The position is a part of the BatFactory project, funded by PRW (Plan de Relance Wallon), with different academic partners from Walloon Region (UNAMUR, UCL, CRM, Cenaero, UMONS, ULB, Materia Nova, ULiège and Pôle Mecatec) and an industrial steering committee.

BatFactory aims to produce batteries and battery components for stationary electrical energy storage and collective applications. The project aims to take advantage of the Walloon region's R&I expertise to support the development of local businesses. At the same time, it aims to produce high-performance materials for instrumented storage batteries using intelligent, environmentally-friendly processes that improve circularity. This project is part of the recovery plan, reflecting our commitment to innovation and sustainable energy solutions.

In order to facilitate the technology transfer to industrial players, functionalization by plasma treatment will aim at the design and construction of a pilot demonstrator and its digital twin Virtual-Coater™ (developed by ICS, spin-off of UNamur) for the functionalization of active materials in powder form. This patented process aims, among other things, to replace traditional and polluting liquid processes with a green, sustainable, non-polluting and much more versatile process in terms of product/process pairs. It will allow companies of all sizes, but particularly SMEs, to evaluate this technology on a scale representative of their needs to validate their products in the field of energy storage.

At the LARN laboratory of UNamur, this position is related to the modelling of PVD and/or PECVD processes of thin film deposition on moving powder. The post-doc researcher will focus on developing a numerical tool dedicated to (1) the modelling of the motion of powder inside a moving drum, and (2) the modelling (by e.g. Ray-tracing) of the species fluxes reaching the surface of powder grains during the deposition process.

More specifically, the tasks of the project are the following:

• Development of a numerical tool to model the powder motion: the investigated parameters could be the size and/or shape of grains, the motion and/or the geometry of the drum.
• Development of a code to compute the fluxes of species coming from one (or multiple) sources and reaching the surface of the powder in motion.
• Use of the simulation tool Virtual-Coater™ to predict the deposited thin film thickness and homogeneity on the powder grains surface.