Recent News
Subscribe to RSS Newsfeed 
15th May 2012
Two recent EPSRC grant awards
Congratulations to Angus Wilkinson and Feliciano Giustino who have both had new grants announced by the EPSRC. Feliciano led a team from Materials and Physics who will work on the design of solid-state semiconductor-sensitized solar cells. Angus with colleagues from Strathclyde, Imperial, Nottingham, Bath and Cambridge will study the nanoscale characterisation of nitride semiconductor thin films using EBSD, ECCI, CL and EBIC.
27th March 2012
Launch of EPSRC National Facility for Aberration-Corrected STEM
A consortium of five UK universities (Oxford, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester and Glasgow) has been awarded £4.5M to operate SuperSTEM as an EPSRC Mid-Range Facility for the next five years. SuperSTEM offers world leading atomic resolution imaging and spectroscopy capabilities in two scanning transmission electron microscope (STEM) instruments. Pete Nellist of the Department of Materials at the University of Oxford acts as the Consortium Scientific Champion for the facility. An opening celebration was held in January 2012. The consortium also recently made a successful bid to the EPSRC Strategic Equipment Panel for a further £1M to enable the purchase of a new instrument offering spectroscopic resolution to better than 60 meV with high spatial resolution.
SuperSTEM is available for all EPSRC eligible researchers, and can be accessed via www.superstem.org.
13th March 2012
New High Temperature Nanotest Equipment
Department of Materials researchers developing Materials for Fusion & Fission Power have just installed a unique high temperature nanoindenter capable of testing between -30°C and 750°C. Both tip and sample are heated, giving a well-characterised indentation temperature. As well as operating as a nanoindenter, the inclusion of a piezoelectric nanopositioning stage allows use in AFM mode, so that small test elements such as microcantilevers can be located, imaged and tested. The machine, manufactured by Micromaterials Ltd, has completed its initial trials, and is now (Feb 2012) being used for the first experiments.
2nd March 2012
150 years after the USS Monitor
9th March 2012 is the 150th anniversary of the action between USS Monitor and CSS Virginia on the second day of the Battle of Hampton in the American Civil War. This was the first ever engagement between two ironclad warships, and the USS Monitor was the first warship to have her main guns on a rotating turret. The result was inconclusive but did not prevent the US Navy from maintaining its blockade of Hampton Roads. The Monitor sank under tow of Cape Hatteras on 31st December 1862. The wreck was located in 1977 and is now part of a US Marine Sanctuary. Because of sea conditions the wreck is deteriorating badly and important parts, notably the turret with its guns and the engine have been raised for conservation and preservation at the Mariners Museum, Newport News VA.
Hwei Tan's Part II project with Peter Northover and Chris Salter is to characterise samples of both ferrous and non-ferrous alloys from the Monitor in order to understand the supply of material for its construction in the mid-19th century USA, and also to explore their present state of corrosion. The results will assist both the interpretation of the vessel's construction and the efforts towards its preservation. To provide an important comparison she is also characterising samples from a steam locomotive lost at sea on its way to Canada in 1857. The materials are very similar but it is in a much colder and less saline environment off the coast of Scotland so that the corrosion is much less advanced.
10th February 2012
Materials graduates ranked as top Oxford earners
The Times Higher Education magazine (THE) magazine recently highlighted Oxford’s published data from the survey of Destinations of Leavers from Higher Education. From the 2009 and 2010 data comparing graduate salaries six months after leaving Oxford, the department is very pleased to see that Materials graduates have the highest average earnings.
4th January 2012
Launch of Bristol/Oxford Nuclear Research Centre
The NRC is a joint initiative between the University of Bristol and the University of Oxford, creating a centre of national and international importance in Nuclear Research. Over 180 people attended the official opening last November by the UK Minister of State at the Department for Energy and Climate Change, Charles Hendry.
1st October 2011
Young Person's World Lecture Competition 2011
Congratulations to Jenni Tilley for being awarded 3rd place in the Young Person's World Lecture Competition organised by Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining. Jenni was flown out to the finals in Brazil, where she gave her talk titled "Faster, Higher, Stronger: Hero Materials of the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games" competing against students from Brazil, Hong Kong, Ireland, Malaysia, Singapore and South Africa.
1st September 2011
Chinese Vice Premier Visits Oxford
During his recent visit to the UK for a UK-China financial and economic dialogue, Vice Premier Wang Qishan visited Oxford on the 9th of September. As part of the visit, Vice-Premier Wang chose to visit the Begbroke Science Park, and was shown by Patrick Grant current work in the Department on new nano-technologies for novel energy storage devices.
1st August 2011
Funding For New Spin-Out Oxtexs
Oxtexs Limited, the newest spinout from the University of Oxford, has secured £500,000 of seed funding to develop intelligent hydrogel self-inflating tissue expanders. For the first time, surgeons will be able to accurately and predictably control the direction, the timing, and rate of in vivo expansion. This will significantly reduce the risk of soft tissue damage and associated complications. The level of control makes them ideal for use in delicate anatomical locations, particularly in the treatment of children.
The innovative hydrogel is the result of a unique collaboration between two materials scientists (Jan Czernuszka, Lecturer in Materials at the University of Oxford, and David Bucknall, currently Professor of Materials Science at the Georgia Institute of Technology, USA) and two plastic and reconstructive surgeons (Marc C. Swan and Tim Goodacre based at the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford). For more information see Oxtexs website news release and Oxford University News.
