An area of increasing technological importance is biomaterials. This is owing to an aging and more active population as well as improvements in health care and assessment. The School has active and well funded collaborations in place with the Graduate School for Biomedical Engineering and the School of Pathology. The processing, performance, and applications of electronic and superconducting ceramics are some of the most research-intensive areas under investigation worldwide. These functional devices require very careful processing in order to achieve improvements in behaviour.
Powders can be wet or dry and range in size from nanometers to centimeters.
The macroscopic behaviour of powders is controlled by the interactions between individual particles and with the surrounding medium. There is a need to understand these interactions and the microscopic mechanisms governing particulate packing and flow. Substantial government and industry funding has been provided principally for work in the development of processing techniques designed to improve the properties and performance of a range of ceramics. The mechanical and thermal processing of metals and alloys is responsible principally for the resultant microstructure, which itself largely determines the performance of these materials. There is considerable technological interest in investigating the relationship between the processing, microstructure, and properties of materials.