Placing almost 7,000 chemists, physicists and materials scientists in a single space for five days is always going to be an intense experience. The Fall Meeting of the Materials Research Society is one of my favourite conferences, although it is growing so large that it may soon implode. An endless programme of talk titles, over forty symposia, poster sessions that felt like rush hour trains, and a fight for coffee at break-times. The advantage is the variety of science on offer; if you can't find talks that interest you, then you should probably quit the field!
(day)
(night)
The highlight is of course meeting people, but there were also some notable presentations:
(From Symposium Z: Semiconducting Oxides, where I spend most of my time)
Band Lineup of Oxide Semiconductors (Hideo Hosono)
- The world leader of transparent conducting oxides gave a good overview of his group's recent work; although, band lineups only received a brief mention. The future points towards indirect band gaps.
Band Energies and Doping Limits of Metal Oxides (Aron Walsh)
- Obviously, the talk of the week.
Selection Rule of Preferred Doping Site for n-type Transparent Conducting Oxides (Su-Huai Wei)
- Trying to distinguish between when to dope cation sites (e.g. Al on Zn in ZnO) or anion sites (e.g. F on O in SnO2) for maximum effect.
Thermodynamics of Carrier Compensation in Ga-doped ZnO (Stephan Lany)
- A revision of earlier work on carrier concentrations in ZnO, but with the addition of corrections from GW theory and the contribution of charge-compensated defect clusters.
Temperature Dependence of the Direct Band Gap and Transport Properties of CdO (Tim Veal)
- The band gap of CdO has been revised several times over the past century. A clear picture emerges when band filling and remormalisation effects are treated properly.
(Plenary talks)
Climbing the Ladder of Density Functional Approximations (John Perdew)
- A demonstration that effective presentations do not have to be aesthetic. A powerful recap of the origins of density functional theory and current developments.
Quasicrystals: Discovery, Structure, Properties and Uses (Danny Shechtman)
- "Choose your field and become an expert in it." An inspiring talk about fighting the establishment with five-fold symmetry.
(From friends who made the week very enjoyable)
P-type Transparent Conducting Oxides: Intrinsic Limitations and Future Directions (David Scanlon)
- A brief summary of his epic PhD work, and an outline of a "madcap" project to screen quinternary oxy-chalcogenides.
MBE Growth and Characterisation of CuCrO2(001) and (015) Thin Films (Russ Egdell)
- How a "simple" material can give a complex reflection when grown on corundum.
Electronic Structure and Surface Properties of Ga and Tl Doped In2O3 (Anna Regoutz)
- Indium may or may not be running out, but it takes guts to investigate Tl doping of indium oxide.
Limits to Doping of Wide Band Gap Oxide Semiconductors and Related Materials (John Buckeridge)
- Re-addressing the doping limits of materials from a chemistry perspective.
Simulation of Hetero- and Nano-structured AgI: The Role of Polytypism and Morphology in Extreme Ag+ Ionic Conductivities (Ben Morgan)
- How ion diffusion is more complex than we commonly think; the small details (really) matter.
Back to the real world now, where today I officially became a Reader (to the confusion of all except UK academics).