The Carbon Conference is an international event organised every year in a different location around the world, including Europe, Asia and the United States. It gather scientists specialising in carbon materials from academia and industry gather to exchange views on all aspects of this fascinating element. Topics covered include the various synthesis processes, applications and characterisation of carbon materials, and an understanding of their properties. During this conference I participated with a poster titled: Modelling screw dislocations in graphite.

The NanoteC is a student friendly international meeting focusing on nanocarbon materials: their production, treatment, properties, in all their monocolour (black) glory! This three days meeting has been running annually,almost continuously since 1998, and in 2024 it took place in Nantes at the Institute of Materials, one of its regular haunts here many previous memorable NanoteCs have taken place. During this conference I participated with a poster titled: Development of a reactive Neural Network Potential for borophene on silver and gold. A fruitful work of the internship conducted at Institut de Lumière Matère (ILM), Theoretical Physical Chemistry team and Laboratory des Matériaux et Interfaces (LMI), Matériaux à Basse Dimensionnalité (MBD) team, during my last master in the University Claude Bernard Lyon 1, France. Villeurbane, France.

Bulk Carbon Materials: processing conditions, structure & properties

While a large body of contemporary research focuses on crystalline/ordered nanoforms of carbon (graphene, nanotubes, etc.), most current applications – as structural materials in aeronautics/space or nuclear applications, as electrodes for energy storage or catalysis, as adsorbents for gas/pollutants separation and storage, etc. – still rely on bulk and disordered solids. Describing accurately and unambiguously the inner “structure” - with this word taken in all the possible meanings and length scales - of bulk carbon materials, and relating the very details of this structure to the materials’ processing conditions and properties remains extremely challenging. Nowadays, the ever growing capacity of structural determination and imaging tools, down to atomic scale, as well as the advent of machine learning, brings a new momentum to this topic. More accurate description and modeling of carbon materials structure and properties are at hand. Meanwhile, the processing methods have undergone significant advances, in terms of diversity and of process control efficiency, thanks in particular to in-situ diagnostics.