Research and Product Development Department

Our R&D team consists of PhDs and engineers with expertise in chemistry, physical chemistry, photochemistry,  thermodynamics of phase transition phenomena and research and product development.

Through these skills, our research center is committed to scientific excellence and creativity to develop the best innovative technology with color change or optimized luminescence properties.

Over the years, we have acquired a unique know-how, that of "making colors talk", of programming colors in a customized way.

This expertise in color intelligence allows our teams to innovate daily to meet new uses. We implement new synthetic ways (organic, hybrid, inorganic) and develop new intelligent products by adjusting the switching speed, the triggering threshold, the optical contrast, etc.

Every day, we create new security features and innovative solutions in response to environmental or performance issues.

Each year, more than 40% of our research and product development programs are carried out internationally.

Depending on the type of your request, the first step entrusted to our research office is often the state of the art. This is an excellent tool to evaluate the relevance of a breakthrough product development.

This bibliographic study is carried out from international databases of scientific journals, patents and economic data.

At the end of this study, our research team analyzes all the scientific works and presents you with a hierarchy of data and potential solutions according to technical feasibility, economic dimension, regulatory constraints, etc.

This allows our research engineers to identify an "embryo" of a solution, to evaluate the existence, or not, of a basis, more or less remote, to obtain the desired property.

Thus, as close as possible to your team, we bring you the advice to initiate, or not, the transformation of your "innovative idea into product".

The next step for our research department is the proof of concept. This feasibility study takes place either at the end of the state of the art, or directly after the realization of the specifications of the future product.

To carry out our product development process, the first phase is voluntarily divergent, without constraints or brakes. The aim is to allow the first research steps towards feasibility to germinate, without any constraints. Generally, our R&D teams explore a multitude of synthetic routes, classes of coatings, intelligent properties... This research freedom is essential to hatch "the" solution to your problem.

Once this solution has been identified, it is challenged, amended and modified. We then enter the second phase of the feasibility study, the convergent approach known as "constraint": our research and product development office makes the necessary modifications to integrate part of the technical and environmental constraints of your request and thus validate its feasibility.

This time, the product development objective is to be as close as possible to your specifications. Our R&D engineers team fine-tune "the solution" by integrating one by one the technical, economic, regulatory and environmental constraints related to the project.

This leads our research and product development office, for example, to modify the elementary bricks to optimize the switching threshold of the optical properties according to the targeted external stimulus: temperature, light, pressure, presence of a solvent, a gas, or a pH variation. In other cases, our R&D team have to rework the optical response: absorption, excitation, emission wavelength.

Sometimes, we have to completely revisit the scientific idea identified during the "proof of concept", and modify the chemistry involved to satisfy economic and/or environmental constraints (the origin and/or nature of the products).

This is a real engineering process that allows us to program the molecular entity at the base of the intelligent product and to take into account the dimensions of an innovation. This process requires several "round trips" between the synthesis and characterization phases to finely optimize the product with the optimal targeted property.