François Reniers got his PhD in Chemistry in 1991 at the Université libre de Bruxelles (www.ulb.be) (Belgium). He performed a post-doctoral stay at University of California Berkeley. He is currently full professor of Chemistry at ULB and his research area are (atmospheric) plasma chemistry, from gas phase conversion to deposition of coatings, nanoparticle synthesis, plasma medicine and surface modifications. François Reniers is a Fellow of the AVS (2018) “For seminal contributions to atmospheric plasma synthesis of organic, inorganic and hybrid coatings to attain a wide variety of functional properties and dielectric barrier discharge CO2 conversion into useful molecules”. François Reniers has been Vice Chancellor from ULB, Dean of the Faculty of Sciences, and he is now leading the plasma group of the ChemSIN dept at ULB (www.chemsin.ulb.be). He is currently the president of IUVSTA, the International Union for Vacuum Science, Technique and Application (www.iuvsta.org)
Main research topic
Atmospheric plasma chemistry is exploiting the properties of (cold) atmospheric plasmas to develop new chemical processes and reactions. In such plasmas the temperature of the electrons is much higher than the one of the neutrals and ions, allowing unique chemical reactivity in the gas phase and at interfaces, leading to new surface properties and materials, that can be controlled by tuning the plasma electrical and gas parameters. Two reference papers are : “The influence of power and frequency on the filamentary behavior of a flowing DBD—application to the splitting of CO2” and “Atmospheric plasmas for thin film deposition: A critical review“.
Atmospheric plasma reactor for gas conversion
Controlled filamentary discharge (top) for localized deposition (bottom left) and spot surface characterization by µXPS (bottom right)