Electrons have a charge and a spin, but until recently, charges and spins have been considered separately. In conventional electronics, the charges are manipulated by electric fields but the spins are ignored. Other classical technologies, magnetic recording, for example, are using the spin but only through its macroscopic manifestation, the magnetization of a ferromagnet. This picture started to change in 1988 when the discovery of the giant magnetoresistance _GMR_ of the magnetic multilayers opened the way to an efficient control of the motion of the electrons by acting on their spin through the orientation of a magnetization. This rapidly triggered the development of a new field of research and technology, today called spintronics and, like the GMR, exploiting the influence of the spin on the mobility of the electrons in ferromagnetic materials. Semiconductor spintronics device physics is progressing along a similar path to metallic spintronics and has achieved remarkable success in the last decade. What we want to mainly explore is the conversion of an electrical spin polarized current into a circular polarized light and how we can take advantage of this effect to built spin polarized VECSEL. We can already anticipate that the ability to control and/or modulate the output polarization of lasers to electrically switch between orthogonal polarization states would be useful for host applications including i)coherent detection system, ii) new modulation formats for optical communications, optoelectronic oscillators and high precision clocks, iii) entangled states for secure communication and quantum cryptography, iiii) and optical switching. As a necessary requirement to progress, basic research including understanding of the spin relaxation mechanisms, material optimization of efficient spin injector and dynamic of the output signals will take a large part. The experimental answer of how much and how far can we drive a spin polarized current into a semiconductor will be a determining clue of this project. This project comes from a previous funded PNANO project MOMES ends in April 2009. It has brought together 7 partners and has covered a large area in the field of spintronic with semiconductors. The present proposal is one of the issue point identified as successful and needed to be pursued. 3 of the 4 partners of this project were already involved in the previous program. They already have the know how to built efficient spin injector CoFeB/MgO on top of III-V materials and they have demonstrated high conversion of spin polarized current in polarized circular light (<50%) in Spin LED experiment. The next step but not the less along this proposal is to extend this realisation to spin VECSEL. The active participation of the Thales company in this goal is a supplementary asset which will certainly benefit to speed up technological transfer from fundamental research to applied research.

The FISSCARDEN proposal is an application-oriented R&D project with the ambition to develop an innovative decontamination process that will offer a realistic and cost-efficient solution for the removal of some radionuclide cations from multi-component effluents related to low- and intermediate level radioactivity, leading to small amounts of ultimate (solid) waste thus generated and simultaneously meeting the requirements for more energy-saving and environmentally friendly waste conditioning. Aqueous effluents of interest to the industrial partners involved in this project contain three major groups of ionic species: (i) monovalent and polyvalent radio-nuclide cations (Cs, Co, Sr, and Ni) (ii) non-radioactive alkaline cations (Na, K), (iii) nitrate and borate anions, with the overall salt content being up to 150 g/L. During the project duration, it will be necessary to optimize the separation process at the laboratory scale and demonstrate its viability through the construction of a laboratory pilot system used to simulate certain features of industrial-scale units. Novel separation-dedicated materials will be designed, developed and tested in simulated waste solutions. This industrial-type research, done by a partnership combining the expertise of academic and industrial partners, will implement the principles of eco-design in both the process development and the materials conception. The Consortium comprises 3 research organisations (AIME and IAM in the ICGM UMR CNRS 5253, GPEB UMR CIRAD 016) and 2 industrial partners (ONET Technologies and COATEX). The project will be co-ordinated by Jerzy ZAJAC (ICGM-AIME). The work plan includes 4 scientific and technical work-packages, and a fifth work package devoted to project management, dissemination and valorisation activities. The Consortium will exploit the results obtained in the project lifetime in accordance with the interests of France, taking into account the international competitiveness of French industry.