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About this talk

Materials are matter with a purpose; that is a set of properties that make them useful, functional and purposeful. The properties of any given material derive from the arrangement and identity of atoms that make it up (structure), and the business of materials chemistry is to understand these structure-property interrelationships and leverage them to design and synthesise new, ever better materials. This paradigm has been fruitful for over 100 years, underpinning technology development such as electronics, batteries, plastics, medical implants etc. But it has a glaring blind spot: like people, no material is perfect, and structural imperfections can critically modulate properties (positively or negatively). In July's Balliol Online Lecture, Theodosios Famprikis will explore the conceptual advance from tidy, symmetric, ideal materials to messy, disordered and real materials, providing examples of how said disorder can be a feature, not a bug, enabling improvement and control over materials properties.

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