On April 30, 2015 – formerly known as the Queen’s Birthday – the Dutch Ceramic Society NKV organised a meeting in the city of Nijmegen in the Netherlands. Part of this meeting was ‘Research in advanced ceramics’, where a total of six PhD and MSc students of Dutch universities took the opportunity to present their research. At the same time, they competed with each other in the Dutch qualifying round for the Student Speech Contest.

A broad range of ceramic subjects were passed in review during the six presentations: from ceramic fibers via bioceramics to ceramics with a metallic behaviour, and from ultrathin ceramic coatings on ceramic nanoparticles to soft ceramics as lubricant for high temperature application. This article presents the essentials of the six ceramic subjects in their practical context.

Please click on the image below to download the article, as it appeared in the 2015 Yearbook of the Society for Materials Science (Bond voor Materialenkennis).