[Image above] Attendees at DSEC V in Warsaw, Poland. Credit: Elizabeth Dickey
Editor’s note: This report comes to us from Elizabeth Dickey, professor and director of graduate programs in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering; director of the Center for Dielectrics and Piezoelectrics; and associate director of the Analytical Instrumentation Facility at North Carolina State University (Raleigh, N.C.). Dickey also helped organize DSEC V.
The 5th International Workshop on Directionally Solidified Eutectic Ceramics (DSEC V), was held in Warsaw, Poland, April 3–7, 2016. Since the first gathering in Paris in 2003, every three years this workshop brings together the international community of ceramists and materials scientists studying directionally solidified eutectics to exchange knowledge and share ideas.
In recent years, the field of eutectics research has broadened in scope to consider complex multicomponent oxide systems for a variety of structural and functional applications. In addition, there has been a resurgence of interest in boride and carbide eutectics for their high-hardness and refractory properties.
DSEC V brought together 68 scientists from 13 different countries to discuss recent progress in phase diagram development, solidification theory and modeling, novel processing strategies, microstructure investigation, mechanical behavior, and optical metamaterial properties of eutectic ceramics in addition to their application in a variety of thermo-mechanical, opto-electronic and energy technologies.
The all-female conference organizing committee (left to right): Dorota A. Pawlak (University of Warsaw, Institute of Electronics Materials Technology Poland); Elizabeth Dickey (North Carolina State University, USA); Rosa Merino (Universidad de Zaragoza, Spain); and Marie-Helene Berger (École des Mines de Paris, France). Credit: Elizabeth Dickey
DSEC V was held in the University of Warsaw’s newest building for the Center of New Technologies (CeNT). The workshop included a tour of the nearby Laboratory of Material Technologies, which is a shared initiative between CeNT and the Institute of Electronic Materials Technology (ITME). Conference chair Professor Dorota Pawlak leads both laboratories, which specialize in developing new material technologies and obtaining novel materials applicable to photonics, optoelectronics, photoelectrochemistry, and potentially photovoltaics and medicine.
The workshop was endorsed by The American Ceramic Society and received financial support from the Journal of the European Ceramics Society (JECS) Trust.