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I'm Dr Tom Scott, I'm Director of the Interface Analysis Centre
which is a surface-science and materials-analysis facility
within the Faculty of Science.
The Interface Analysis Centre is a multidisciplinary hub
for research from across the University
for anyone who's doing physical sciences,
whether that's working on teeth to working on nuclear fuels.
We do it all at the IAC
and we collaborate with all of the other University departments
to solve scientific materials problems. We're very lucky
in that we've got a wide array
of multi-million-pound analytical equipment at our disposal.
Generically for materials science,
in order to find out about the material surface you're interested in,
we're always firing something at that surface. In some cases,
it may be electrons, in other cases, it may be ions, or even X-rays.
We're looking at measuring the response of the material
to tell us what it's made of in terms of the elements which are present
and also, in some cases, the way those elements are bound together
to make compounds.
One of our leading techniques
is a DualBeam system,
a secondary electron microscope and focused ion-beam system.
It allows us to perform nanosurgery.
Recently, we've had a project with the School of Biology
where we've been working with insect specialists
to try and understand better how insects hear.
We've been using the focused ion-beam system that's in the DualBeam
to section the ear membrane on Indian tree crickets
to determine what its structure is.
This has never been done before because other techniques
have had the wrong scale-length capability,
but the DualBeam, with its nanometre-scale-length measurement,
we can very accurately cut these membranes up
and get new insights
into insect hearing issues that have never been seen before.
A key aspect of what we do is working with industry.
For example, we do a lot in the civil nuclear sector.
We have students specifically looking at the ageing
of stainless steels in reactor conditions to understand
how and why their properties change as a function of time
and whether that change in properties
will have a significant impact
on the safe running of the UK's nuclear reactors in the future.
One technique we use on a regular basis to do that
is a technique called electron backscatter diffraction
where we fire a focused beam of electrons at the surface
and the surface is tilted to 70 degrees
and we look at the coherent scatter
of diffracted electrons out from that point that we've hit.
By looking at how those electrons are diffracted, we can tell the structure
of the material we've hit, as long as its crystalline.
If we're looking at stainless steels
for a company like EDF,
we're looking at determining
the content of austenite versus ferrite
and it's a very useful technique
which produces very visual data
that are easy to interpret.
The whole point of having the Interface Analysis Centre
at the University of Bristol is to provide a multidisciplinary hub
for materials science.
We work with lots of different departments
because we are that hub.
We work with the biologists, the chemists, the physicists,
the earth scientists and also the dentists.
Because we have this amazing array of analytical equipment,
it's enticing to researchers not just within the University
but also to researchers in industry
and that's why we have such successful collaborations
both within the University and externally.