Actualités de l’institut

Phones, computers, electric vehicles: lithium-ion batteries are playing an increasingly important role in our daily lives and require metals such as lithium, cobalt, nickel and manganese. How can these resources be recovered when batteries reach the end of their life? As part of a jointly supervised PhD thesis conducted between UMONS and Joseph KI-ZERBO University in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, Ali Iname investigated different approaches to separating and recovering the critical metals contained in these batteries, with the aim of developing more sustainable recycling processes.

How can we design soft materials whose structure and properties can be controlled with ever greater precision? This is the objective of the international ASPIRE project, funded by the Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST), in which UMONS’ Polymer and Composite Materials Department is taking part. Over five years, Japanese, European and North American teams will combine their expertise to gain a better understanding of how these materials work and learn how to control their properties more precisely. The ultimate goal is to design materials that are more efficient, more durable and easier to reuse.

Transforming shrimp waste into an innovative dressing capable of improving burn treatment: this is the ambition of ChitoPatch, an AMORCE project selected by the Academy for Research and Higher Education (ARES). Led by the UMONS Department of Polymeric and Composite Materials (SMPC), with Professor Jérémy Odent, ChitoPatch is being conducted in collaboration with the Laboratory of Biotechnology, Pharmaceutical Bioengineering and Artificial Intelligence at Cadi Ayyad University (UCA) in Marrakesh, represented by Professor Anass Belbachir. Together, the partners will develop a bio-based dressing for the treatment of second-degree burns.

ARES has selected BIOMADA, an "amorce" project led by the Polymer and Composite Materials Department at UMONS (Prof. Jean-Marie Raquez). Developed in collaboration with the UMONS Laboratory of Marine Organisms Biology and Biomimetics (Prof. Igor Eeckhaut) and the Institute of Fisheries and Marine Sciences (IH.SM) at the University of Toliara (Prof. Gildas Todinanahary) in Madagascar, the project aims to lay the scientific foundations for a new generation of bio-based materials inspired by the natural structure of algae. Using red algae, coconut residues and chitin derived from crabs, the researchers intend to develop innovative materials suited to Madagascar’s environmental, economic and societal realities.

Coordinated by UMONS, the European SAM3 project (Soft Active Matter Microrobots for Medicine) will bring together several European universities and research centres around an ambitious objective: to develop a new generation of microrobots capable of moving through narrow and sensitive areas of the human body. Supported under the MSCA Doctoral Networks programme (Horizon Europe), the project will also train twelve doctoral candidates at the interface between materials science, microrobotics and medicine.