Materials Physics podcasts

Hamish Johnston speaks with iGii co-founder Marco Caffio about Gii, a porous three-dimensional carbon nanomaterial. They discuss how it retains useful electronic, structural and chemical properties associated with graphene while offering different manufacturing and integration options. Applications include chemical sensors, batteries and heaters. The conversation also covers the company’s origins and career advice for physicists entering materials technology.

Hosted by Hamish Johnston

Markus Suta of Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf speaks with Tom Götze-Ebert about inorganic photoactive materials and phosphors spanning infrared to ultraviolet wavelengths. The episode examines material choices for lighting, approaches to improving environmental performance and the use of luminescence to measure temperature.

Hosted by Tom Götze-Ebert

Laura Leay interviews MIT’s Carlos Portela about a computational design framework for deformable woven metamaterials. Graphs describe the periodic architecture and how struts interweave at nodes; user-defined helix geometry controls the woven beams. The framework produces files for finite-element analysis and 3D printing, enabling predictions of large-deformation behavior and fabrication of previously inaccessible architectures. The freely available approach connects textile-inspired design with tunable elastic response.

Hosted by Laura Leay

Sophia Chen interviews Matt Dickerson of the Air Force Research Laboratory about manufacturing nanofibrous ceramics with additive methods. The discussion explains how block copolymers direct preceramic polymers into fibers, followed by heating that removes the block polymer and converts the precursor to ceramic. Compared with electrospun mats, printing offers control over component geometry. Ceramic springs illustrate repeated deformation without degrading their mechanical properties, with possible applications in catalysts, batteries and high-temperature components.

Hosted by Sophia Chen

Melissa and Jam explain why graphite makes pencils useful for writing. The discussion follows carbon bonding into graphene sheets, conductivity and the weak interactions between layers, then connects these structures with paper, pencil hardness and clay mixtures.

Hosted by Melissa, Jam

Steve Jacobsen describes how laboratory experiments reproduce the extreme pressures and temperatures found inside planets. He explains how the behaviour of minerals under those conditions informs models of planetary interiors and discusses work at the NSF Center for Matter at Atomic Pressures.