") and also known as ENSCP or Chimie Paris, is a prestigious grande école and a constituent college of PSL Research Univer ...

. During the end of her studies she completed an internship at the Office National d'Études et de Recherches Aérospatiales (

) solid-state physics laboratory. She moved to the

Paris-Sud University Paris-Sud University (), also known as the University of Paris — XI (or as the Orsay Faculty of Sciences, University of Paris before 1971), was a French research university distributed among several campuses in the southern suburbs of Paris, ...

for her doctoral studies.

Research and career

Loiseau joined the faculty at ONERA, where she worked on high-resolution

electron microscopy An electron microscope is a microscope that uses a beam of electrons as a source of illumination. It uses electron optics that are analogous to the glass lenses of an optical light microscope to control the electron beam, for instance focusing i ...

, which she developed to study metal

alloys An alloy is a mixture of chemical elements of which in most cases at least one is a metallic element, although it is also sometimes used for mixtures of elements; herein only metallic alloys are described. Metallic alloys often have properties ...

. In 1992 she became interested in

carbon nanotube A carbon nanotube (CNT) is a tube made of carbon with a diameter in the nanometre range ( nanoscale). They are one of the allotropes of carbon. Two broad classes of carbon nanotubes are recognized: * ''Single-walled carbon nanotubes'' (''S ...

s, which had recently been discovered by

Sumio Iijima is a Japanese physicist and inventor, often cited for his discovery of carbon nanotubes. Although carbon nanotubes had been observed prior to his "invention", Iijima's 1991 paper generated unprecedented interest in the carbon nanostructures an ...

. She started to work on graphene and carbon nanotubes, and eventually led the Graphene-Nanotube Research Group. In 1996 Loiseau became the first woman to be appointed research director at ONERA. She has focused on

transmission electron microscopy Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) is a microscopy technique in which a beam of electrons is transmitted through a specimen to form an image. The specimen is most often an ultrathin section less than 100 nm thick or a suspension on a g ...

electron energy loss spectroscopy Electron energy loss spectroscopy (EELS) is a form of electron microscopy in which a material is exposed to a beam of electrons with a known, narrow range of kinetic energies. Some of the electrons will undergo inelastic scattering, which mea ...

(TEM–EELS). Her current research activities focus on synthesis and study of the structural, optical and electronic properties of

nanomaterials Nanomaterials describe, in principle, chemical substances or materials of which a single unit is sized (in at least one dimension) between 1 and 100 nm (the usual definition of nanoscale). Nanomaterials research takes a materials science ...

by optical spectroscopy and TEM-EELS Loiseau has been involved in the

Graphene Flagship The Graphene Flagship is a European Union scientific research initiative. With a budget of €1 billion, it is one of the large scale initiatives organized by the Future and Emerging Technologies program, along with the Human Brain Project and ...

since its start in 2013 and is a current member of its executive board.

Awards and honours

* 1988 Grand Prix Aluminum Pechiney of the Academy of Sciences * 1995 Chimie ParisTech metallurgy medal * 1999 of the

Société Française de Physique The Société Française de Physique (SFP), or the French Physical Society, is the main professional society of French physicists. It was founded in 1873 by Joseph-Charles d'Almeida. History The French Physical Society is a state-approved non- ...

* 2006

* 2011

Legion of Honour The National Order of the Legion of Honour ( ), formerly the Imperial Order of the Legion of Honour (), is the highest and most prestigious French national order of merit, both military and Civil society, civil. Currently consisting of five cl ...

Selected publications

Journal articles

* * *

Books

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Loiseau, Annick 1957 births French physicists Recipients of the Legion of Honour Living people Chimie ParisTech alumni