{"id":1493,"date":"2016-11-28T13:58:18","date_gmt":"2016-11-28T13:58:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mub.eps.manchester.ac.uk\/uommaterialsblog\/?p=1493"},"modified":"2018-05-22T16:47:33","modified_gmt":"2018-05-22T15:47:33","slug":"mondaymaterials-episode-26-professor-allan-matthews","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mub.eps.manchester.ac.uk\/uommaterialsblog\/mondaymaterials-episode-26-professor-allan-matthews\/","title":{"rendered":"#MondayMaterials Episode 26 – Professor Allan Matthews"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hi Everyone. Welcome to Episode 26 of #MondayMaterials where we\u2019ll be meeting with Professor Allan Matthews, a member of the Ceramics and Inorganics Research Group<\/a> here in the School of Materials<\/a>. Allan is also the Deputy Director of the BP International Centre for Advanced Materials and a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, so it\u2019s fair to say he has a pretty impressive CV. To find out more about the exciting work he\u2019s involved in, just keep reading:<\/p>\n

\"Allan1Blog\"Hi Allan. Thanks for talking to us; it\u2019s great to have you on the blog. Can you start by describing your research, for the layman, in ten sentences or less?<\/strong><\/h3>\n

My research area is called Surface Engineering, which comes about because people realise that most products fail because of surface effects. Either by wear, corrosion, fatigue, or seizure. And also, the surface is the part that you can see so it\u2019s important from an aesthetic point of view.<\/p>\n

So surfaces have become increasingly important in research over recent years, and in particular we\u2019re looking at what we call plasma-based processes \u2013 which are environmentally friendly compared to, for example, traditional coating methods like electro-plating, where you had effluents that had to be discharged into the rivers etc. So we have techniques that are completely environmentally friendly, and, as I said, they\u2019re plasma based.<\/p>\n

So you might say, well, what\u2019s a plasma? A plasma is a conducting gas, which basically means that the species we are depositing are ionised. By ionising them we can accelerate them and give them increased energy, so that gives coatings with improved properties such as density, and also better adhesion.<\/p>\n

So that\u2019s basically what my area is, just researching Surface Engineering as we call it.<\/p>\n

And how can your research benefit the public?<\/strong><\/h3>\n