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Department of Materials Science and Metallurgy

One of the leading departments of materials science in the world, our origin was the nineteenth-century metallurgical research in Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge. This work by Heycock and Neville on phase-diagram determination has today broadened to a very wide range of materials: not just metals and alloys, but ceramics, polymers and composites, and materials of interest for their semiconducting, magnetic, superconducting and ferroelectric properties.

The Department is structured to take materials research forward into the new century with a rapidly growing commitment to the field of biomedical materials, in parallel with our historically strong activities in processing and materials chemistry and in the development of structural and device materials. underpinning these are our world-class facilities for materials characterisation, including state-of-the-art electron microscopes, among the most advanced in the country. Both computational modelling and process technology have evolved remarkably in recent years, and advanced computer simulations of material behaviour are supported by a network of high-powered computers, including the University's High Performance Computer.

Our research has always been closely linked with industrial needs and supported in large part by industry as well as government, but recent trends have seen the development of large-scale working relationships with major research sponsors such as:

Rolls-Royce

• Cambridge University's Rolls-Royce UTC (University Technology Centre
• The University Gas Turbine Membership
• Institute for Manufacturing

Regenesys Technologies

• the Regenesys Technologies University Technology Centre (fuel cells)

Pfizer

• Pfizer Institute for Pharmaceutical Materials Science

Similarly, our wide range of international contacts has been extended through formal collaboration agreements with institutions in Switzerland, Singapore and most recently, the USA via the Cambridge-MIT Institute

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Last updated March 2010

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