Wednesday 7 June 2017

Functional Materials for a Sustainable Future

Last month, on the 15th of May, the University of Sheffield Functional Materials and Devices group hosted a workshop centred on the topic of "Functional Materials for a Sustainable Future". A diverse number of speakers from out own group, and collaborators, and industrial partners, gave insightful and exciting talks on how a range of materials can be designed and fabricated, for use in a wide range of applications.

Presentations ranged from magnetic materials for cooling, solar power materials, and the use of computational simulations to model novel materials. The workshop was also an opportunity for the FMD group to demonstrate the value of KTP (Knowledge Transfer Partnerships) whereby researchers can pursue underpinning research to enable novel materials discovery and applications.

Guests included representatives from QinetiQ, Johnson Matthey, CeramTec, Rolls-Royce, and more (a full list can be found on the event page).

























Functional materials in Japan

The assembled attendees
Between the 29th and 31st of May, the 8th International Conference on Electroceramics (ICE) was held at Nagoya University in Japan.

Topics covered at the conference encompassed most of the oxide functionalities, including piezoelectrics, thermoelectrics and ferroelectrics. Plenary lectures included Prof John Kilner (Imperial), Prof Harry Tuller (MIT), and Dr Nava Setter (EPFL).

Attendees included academics, students and industry representatives, which enabled some interesting discussions about the future directions of functional materials.  

Becky receiving her prize
Becky attended as a speaker, talking about her work on control of morphology in barium titanate, for which she won a Young Presentation Prize.

There was also a moving memorial symposium for the late Prof Eric Cross (PSU) a pioneer in the ferroelectrics field, who passed away at the end of 2016, with contributions from former students and colleagues.