Lectures and Seminars
Degree-course lecture lists are published termly under Teaching section of this website.
Materials Colloquia
Research seminar series organised by the Department of Materials
Thursdays 4pm Hume-Rothery Lecture Theatre
The dates of the colloquia for 2023/2024 are:
Michaelmas Term 2023:
Week 2 (19 October 2023) Professor Warren Scott (University of North Carolina) - in-person
Week 3 (26 October 2023) Professor Theresa Davey (National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Tec) - potentially on-line only
Week 6 (16 November 2023) Dr Takuya Matsui (National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology) - in-person
Week 7 (23 November 2023) Professor Tamalika Banerjee (University of Groningen) - in-person.
Hilary Term 2024
Week 1 (18 January 2024) Professor Rachel Oliver (University of Cambridge) - in-person
Week 3 (1 February 2024)
Week 5 (15 February 2024)
Week 8 (7 March 2024).
Trinity Term 2024
In addition there are numerous seminars by visiting researchers advertised via email.
Archive of the most recent public lectures hosted by the department
Biennial Hume-Rothery Lecture 2023
This lecture, by Professor Brian Cantor (Oxford University and the Brunel Centre for Advanced Solidification Technology (BCAST) Brunel University), took place on 21 April 2023:
'Multicomponent High-Entropy Cantor Alloys' by Professor Brian Cantor CBE FREng
Abstract: All human advances have depended on making new materials, and all materials are alloys (ie mixtures of several different starting materials or components), so the history of the human race has been the continued invention of new materials by discovering new alloys. Recently a new way of doing this, by manufacturing multicomponent high-entropy alloys, has shown that the total number of possible materials is enormous, even more than the number of atoms in the galaxy, so we have lots of wonderful new materials yet to find.
Multicomponent phase space contains a surprisingly large number of single-phase extended solid solutions and compounds. The first group of these which was discovered are called Cantor alloys, an enormous composition range with a single-phase fcc structure, based loosely on the original equiatomic five-component Cantor alloy CrMnFeCoNi. This talk will discuss the previous history of alloying, the discovery of multicomponent alloys, the structure of multicomponent phase space, and the fundamental thermodynamics of multicomponent solid solutions such as the Cantor alloys, the complexity of local atomic and nanoscale configurations in such materials, the effect of this on properties such as atomic diffusion, dislocation slip, and the resulting outstanding mechanical properties and potential applications, including at low and high temperatures, for corrosion and radiation resistance, and to enhance recycling and re-use. The topic of the talk is dedicated (highly suitably) to the work of William Hume-Rothery whose famous Hume-Rothery Rules are the basis of all our scientific understanding of alloy and material development.
Short Biography: Brian Cantor is our colleague and former Head of Department , a Research Professor in the Brunel Centre for Advanced Solidification Technology at Brunel University, a Trustee of the UK's national Science Museum Group, Co-Director of the UKRI Interdisciplinary Research Centre for Circular Metals, and a Chief Editor of the Springer-Nature research journal 'High Entropy Alloys and Materials'. He was previously Vice-Chancellor of the University of York and Bradford University, Head of Mathematical and Physical Sciences at the University of Oxford, and a research scientist and engineer at General Electric Research Labs in the USA. He also worked briefly at Banaras Hindu University, Washington State, Northeastern, IISc Bangalore and the Kobe Institute. He founded and built up the World Technology UniverHities Network, the UK National Science Learning Centre, the Hull-York Medical School, Oxford's Begbroke Science Park, and the York Heslington East Campus. He was a long-standing consultant for Alcan, NASA and Rolls-Royce, and editor of 'Progress in Materials Science'. he invented the new field of multicomponent high-entropy alloys and discovered the so-called Cantor alloys. Among many honours and prizes from different countries around the world, he is a Commander of the British Empire (CBE) and a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering (FREng).
Biennial Hirsch Lecture 2022
'From Batteries to Solar Cells: Exploring Energy Materials on the Atomic Scale'
Professor Saiful Islam FRSC FIMMM
Chair of Materials Modelling, University of Oxford
Friday 14 January 2022
Panopto recording (requires an Oxford account log-on) https://ox.cloud.panopto.eu/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=c93a81b8-bda8-4d74-8919-ae1500d17ed6. .
Biennial Hume-Rothery Lecture 2021
'Microscopy and Magnetic Materials: Exploring Energy Landscapes at the Nanoscale'
Professor Amanda Petford-Long FREng
Argonne National Laboratory and Northwestern University
Friday 15 January 2021
Biennial Hirsch Lecture 2019
Triboreacted materials as functional interfaces in internal combustion engines and medical implants
Professor Anne Neville OBE, FREng, FRS, FRSE
RAEng Chair in Emerging Technologies, and Professor of Tribology and Surface Engineering, University of Leeds
Friday 8 February 2019
Biennial Hume-Rothery Lecture 2018
Damage-tolerance in engineering and biological materials
Professor Robert O. Richie FREng, ForMemRS
Materials Sciences Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and Departments of Materials Science & Engineering and Mechanical Engineering, University of California Berkeley
Wednesday 24th January 2018
Other Seminar Series in Oxford
Additional seminar series of interest organised elsewhere in the university include:
