Welcome to the second annual meeting of the GDR SoPhy: Soft Physics for Hard Materials.

The meeting will take place at the Centre Paul Langevin in Aussois from May 21^st (Tuesday) to May 24^th (Friday).

Among the topics relevant to the GDR SoPhy, we will address the following ones:

• Synthesis and characterization of building blocks for the synthesis of soft solids serving as soft precursors
• Control of the spatial organization of elementary building blocks and/or self-assembly
• Use of external fields to texture soft solids - memory effects
• Transformation of a soft solid into a hard material: analysis of the properties inherited from the soft precursor

Invited speakers and lecturers

This year, two invited speakers will discuss their research topics, and two invited lecturers will deliver 1h30 introductory lectures on shaping routes for porous materials and synchrotron X-ray micro- and nano-analysis.

Wiebke Drenckhan, Institut Charles Sadron et CNRS Univ. Strasbourg

"Elucidating the effect of fluorocarbons in reducing the pore size of polyurethane foams"

Marie Albéric, Laboratoire de Chimie de la Matière Condensée de Paris

"From amorphous calcium carbonate precursors to mineralized biological materials:

the case study of sea urchin biominerals"

Cédric Boissière, Laboratoire de Chimie de la Matière Condensée de Paris

"Shaping porous materials"

Julie Villanova, ESRF

"Synchrotron X-ray micro- and nano-analysis"

The deadline for registration is April 5. For organizational reasons, the deadline will not be pushed at the last minute ! Please register as soon as possible if you're planning to join us. Thanks.