Home | Olivier Durif

A 3D printer in the lab

Tue, 18 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The big boss said OK: the laboratory is now equipped with a Bambu Lab X2D 3D printer (€850 with the multi-material AMS 2). Getting started is quick, dual nozzle, wide range of compatible materials.

There remains the production of the parts; I am not a big fan of CAD software with complex features and an interface that is often hard to get into, but I found a working environment I like, with AI: the PI agent, an MCP plugin for FreeCAD or Blender, and the GPT 5.6 Luna model, which turns a simple description of my parts in natural language, turned into a 3D model in a few iterations. The main drawback remains the slowness of the iterations, but the revolution is underway.

GPT excels at visual recognition — essential here — and Sol brings no decisive gain over Luna. The models I love for coding (GLM, Deepseek) are weaker at vision: multimodal GPT models are, in my opinion, the most performant on these tasks.

The essence of this approach now lies in the description: expressing a 3D part in words alone requires precise technical vocabulary. Wording a mechanical assembly unambiguously is actually more demanding than sketching a diagram on paper to share with a colleague.

Experience shows that the limits encountered do not come from the model itself, but from the agent’s understanding of the request. A simple practice improves results noticeably: before executing, ask the agent to confirm that the instructions are clear and to recap what it is about to do. Once agreement is reached, execution, although sometimes slow (including for small adjustments one might rather do in the GUI), generally proves remarkably reliable.

Just do it.

The Bambu Lab X2D 3D printer with AMS 2 in the lab

Adjustable camera holder, printed in blue, to visualize the Taylor cone of the electrospray

avogadro-background-image

Sat, 15 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

C++ plugin for Avogadro 2 to display a background image in the 3D view — handy to overlay a molecular structure on an STM image.

ESIBD Explorer Plugins

Sat, 15 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Extensions to the software developed to control the devices of the ESIBD instrumentation at MPI-FKF.

zsh-dual-history

Sat, 15 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Oh My Zsh plugin that separates human shell commands from AI model instructions in the zsh history — with first-class fzf integration.

CPLT 2026 conference in Bochum

Thu, 06 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

From August 2 to 6, 2026, I attended the in Bochum (Germany), where I gave a 15-minute talk presenting my work on the reinterpretation of kinetic measurements performed in uniform supersonic flows.

Talk title: A Critical Reappraisal of Low-Temperature Kinetics in Uniform Supersonic Flows.

There, I show that rate coefficients of bimolecular reactions at low temperature have been overestimated: upon reactant injection, the mixing of gases comes with a density drop in the flow, which is mistakenly interpreted as a chemical decay. I predict that, for these systems, product-following measurements (which, unfortunately, struggle to materialize) will never recover such high values. After the considerable sums invested in new spectrometers dedicated to Laval nozzle expansions, it is time for the community to draw the methodological consequences.

As part of the conference excursion, we visited the German Mining Museum in Bochum. A fine reminder that science, like mining, is built in the bowels, in depth. My practice of science gives me the impression not of raising a building but of digging: descending toward the foundations, scratching, searching in the dark, hands in the mud. Chained to one’s project, scanning the cracks, the luminous openings in a confined space. A tribute to the courage of those miners, whose conditions were far harsher.

GDR EMIE plenary meeting in Toulouse

Mon, 08 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

In early June, I travelled to Toulouse for the plenary meeting of the GDR EMIE (the French network bringing together physicists and chemists working on molecular systems that are isolated or placed in a controlled environment). Being far from France, it is also a way for me to keep up with what is happening there and to exchange with the community, especially now that I am based in Germany. It was my first conference in this new postdoc.

I presented a poster on our work at the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research: the ESIBD+SPM instrument we are developing for single-molecule imaging. The project is still in its early stages we are currently assembling the vacuum chambers and wiring the electronics in a room that was empty a few months ago. The project is ambitious, and progress is steady.

New postdoc at the Max Planck Institute

Sun, 15 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Starting March 15, 2026, I begin a new postdoc at the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research (MPI-FKF, Stuttgart), in collaboration with .

My work focuses on the development of ESIBD instrumentation — soft landing of molecular ions from an electrospray — coupled with scanning probe microscopy (SPM) to image molecules one by one on surfaces under ultra-high vacuum.

Photo: Stuttgart Max Planck campus — .

Research

Sat, 01 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

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My research work lies at the interface of experimental molecular physics and the gas phase. My main expertise lies in the development of instrumentation, the design of reactors and detectors, as well as in the in-depth analysis of precision measurement data.

My approach is that of an experimental physicist: I prefer to deepen the study of a system - understanding its mechanisms, its instrumental limits and its measurement biases - rather than multiplying case studies over a wide variety of systems.

