Photo credit: Ulrik Svedin
Materials Science at Linköping University is an established world-leading research environment, known for creating functional thin film materials, advanced semiconductors and unique nanomaterials. We develop new material structures for energy storage, energy recovery, terahertz electronics, hard coatings, batteries, fuel cells, neutron optics and much more.
PhD studies in Materials Science gives you expertise and experience in the development of materials, as well as the advanced methods to produce them. It is an experimentally based science with close links to theory and computational methods. Based on supercomputer calculations, new materials with exceptional properties have been identified.
The quest to understand the structure of a material from the inside out produces results that are crucial to the development of society. Materials technology has always been a central part of human history and civilisation, as evidenced by the naming of eras after the materials used: the Stone Age, the Bronze Age and the Iron Age.
Modern materials science, on the other hand, is not just about making materials, but concentrates on understanding the relationship between the manufacturing process, the structure of the material and its properties, and how this knowledge can be used to design materials according to specific requirements.
Materials science has evolved from an engineering field to be also fundamental and high-tech, with well-integrated theoretical and experimental methods, without forgetting the importance of being inspired by real-life applications. New materials with combinations of different elements in new combinations are also constantly being discovered. The driving force behind this development is found both in materials science itself and in various application areas where the limitations of current materials and the possibilities of these new materials are recognised.
We collaborate with a large number of companies which inspire our research, adopt the results for use in applications and commercial products, and employ our graduate engineers and doctors. They include major international and Swedish companies such as Sandvik, ABB, Atlas Copco and SAAB, but also spin-offs generated by the research environment. The PhD studies prepares you for a career in whatever you aim for, be it a leading position in industry or other sectors, an entrepreneur, or a continued academic career.
The scientific excellence of the environment and the doctoral studies in Materials Science is demonstrated by our extensive track record in scientific publications and numerous grants to individual research leaders as well as to research environments and centres. In addition to the Swedish Research Council, we also receive grants from the European Research Council, the Wallenberg Foundations, the Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research, Vinnova, and the EU's research and innovation funding programme Horizon 2020.
