The Smart Materials & Systems Committee of the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining were pleased to announce the fifth workshop in the series, held over two days.

Multiferroic materials offer the opportunity for many new types of devices – from ultralow magnetic field sensors to new types of multiple state memories. Much has been learnt of these materials through the use of diffraction and spectroscopy methods through synchrotron and neutron scattering combined with other methods, including bulk and thin film metrology and atomistic modelling.

The workshop hosted the first workshop of the European Union’s EURAMET 16ENG06 ‘ADVENT’ project – ‘Metrology for advanced energy-saving technology in next-generation electronics applications’. Very recent results from ADVENT of modern ferroelectric/piezoelectric materials examined using new X-ray synchrotron facilities (diffraction and spectroscopy) at ESRF, BESSY, DIAMOND and APS, were presented alongside electron spectroscopies (TEM/Holography) at CNRS, Toulouse. The two day workshop brought together research leaders in the fields of neutron, x-ray synchrotron and, for the first time, Free-electron laser x-ray sources at XFEL. Though the focus of the presentations was aligned to metrology and facilities development, our ferroelectric and multiferroic theme provided a great opportunity to catch up on the very latest developments and understanding in this broad class of materials.

The workshop also hosted a student poster session with a prize given to the best workshop poster.

The X-ray and neutron scattering and spectroscopies in ferroelectric and multiferroic research workshop comprise a series of one or two day meetings designed to bring together experts from the multiferroics, magnetoelectrics and ferroelectrics communities with neutron, synchrotron and other spectroscopy facility users to present the latest developments in this field.

The meeting was held at IOM3 London Headquarters.