The prize recognizes young scholars who are judged to have defended the most outstanding PhD thesis in the field of physical chemistry in 2025. The award winner is selected by a scientific committee appointed by the Journal of Physchem.
Located on the Paris-Saclay plateau, about 20 kilometers from the capital, the SOLEIL synchrotron is one of France's leading research facilities. Since it began operating in 2008, it has served the national and international scientific communities. Research conducted at SOLEIL covers a wide range of scientific and industrial fields — including physics, biology, chemistry, materials science, environmental science, Earth sciences, and cultural and natural heritage — all connected to current societal challenges.
Located on the Paris-Saclay plateau, about 20 kilometers from the capital, the SOLEIL synchrotron is one of France's leading research facilities. Since it began operating in 2008, it has served the national and international scientific communities. Research conducted at SOLEIL covers a wide range of scientific and industrial fields — including physics, biology, chemistry, materials science, environmental science, Earth sciences, and cultural and natural heritage — all connected to current societal challenges.
After conducting a first series of highly conclusive test measurements in October 2024 on the PSICHE beamline, two archaeologists from the Archaeology Department of the City of Orléans returned in December 2025 with the aim of accessing the texts inscribed on 17 Gallo-Roman curse tablets. Their five intense days of X-ray microtomography on PSICHE have already yielded a wealth of results.
Located on the Paris-Saclay plateau, about 20 kilometers from the capital, the SOLEIL synchrotron is one of France's leading research facilities. Since it began operating in 2008, it has served the national and international scientific communities. Research conducted at SOLEIL covers a wide range of scientific and industrial fields — including physics, biology, chemistry, materials science, environmental science, Earth sciences, and cultural and natural heritage — all connected to current societal challenges.
Researchers from the Centre des Matériaux – Mines Paris (PSL) have achieved a world-first at the SOLEIL synchrotron: real-time 3D X-ray imaging of steel deformation and fracture under pressurized hydrogen gas. The objective is clear: to understand how hydrogen embrittles steels used in transport infrastructures, a fundamental challenge to ensure the safety of future hydrogen networks.
Bacterial resistance to antibiotics is a major public health issue. The quantification of antibiotic accumulation is a crucial parameter that determines the antibiotics’ activity and is useful for the development of new antibacterial molecules. At the bacterial scale, UV fluorescence microscopy allows for tracking the kinetic accumulation of an antibiotic.
Chiral molecules exist in two forms, called enantiomers, which cannot be superimposed but are mirror images one of the other. Amino acids, the chiral elementary building blocks of proteins, only exist as their left form in the biosphere. How did this selection process happen? Researchers from DESIRS beamline, in collaboration with a research team from the University of Nottingham, have confirmed a scenario for the amino acid proline that was proposed a few years ago for another amino acid, alanine.
The functioning of the enzyme FAP (Fatty Acid Photodecarboxylase), useful for producing biofuels and for green chemistry, has been decrypted. This result mobilized an international team of scientists, including many French researchers from the CEA, CNRS, Inserm, École Polytechnique, the universities of Grenoble Alpes, Paris-Saclay and Aix Marseille, as well as the European Synchrotron ESRF and the PROXIMA-1 beamline of SOLEIL. The discovery is published in Science on April 09, 2021.