Materials Annual Report - Friends of Imperial College

The Department has internationallyleading
research programmes in the
synthesis, processing, microstructure,
properties and modelling of a broad
range of materials (metals, ceramics,
semiconductors, glasses, metal- glass-
and ceramic- matrix composites)
directed to diverse applications such as
nuclear, solid oxide fuel cells, aerospace,
biomedical, automotive and electronic.
Our expanding portfolio mean that
we now group our research into six
core themes: Biomaterials and Tissue
Engineering, Ceramics and Glasses,
Advanced Alloys, Nanotechnology and
Nanoscale Characterisation, Functional
Materials and Theory and Simulation
of Materials. We have world-leading
researchers in all these fields and
adopt the Imperial ethos of looking for
commercial application of our work
directed to diverse applications in the
nuclear, solid oxide fuel cells, aerospace
and military, biomedical, automotive
and electronic sectors. The Department
currently has two active spin-out
companies, Ceres Power and RepRegen
which were set up to commercialise the
products of departmental research.
We enhance the quality of our research
by continually appointing new people
of international standing and by
building on the already extensive links
to other departments and research
centres and institutes at Imperial
and worldwide, including Imperial’s
Energy Futures Laboratory, Security
Science and Technology Institute, The
Composites Centre, London Centre for
Nanotechnology, Centre for Advanced
Structural Ceramics, Thomas Young
Centre for Materials Theory and
Simulation and the Centre for Nuclear
Engineering. Important international
links are with King Abdullah University
of Science and Technology (KAUST), the
IDEA League (with ETH Zurich, ParisTech,
RWTH Aachen and TU Delft) The National
University of Singapore (NUS), Nanyang
Technological University (NTU) and the
European Network of Excellence KMM in
Advanced Materials.
The Department also has excellent
contacts with industry, and receives
research support from over 60
companies either as research contracts
or student support. The Department’s
research volume during 2009–10 was
in excess of £7.5 million from Research
Councils, industry and Government
bodies and the 2010–11 budget forecast
is £7.8 million. Overall, the Department
holds grants valued at £46.5 million.
Our Academic Excellence Alliance
partnership with King Abdullah
University of Science and Technology
(KAUST) in Saudi Arabia, continues
to strengthen. We have initiated a
number of new collaborative research
projects with staff at KAUST in a range
of areas including: Zinc Oxide (Iman
Roqan and Udo Schwingenschlogl),
Defects in Semiconductors (Udo
Schwingenschlogl), Graphene (Aram
Amassian), Energy Harvesting (Ghassan
Jabbour) Cytotoxicity of Nanowires
(Timothy Ravasi) and finally, Catalysis
(Jean-Marie Basset).
Prizes awarded to members of the
Department this year include: the
Amgen Life Sciences Award at the ACES
(Academic Enterprise Awards), the 2010
Macro- IUPAC Award for creativity in
applied polymer science or polymer
technology, the 2010 IOM 3 Rosenhain
Medal and Prize and the 2010 Royal
Society of Chemistry Norman Heatley
Award to Professor Molly Stevens, The
American Ceramic Society 2010 Robert
Coble Award for Young Scholars to
Dr Julian Jones, the 2010 IOM 3 Harvey
Flower Titanium Prize to Dr David
Dye, the 2010 IOM 3 Silver Medal to Dr
Christopher Gourlay, the 2010 IOM 3
Griffith Medal and Prize to Professor
Robin Grimes, the Institute of Physics
2010 Maxwell Medal and Prize to Dr
Peter Haynes and a 2010 Rector’s Award
for Excellence in Teaching to Dr Luc
Vandeperre. In addition, Professor Sue
Ion (Visiting Professor) was awarded
the DBE for services to science and
engineering.
The excellence of some of our
undergraduate and postgraduate
students and postdoctoral research staff
has also been recognised by a number
of awards including: highly competitive
6 Department of Materials Annual Report and Research in Progress 2009–10 www.imperial.ac.uk/materials
Imperial Junior Research Fellowships
to Drs Cecilia Mattevi and Fang Xie, a
Natural Science and Engineering Council
of Canada (NSERC) Postgraduate
Scholarship, valued at $CAD21,000
for three years to HoKwon Kim, and a
Fluor corporation scholarship valued
at £2,000 to Shakiba Kaveh (fourth
year MEng student), to name a few.
