The EPMA has launched EuroFM, a sectoral group covering functional materials. This comes five years after the formation of the organization’s last group, EuroAM.
According to the EPMA, the objective of the group is to promote the interests of EPMA members in the field of functional materials to help increase awareness of the sector, promote knowledge exchanges and improve the understanding of this sector end users, designers, mechanical engineers, metallurgists and students.
While functional materials can be defined in a number of different ways, the EuroFM defines them as materials that have a distinct physical property they can bring into a component, including magnetism, caloric effects and electronic conductivity. With growing understanding of powder-based processes, the desire to implement functionality into components also increases, the EPMA says.
‘When we think of future components made by using the powder metal process, [using] functional, maybe even adaptive materials, where the component has the ability to change a property, such as internal structure, will help to keep PM at the cutting edge of industrial applications,’ said Dr Lionel Aboussouan, EPMA’s executive director.
The EuroFM will be chaired by Dr Sebastian Hein from the Fraunhofer Institut and Peter Kjeldsteen from Sintex a/s. The first functional materials seminar takes place from 3-4 April 2019 in Bremen, Germany and will cover the processing of functional materials, functional material and energy conversion and functional material and energy storage.
This story is reprinted from material from the EPMA, with editorial changes made by Materials Today. The views expressed in this article do not necessarily represent those of Elsevier.
