The “Institut Néél” is a CNRS Lab associated to the Joseph Fourier University at Grenoble. The strength and richness of our inter-related research group structure come from the fact that physicists, chemists and geochemists are working together very closely. The laboratory is also associated to the Institut National Polytechnique de Grenoble (INPG), a well known engineer school, through a four years contract which leads to strong collaborations with several Labs of this institute (LEPMI, LMGP).
We are fully involved in the Institut dNanosciences et Matière(INM) which today gathers all the Physics Laboratories of the Grenoble site. The main goal of the INM is to help starting up new research fields. In addition the Laboratory is playing a key role into operate three out of the four « Collaborative Research group » beamlines installed at ESRF (European synchrotron radiation facility) and one CRG at the ILL neutron facility ( Institut Laue Langevin). Our research group includes 32 researchers from the CNRS, 16 professors or assistant-professors at the University J. Fourier, about 20 Ph-D students and Post-docs, and 33 members of technical staff among which 4 are in charge of the French CRG (Collaborative Research Group) beam lines at ESRF and ILL. Eleven engineers and seven technicians are responsible for the experimental equipment of the NEEL I.. The researchers are organized in a network of teams according to their research field of activity.
The Grenoble site is a unique ensemble of world-wide known laboratories of CNRS, CEA with intense relations with ILL and ESRF. This campus, deeply involved in international programs offers the possibility to participate to various meetings (seminars, colloquia, workshops ...). Moreover, we are strongly committed in the organization of the 20 years-old HERCULES European School (Higher European Research Course for Users of Large Experimental Systems) and the more recent European ESONN school (European School on Nanosciences and Nanotechnologies.
Finally, the NEEL I. is enriched by long term collaborations with private companies and institutions through innovative contracts either on synthesis of new materials for specific applications (Schneider, Elf, Pechiney, Sanofi, Thomson, Saint Gobain, Genewave, ...) or on new instrumental developments (Cyberstar, AET technologies, ..)
A key point for the successful achievement of our thematics concerns the development of original instrumentation required both for material elaboration and for development of new structural methods, some of them being strongly coupled with synchrotron radiation (SR).
The laboratory has a long standing expertise in x-ray, synchrotron and neutron diffraction techniques applied to complex crystallographic problems. The support of the expertise of the SERAS mechanical office (13 experts for design and machining), the cryogenic office ( 13 other experts), and the electronic division allows the NEEL I to be deeply committed in ambitious programs as demonstrated by the successful implementation of the CRG beam lines at ESRF and ILL, or the realization of the cryogenic camera for the Planck program.
Single crystal diffraction experiments, using a CCD diffractometer, are applied to the structural studies of materials for nonlinear optics, low-dimensional oxides or GMR materials. High resolution powder diffraction using laboratory and synchrotron sources is being used for the ab initio solution and refinement of increasingly complex structures, including pharmaceutical molecules, disordered materials or incommensurately modulated compounds. The microstructures of samples – thin films, multilayers, ceramics- are investigated by using a wide variety of diffraction techniques including grazing incidence diffraction and texture analysis, in combination with electron microscopy.
Since the beginning of the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF, Grenoble), The Néel I., was involved in research and instrumental development using synchrotron radiation. It has developed new spectroscopic methods like Diffraction Fine Structure Analysis, XANES and resonant scattering simulation using original principles (Y. Joly). Presently the Institut is involved on the developpement of Resonant Inelastic X-ray Scattering (RIXS) and of Resonant Contrast Diffraction experiments which will be used in this project. Since fifteen years, its researchers are in charge of a huge part of the organisation of the European school “HERCULES”, a five weeks school on synchrotron radiation and neutron possibilities for PhD students and scientists. Several books have been recently published in this topic. The Institut is in charge, for the CNRS part, of several Collaborative Research Group beamlines, mainly: [FAME->http://www.esrf.eu/UsersAndScience/Experiments/CRG/BM30B/] (French Absorption spectroscopy beamline in Material and Environmental sciences, leader: J.-L. Hazemann), dedicated to X-ray Absorption Spectroscopy including mainly Extended X-ray Absorption Fine Structure (EXAFS) and X-ray absorption near-edge structure (XANES) techniques. FAME allows a precise characterization of the electronic structure and local order around the probed element and is optimized for the study of diluted element. High resolution X-ray spectroscopies are now under development: Resonant Inelastic X-ray Scattering (RIXS) and Partial Fluorescence Yield XAS (PFY-XAS) and D2AM (leader: J.-F. Bérard).