Lorène Champougny

Office: 1.1.D.01   Phone: (+34) 91 624 8341    Email: lchampou@ing.uc3m.es

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Short Bio

I was born in France, where I received my Master's Degree in Fundamental Physics from École Normale Supérieure de Lyon. I obtained my Ph.D. in Soft Matter Physics under the supervision of Prof. Emmanuelle Rio at Université Paris Sud / Université Paris Saclay in 2015. After a 3-year postdoctoral period at Ecole Supérieure de Physique et Chimie Industrielles in Paris, I joined the Fluid Mechanics group of Universidad Carlos III de Madrid as a visiting professor in 2019. From September 2020 to December 2022, I have been a Marie Skłodowska-Curie fellow at UC3M, working under the supervision of Prof. Javier Rodríguez Rodríguez.

Research Interests

My research lies at the intersection between Fluid Mechanics and Soft Matter. I am particularly interested in the structure and evolution of liquid architectures (e.g. thin liquid films, liquid foams) in which interfaces and capillary forces play a dominant part. My approch combines experiments using home-made, original setups, and theoretical modelling to unravel the physics of these complex systems.

Key topics:

  • Hydrodynamics of liquid films (soap bubbles, liquid coatings);
  • Interfacial rheology and capillary phenomena (e.g. Marangoni flows);
  • Multi-phase flows and systems (e.g. liquid foams, floating lenses) at milli- and micro-scales.

Past Projects

COCONUTE - COmpound COatings NUrturing applications in Tissue Engineering

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement No 882429.

 

Project summary

The deposition of particle-laden coatings is key to a number of modern technologies, ranging from semiconductor electronics to bioengineering. In the thriving field of regenerative medicine, deposition processes to manufacture artificial skin in vitro turn out to be particularly challenging. Because skin is composed of several layers with specific cell distributions, space-resolved deposition of cells has to be achieved to obtain viable tissues. However, the delicate nature of living cells and biomaterials strongly limits the number of available techniques, thereby hindering further advances in the field.
In this context, COCONUTE emerges as a timely and essential initiative to adapt a well-known technique, dip-coating, to meet the challenges posed by current skin manufacturing technologies. I will investigate, using theoretical and experimental tools, key unknown aspects of the physics of dip coating in the presence of two liquids, which may have particles in suspension. Gaining further understanding of the physics, I will be able to create compound coatings exhibiting well-controlled arrangements of particles. These particles will have physical properties similar to skin cells to guarantee the applicability of the results to tissue-on-a-chip setups.

“Complex Materials at Microscales” (COMµ) workshop

As part of the COCONUTE project, I organized on September 23rd, 2021 an interdiscipinary workshop on “Complex Materials at Microscales” (COMµ) on the Leganés campus of UC3M. Topics included microfluidics, soft matter, interface science, biomechanics and bioengineering, …

The workshop brought together about 30 researchers from 6 different departments at UC3M, as well as from other academic or indutrial partner institutions, looking to promote interdisciplinarity and scientific stimulation in a friendly atmosphere. The full scientific program can be found here.

“El arte de las superficies líquidas” outreach workshop

As part of the COCONUTE project and in the framework of the "Semana de la Ciencia y de la Innovación 2021" (Madrid Science Week 2021), I organized on November 12th, 2021 an outreach workshop entitled "El arte de las superficies líquidas" (the art of liquid surfaces). This activity was directed to the general public, including children aged 10+. The objective of this workshop, which gathered a total of 26 participants, was two-fold:

  • introduce some fundamental concepts about the physics of liquid surfaces (e.g. surface tension, surfactants), highlighting applications in which they play an important part.
  • allow participants to experiment hands-on with these physical effects through an art technique consisting in depositing colored inks at the surface of water ("suminagashi" or "ebru").

Publications

Peer-reviewed articles

[11]     Dip-coating flow in the presence of two immiscible liquids
L. Champougny, B. Scheid, A. Korobkin and J. Rodríguez-Rodríguez
Journal of Fluid Mechanics, 922 (2021)

[10]     Wettability patterning in microfluidic devices using thermally-enhanced hydrophobic recovery of PDMS
M. Pascual, M. Kerdraon, Q. Rezard, M.-C. Jullien and L. Champougny
Soft Matter, 15, 9253 – 9260 (2019)

[9]      Ultrasound transmission through monodisperse 2D microfoams
L. Champougny, J. Pierre, A. Devulder, V. Leroy and M.-C. Jullien
European Physical Journal E, 42: 6 (2019)

[8]      Influence of evaporation on soap film rupture
L. Champougny, J. Miguet, R. Henaff, F. Restagno, F. Boulogne and E. Rio,
Langmuir, 34 (10), 3221-3227 (2018)

[7]     Dynamic stiffness of the contact between a carbon nanotube and a flat substrate in a peeling geometry
T. Li, L. Champougny and L. Bellon,
Journal of Applied Physics, 121, 094305 (2017)

[6]     The break-up height of free films pulled out of a pure liquid bath
L. Champougny, E. Rio, F. Restagno and B. Scheid,
Journal of Fluid Mechanics, 811, 499-524 (2017)

[5]      Life and death of not so “bare” bubbles
L. Champougny, M. Roché, W. Drenckhan and E. Rio,
Soft Matter, 12, 5276 - 5284 (2016)

[4]     Surfactant-induced rigidity of interfaces : a unified approach to free and dip-coated films
L. Champougny, B. Scheid, F. Restagno, J. Vermant and E. Rio,
Soft Matter, 11, 2758 - 2770 (2015)

[3]      A study of generation and rupture of soap films
L. Saulnier, L. Champougny, G. Bastien, F. Restagno, D. Langevin, and E. Rio,
Soft Matter, 10, 2899 – 2906 (2014)

[2]      Flexural fracturing of a cohesive granular layer
J.-C. Géminard, L. Champougny, P. Lidon, and F. Melo,
Physical Review E, 85, 012301 (2012)

Monographs

[1]      Generation and rupture of thin liquid films  [in French]
L. Champougny, PhD thesis, Université Paris-Sud (2015)