The PLanetLab project assembles a world recognized team in the area of matter under extreme conditions to study the properties of metallic alloys and complex silicates at conditions encountered in Earth-like planets as well as in the core of giant planets and exoplanets. More than 700 exoplanets have been discovered as of today and the detection of Earth like exoplanets has just been announced. While the number of exoplanets detected is growing at an incredible pace so as to make them a new class of astrophysical objects, the physical properties required for modeling their interiors are currently lacking. As these planets are most of the time significantly larger than the ones found in the solar system, there is now an urgent need to characterize the physical properties of key compounds of geophysical interest at pressure-temperature conditions reaching several tens of Mbar and temperature up to a few eV. As of today no accepted model exists for the structure of the possible Earth-like candidates or the equation of states used as input in these models. While the variety of situations where one can find an exoplanet greatly affects the interpretation of its structure and complexifies accordingly its modeling, there is actually a great need to establish benchmarking values for the equations of states, melting curves and the transport properties in the Fe-Si-Mg-O-S complex system anticipated in these objects. This will also greatly impact the modeling of giant planet and exoplanet inner cores that are currently based on ill-defined silicates equation of states and high pressure melting curves. To reach this goal, the team will apply first principle simulations based on density functional theory to calculate the phase diagrams and associated physical properties for simple silicates and oxides (SiO2, MgSiO3, MgO) and iron alloys (Fe-S, Fe-Si, Fe-O). While extremely demanding in resources, the continuing increase in computational power available renders possible these calculations using current large scale computing facilities (GENCI and PRACE). The first two partners, including the PI of the project, are co-developers of the electronic structure code Abinit. They have an extended experience at both developing algorithms and applying them at describing the properties of matter at extreme conditions and using large scale computing facilities. They will also develop an innovative method coupling classical and ab initio simulations to calculate the thermodynamical and transport properties of multi-components compounds. The aim is to complete the studies on binary iron alloys, oxides, and silicates by calculating the melting curves of complexes (Fe,Si,O,S) metals, the melting/metallization/dissociation of complex silicates (Mg,Fe)SiO3, The strength of the current proposal is to extend the ab initio simulations in the regime relevant to exoplanet modeling after a careful validation against both static and dynamical experiments. Partners 3 and 4 are recognized leaders in, respectively, static measurements of high pressures properties using diamond anvil cell (DAC) coupled to synchrotron radiation and dynamics measurements using high energy lasers. Partner 3 will focus on high-pressure equations of state and high pressures melting curves of binary alloys and simple oxides and silicates (Fe-S), (Fe-Si) , (Fe-O), MgO, SiO2, MgSiO3. Partner 4 will focus on characterizing melting of iron-based alloys and melting/metallization/dissociation of silicate compounds at high pressure and temperature by performing simultaneous XANES (X-ray near edge spectroscopy) and reflectivity measurements using high energy lasers.This work will establish for the first time accurate EOS and transport properties of key planetary constituents. New mass-radius relationship for exoplanets will be established using a 1-D planetary modeling.

In order to fight against the global warning and cities pollution, H2 vehicles equiped with fuel cell, FCEV, are developed. These clean vehicles having an autonomy similar to the one of conventional vehicles which can be filled in less than 5’ with H2 under 700 bar, require the reduction of cost and the processing time of the main components such as the H2 tank. For these tanks based on thick composite materials with a thermoset matrix, the curing time of the matrix (epoxy) of H2 700 bar tanks, needs to be strongly reduced. The FASTCURE project proposes to reduce by a factor of 10 the curing time by using innovative epoxy formulations based on ionic liquids as reactants. In addition, it was demonstrated that such IL components as curing agents could bring to resulting materials additional properties (fire retardancy, barrier). The designed resins will be used in a second step to process prepregs and tanks in order to check the relevance of the proposed approach.