Symposium Sessions

Please contact the symposium organizers with questions.

Structural and chemical flexibility across fluorites and fluorite-related compounds is a key area of research focus as these materials have desirable properties across a wide range of engineering applications, such as high temperature thermal barriers, fast ionic conductors, nuclear waste forms, chemical flexibility and excellent catalytic performance. These applications arise from their unique structural flexibility, both in composition and in order/disorder. This symposium will provide a common platform for researchers to present experimental, computational, and theoretical investigations of desirable properties in complex multicomponent fluorite-related compounds, including but not limited to aliovalent fluorites, bixbyites, and pyrochlores. Of particular focus will be contributions describing structural/property relationships in fluorite-related materials and the techniques used to design architectural complexity. The goal of this symposium is to engage a diverse community of scientists in discussions and exchanges concerning relationships between atomic architectures and properties in these compounds. Especially intriguing are the effects at the mesoscale where complexity and disorder can promote the emergence of new physical effects. Abstracts will be solicited to this symposium involving experimental, computational, and theoretical investigations of physical properties in complex multicomponent compounds with crystal structures related to fluorite (aliovalent fluorites, bixbyites, pyrochlores, etc..) in (but not limited to) the following areas.

Topics will include:

• Fluorite structures for applications such as: fuel cell materials; thermal barrier materials; nuclear materials; sensors (e.g., oxygen and radiation detection)
• Composite or multiphase fluorite related materials involving baddleyite, Pa-3, cotunnite, and rutile phases.
• Compositional fluctuations and nonstoichiometry in fluorites and their influence on properties
• Multicomponent fluorite derivatives (not limited to oxides)
• Mechanical properties
• Magnetic properties
• Optical properties (scintillation, fluorescence, etc.)
• Thermodynamic properties
• Multiscale modeling

• A tutorial complementing this symposium is tentatively planned.

Invited Speakers:

• Karl Whittle (University of Liverpool, United Kingdom)
• Thierry Wiss (JRC Karlsruhe, Germany)
• S. Nagabhusan Achary (Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, India)
• Ricardo Castro (University of California, Davis, USA)
• Chaitanya Deo (Georgia Institute of Technology, USA)
• Lionel Desgranges (CEA Cadarache, France)
• Pratik Dholabhai (Rochester Institute of Technology, USA)
• Sarah Finkeldei (University of California, Irvine, USA)
• Brendan Kennedy (The University of Sydney, Australia)
• Christel Laberty-Robert (Sorbonne Université, France)
• Maik Lang (University of Tennessee, USA)
• Greg Lumpkin (Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation, Australia)
• Kurt Sickafus (The University of Tennessee, USA)
• Taylor Sparks (The University of Utah, USA)
• Blas Uberuaga (Los Alamos National Laboratory, USA)
• Marc Verwerft (SCK CEN Institute for Nuclear Materials Sciences, Belgium)

Symposium Organizers