While studies of liquids at high temperature present an obvious interest from a fundamental point of view, they are also important technologically since the molten state is an essential stage in various industrial processes: glass fabrication, semiconductor technology, iron and steel making industries, etc. Despite the considerable amount of work performed over the past 50 years, this state is still not well understood. Therefore, it necessitates to develop experimental techniques as well as numerical simulation capabilities for studying the properties of high-temperature liquids.

Our aim is a deep investigation of the atomic and electronic structures and transport properties of these liquids. This will be achieved by combining in-situ conductivity measurements with diffraction and inelastic scattering at synchrotron and neutron sources and by modeling all of these results with state-of-the-art ab initio molecular dynamics  simulations.

A novel collaboration with the ILL neutron source will make it possible to exploit neutron scattering techniques. In particular, a dedicated equipment optimized for neutron scattering applications (reduced background, stabilization of large samples, etc.) will be designed and built for opening the door to the investigation of magnetic systems.

On the 15th of February 2010, the kick-off meeting of the project will be held at ILL. It will gather people from CNRS-CRMHT, CNRS-SIMAP, SOLEIL and ILL.