Professor Sandie Dann - Inaugural Lecture

A recurring theme in Prof Sandie Dann’s career to date has been that many of the functional materials she has investigated since her PhD studies at Southampton have their origins in geology. Like the natural product chemist, identifying and synthesising active pharmaceutical ingredients in plants, the geomimeticist identifies minerals with useful properties and copies them to make new materials.

From oxygen ion conductors to pigments and frustrated magnets to catalysts, the structure-property relationship principle has been exploited to prepare materials which are chemically interesting and industrially useful. By understanding why the properties exist by characterising the structure locally, in collaboration and at central UK research facilities, it has been possible to improve on nature to prepare ever-better materials for targeted applications by using more elements from the Periodic Table than those that occur naturally in a single place. During this talk, Sandie will demonstrate the principles of designing functional materials from minerals both by intention and through happy accident, using selected examples from her varied materials research programmes.