Imen Hnid, recruited in September 2022 as a lecturer at Polytech Lille and researcher at the IEMN, received three prizes for her thesis, defended on 16 March 2021 and entitled "Surfaces et jonctions moléculaires photo-actives: organisations, functionalisations et caractérisations par microscopie à effet tunnel et microscopie à force atomique et pointe conductrice".
This doctoral thesis was carried out in the ITODYS laboratory, Université de Paris Cité, under the supervision of Jean-Christophe Lacroix.
His research focuses on the development of electronic systems based on molecules:
"The first electronic computer was manufactured in 1946 and weighed 30 tonnes. At the time, few people thought that one day laptop computers, weighing around 1 kg, would become so widely available, like other small electronic devices. It was nanotechnology that facilitated this development. This was sensed by E. Moore in 1965. Since then, the number of transistors has risen from 1,000 to 50 billion by 2020, and their size has decreased from 10µm to 5nm in 2018, which represents the size of the molecular scale: we are reaching the limits of the nanotechnology used today.
How can we go beyond Moore's prediction? Molecular electronics is the answer. This scientific field aims to develop devices that use molecules to reduce the size and cost of devices. My thesis falls within this framework: I am developing electronic systems based on molecules. My research has enabled me to manufacture a molecular switch with unprecedented performance (world record in ON/OFF ratios).
This work is distinguished by :
- the Prize for Excellence in "Inorganic, Mineral and Materials Chemistry", from the Société Chimique de France - section Ile-De-France, October 2022 (regional prize).
- the 2022 Labex SEAM thesis prize, December 2022.
- 2nd prize ex-aequo for the 2021 "René Dabard - ENSCR" thesis, March 2023 (national prize).