New appointments during this period
include: Professor Norbert Klein from
Forschungszentrum Jülich, (FZJ),
Germany as Chair in Electromagnetic
Nanomaterials, Professor Eduardo
Gutierrez Saiz from Lawrence Berkeley
National Laboratory, USA as Chair
in Structural Ceramics, Dr Rongshan
Qin from POSTECH Graduate Institute
of Ferrous Technology (GIFT) as
RAEng/Corus Senior Lecturer in Steel
Processing, Dr Iain Dunlop from the Max
Planck Institute for Metals Research/
University of Heidelberg as Lecturer
in Biomaterials, Dr Jonathan Weaver
from University of Liverpool as Lecturer
in Polymeric Biomaterials (a joint
appointment between the Department
of Materials and Department of
Bioengineering) and Mr Graeme Rae as
Research Operations Manager.
We said goodbye to: Professor Manish
Chhowalla (Chair in Materials), Dr Alison
Harrison (Lecturer in Nanotechnology),
Ashley Perris (Finance Officer), Nick
Royall (Characterisation Facilities
Technician) and Michelle Ryder (PA to
Professor Robin Grimes and Project
Manager to the Centre of Nuclear
Engineering). We wish them all the best
of luck in their new ventures.
We are currently renovating the
basement area. This is a major
refurbishment that will provide us
with four new laboratories and a new
mezzanine area which will have two
classrooms each accommodating 40
people. The labs will be used for energy
research. We were fortunate enough
to win a Wolfson refurbishment grant
valued at £380,000 to offset the ~£3
million cost of the refurbishment.
We commissioned the new TOF-
SIMS which was officially ‘opened’
by the Rector on 9 December 2009. We also
commissioned the new thermal analysis
equipment purchased from Netszch. In the
area of functional materials, we bought a THz
spectrometer, a new pulsed laser deposition UHV
apparatus, an e-beam/sputter deposition unit
and two RHEED (reflection high energy electron
deposition) systems.
Our undergraduate programme continues to
thrive. During 2009–10, we enrolled 80 new
undergraduates which brings our current total
to more than 260. The Department of Materials
has a reputation for excellence in undergraduate
teaching. Over the past three years, analyses
by newspapers (The Times, The Guardian, The
Independent and The Telegraph) have consistently
placed the Department in the top three for
teaching of the discipline. The Department
continues to attract the best students, the 2009–
10 students having the best A level results of any
intake, and produce highly motivated, skilled,
employable graduates.
We are continuing to support our undergraduates
through the Harvey Flower Undergraduate
Research Scholarship (HFURS) fund, which we set
up in 2007 in honour of the late Professor Harvey
M Flower. In addition, numerous companies and
charities including the Armourers and Brasiers’
Company, AWE, The Ironmongers Company,
Corus/Tata continue to support our students by
generously funding various scholarships and
bursaries. These, together with the HFURS funds,
mainly enable our undergraduates to spend time
abroad in high quality research institutions and/or
support their studies.
Our PhD student intake in October 2009 was 36
which puts our PhD numbers at well over 100. In
addition, the past year has, in terms of number of
PhDs awarded, been the most successful in the
Department’s history. We graduated 36 students
in the 2009–10 period, which is five more than in
2008–09 (31) and 21 more than in 2007–08 (15).
We congratulate our
graduates and wish
them all the best in the
future!
I hope you will find this
report of interest. This is
the first that I introduce
as Head of Department,
having taken over the
reins from Bill Lee. The
Department thrived
under his leadership
and I hope it continues
to do so.
Professor Neil McN
Alford, FREng
2 3
1: Thermal analysis
equipment
2: E-beam/sputter
deposition unit
3: Pulsed laser deposition
UHV apparatus with
RHEED system
www.imperial.ac.uk/materials Department of Materials Annual Report and Research in Progress 2009–10
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