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About us Faculty of Science and Engineering Our Research FSE research themes Advanced Materials About Advanced Materials

About Advanced Materials

Modern materials have shaped the society in which we live and work. They enable an environment in which we have instantaneous access to people and information and can communicate globally at the touch of a button. New materials are transforming the medical and manufacturing industries and it is clear that everything around us is moving towards a highly connected, interacting global society. In making this new reality sustainable, we have to overcome significant barriers and reach into domains that are currently inaccessible. In particular, we either need to achieve totally new functions —“impossible materials”— or achieve energy efficiency (sustainability) using existing materials. We therefore need to grapple with increasingly complex materials architectures that are either space efficient (nano) or faster or that combine seemingly incompatible components; that contain or mimic efficient biological systems; or that unite several of the aforementioned strategies. We first have to understand processes at lengths scales ranging from atomic and molecular to supramolecular structures to the building blocks of life. We employ a philosophy to research that is focusing not only on the static structuring and elucidation of the properties of materials, but also on the dynamics of the processes and phenomena that they give rise to. This approach is essential as dynamics dictate functionality and a key challenge to overcome energy dissipation. Thus, we engage both in achieving functionality at the nanoscale and in the way that available energy can be transformed and exploited at those length scales to effect function.

Last modified:17 March 2020 08.45 a.m.