Sylvain Finot, PhD

Hello there, I'm currently a Research Engineer at C2N (and previously at IPVF), working on the development of ultrathin solar cells.

  • 🔬 Interested in semiconductor device fabrication, modeling, and characterization
  • 💻 Enjoy working in the Python ecosystem (Jupyter, NumPy, Matplotlib, etc.)
  • 🛠️ Tinkering with side projects
  • 🏠 Self-hosted homelab enthusiast
  • 🎮 Relax with cooperative games with friends
  • 🤡 I also like Easter eggs.

You can check my PhD manuscript if you are interested in cathodoluminescence and/or LEDs characterization 😁.
Note: it's the same version that you can find on HAL but with working internal links.

Experience

Research Engineer

Institut Photovoltaïque d'Île-de-France·Centre de nanosciences et de nanotechnologies -Palaiseau, France

Modeling, optimization and fabrication of ultrathin III-V solar cells
  • Performed modelization and optimization of ultrathin III-V solar cell designs using Rigorous Coupled-Wave Analysis and surrogate model optimization.
  • Developed microfabrication processes involving:
    • wet and dry etching
    • electron-beam, optical and nanoimprint lithography
    • sol-gel SiO₂ by spin-coating (nanoimprint & thin films)
    • electron-beam metal evaporation
  • Co-supervised a PhD student on polymer-blend lithography for silicon solar-cell nanopatterning
  • Rigorous coupled-wave analysis
  • Light-trapping
  • Microfabrication
  • Nanoimprint lithography
  • Optical lithography
  • Wet etching
  • Dry etching
  • SiO₂ sol-gel

PhD Student in Nanophysics

Institut Néel, CNRS·Université Grenoble Alpes -Grenoble, France

Cathodoluminescence lifetime spectroscopy for efficient III-nitride LEDs. Supervisor: Gwénolé Jacopin.
  • Characterized III-nitride LEDs using cathodoluminescence techniques.
  • Developed a Hanbury-Brown & Twiss interferometer to measure carrier lifetime in a SEM.
  • Developed Monte-Carlo simulations of the autocorrelated cathodoluminescence setup to understand the influence of various parameters (beam current, lifetime, jitter, dead time, etc.)
  • Studied crack effects on the optical properties of AlGaN/GaN microwires for core-shell UV LEDs.
  • Developed techniques to quantify surface recombinations at µLED sidewalls (lifetime profile measurement combined with diffusion model fitting).
  • Fabricated and performed electro-optical characterization of single microwire UV LEDs.
  • Cathodoluminescence
  • Lifetime
  • Hanbury Brown & Twiss
  • Simulations
  • III-Nitride
  • Light-Emitting Diodes
  • Optoelectronics
  • Microfabrication

Research Internship

Institut Néel, CNRS·Université Grenoble Alpes -Grenoble, France

Enhancing blue nanoLED speed using the Purcell effect. Supervisor: Gwénolé Jacopin.
  • Aimed to increase modulation speed of blue InGaN/GaN LEDs using the Purcell effect.
  • Achieved initial success with polar c-plane quantum wells.
  • Characterized core-shell microwire structures using temperature-dependent time-resolved cathodoluminescence to identify the most efficient design.
  • Studied speed enhancement after silver and aluminum coating on the optimal structure.
  • Cathodoluminescence
  • Time-correlated cathodoluminescence
  • Sputtering
  • E-beam deposition
  • III-Nitride
  • LEDs
  • Microwires

Research Internship

Diamfab·Institut Néel, CNRS·Université Grenoble Alpes -Grenoble, France

Cathodoluminescence on epitaxial diamond layers for quality and doping assessment. Supervisors: Gauthier Chicot, David Eon.
  • Conducted cathodoluminescence analysis of boron-doped diamond epitaxies grown by CVD to determine boron density and homogeneity using an empirical statistical law.
  • Developed Python software to automate data analysis and reporting.
  • Cathodoluminescence
  • Diamond
  • Doping density

Education

Skills

Micro/nanofabrication

  • Photolithography
  • Nanoimprint lithography
  • Basics of chemistry (cleaning, etching, ...)
  • Dry etching (CCP, ICP-RIE)
  • KLayout / GDS

Characterization

  • Scanning Electron Microscopy
  • Cathodoluminescence (CW, time-correlated, autocorrelated)
  • Electron Beam Induced Current
  • Electrical measurements (I-V, Solar cell IQE/EQE)
  • Electroluminescence
  • Ellipsometry

Simulation & Modeling

  • In-house Python (diffusion model, Monte-Carlo)
  • Semiconductor device simulation : Nextnano
  • Optical simulation : RCWA (Reticolo)

Dev

  • Python (NumPy, Pandas, SciPy, Matplotlib, Numba, ...)
  • Matlab
  • Version Control (Git)
  • Continuous Integration (GitHub Actions)
  • Docker
  • Web : HTML, CSS, Tailwind, JavaScript, Astro, React

Others

  • LaTeX
  • Office Suite (Word, Excel, PowerPoint)
  • Basics of CAD (Solidworks, Fusion 360, Blender)

Random projects

I like to build small tools and projects in my free time. Here are a few public ones that actually turned out to be useful.

iLikePDF

iLikePDF

Open project

A small tool built with Pyodide (Python in WebAssembly), PyMuPDF, and React for simple in-browser PDF tasks (edit metadata, merge, split, extract images, compress, etc.).

  • Python
  • Pyodide
  • PyMuPDF
  • React
  • PDF editing
GS-WASM

GS-WASM

Open project

A WebAssembly port of Ghostscript, allowing users to call Ghostscript directly in the browser. Built with Emscripten and a simple Bootstrap frontend. Mainly used to compress PDFs in-browser, without uploading them to a server.

  • WebAssembly
  • Ghostscript
  • Bootstrap
AOSP downloader

AOSP Downloader

Open project
Currently broken (Cloudflare Worker hits a different download endpoint)

A small toolkit to simplify patching and flashing Android boot images. Downloader fetches the AOSP boot.img (∼64 MB) using HTTP range requests, so you don't need to download the full factory image archive (>2 GB). It includes a CORS proxy hosted on Cloudflare to access Google-hosted images. File Transfer uses Cloudflare KV to move the patched image between your phone and computer, and a Flasher (Chromium-only) can flash the patched image from the browser.

  • JavaScript
  • Android
  • Cloudflare Workers
  • Cloudflare KV