Ever wanted to play God and create entirely new materials by yourself?

Did you know your snowboard contained new materials too?

It’s a fancy form of cookery for atoms, but you cannot eat what you get. In our Graduate School we are a hive of activity designing, making and testing new materials. From large lumps to minute molecular-sized pieces.

Quasicrystals: these are peculiar crystals with a semi-regular structure. They are usually made from metals. In two-dimensions there is a similar structure, called Penrose tiles.

What we do is to make new quasicrystals, and investigate their structure and physical properties.

Carbon nanotubes: these tiny nanometer (1 nm=10^-9 m) sized tubes are the strongest known material and at the same time can be made to conduct electricity.

We are calculating how electrons move in these nanotubes. These may be the wires in your computer of the future.