Current research

Development of ESIBD instrumentation for the soft landing of molecular ions onto surfaces.

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At the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research (MPI-FKF), we develop instrumentation to transfer molecules from a solution to a surface under ultra-high vacuum, after mass selection and soft deposition of the ions, in order to image them one by one by scanning tunneling microscopy.

My work focuses more specifically on the instrumental development of the apparatus, in particular the electrospray source, the ion optics, and the interfacing of the instrumentation.

For an overview of the group's scientific activity: anggara.science.

Postdoc 1 - Trace-level atmospheric measurements

At the KTH Royal Institute of Technology (Sweden), development of trace-level measurements for the study of the atmosphere: peroxy radicals and Criegee intermediates.

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This work aimed at a better understanding of atmospheric oxidation processes by proton transfer reaction mass spectrometry (PTR-MS). It led me to develop the instrumentation, the experimental protocols and the data processing tools necessary to study highly reactive and weakly concentrated systems, notably in work published in JACS Au.

Development and optimization of a PTR-TOF-MS enabling the direct measurement of ROO• radicals, with sub-ppbv sensitivity and a resolution that is unique worldwide.

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The massive production of data by this new experimental device, on the order of 1 GB per hour of experiment, required the development of a complete data processing program, written in the Julia language.

This tool, MassSpec.jl, is fully open-source and constitutes a robust basis for the analysis of complex atmospheric measurements and the direct detection of reactive intermediates. The project is available here: gitlab.com/massspec.jl/MassSpec.jl.

A novel tubular flow reactor architecture for quantitative measurements at room temperature and atmospheric pressure.

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Unlike conventional devices, this reactor operates in continuous regime and without moving parts. I also developed a variant allowing the residence time to be modulated by the flow rate, by means of a buffer arm.

Beyond gas-phase measurements, this approach enables direct quantitative measurements of rate constants and uptake rates at gas–solid or gas–liquid interfaces. It thus paves the way for quantitative measurements on surfaces that are difficult to study with conventional architectures.

Application of these tools to the study of air quality, in particular emissions generated by brake wear.

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These measurement campaigns focused on gaseous and particulate emissions, as well as their oxidative aging. They showed that gaseous emissions can lead to the formation of secondary particles, with a direct impact on air quality, as shown in ES&T Air.

This part illustrates the value of instrumental developments designed first for fundamental research, then reused in concrete environmental contexts.

PhD - CRESU and low-temperature chemistry

An original apparatus to study reactive collisions at very low temperatures in uniform supersonic flows.

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At the Institut de Physique de Rennes, I worked on CRESUSOL, an instrument coupling a uniform supersonic flow in a Laval nozzle (CRESU) with a time-of-flight mass spectrometer in photoelectron–photoion coincidence (TOFMS-PEPICO). The objective was to study the molecular growth of neutral aggregates and reactions between neutral species in conditions of interest for astrochemistry.

This work belongs both to instrumental development and to the study of fundamental gas-phase mechanisms at very low temperature. A description of CRESUSOL is available in Review of Scientific Instruments.

Evidence of a general bias in the interpretation of kinetic measurements performed in CRESU reactors.

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The exponential decays observed when monitoring radicals do not necessarily reflect chemical reactivity. In many cases, they are mainly explained by density drop effects related to the mixing of gases in Laval nozzle flows.

This new interpretation sheds light on the fact that rate coefficients measured at very low temperature have often been overestimated. It is at the heart of my critical re-reading of the field, notably in the commentary Commentary Regarding the CRESU-SIS Experiment.

A program to generate Laval nozzle profiles optimized for uniform supersonic flows.

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This tool makes it possible to design nozzles adapted to the desired conditions of temperature, density and gas flow rate, in order to maximize the uniformity of the expansion. It has been made publicly available and is a useful tool for the community working on CRESU experiments.

The program is available here: odurif.gitlab.io/cresu.

MassSpec.jl

Thu, 01 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Open-source Julia package for full processing of time-of-flight mass spectrometry data. Developed for KTH’s PTR-TOF-MS (trace-level peroxy radicals), it handles calibration, spectrum alignment and mining of large measurement volumes.

FlowTube

Wed, 01 Jun 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Program computing concentration profiles in a continuous-flow tubular reactor, for quantitative analysis of kinetic measurements at room temperature and atmospheric pressure.

Laval nozzles (CRESU)

Tue, 01 Jun 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Program computing Laval nozzle profiles in rarefied flow, maximizing expansion uniformity at targeted conditions (temperature, density, flow rate). Publicly released for the CRESU community.