Cellular Materials

Dear readers of AEM's special section “Cellmat 2018,” The 5th International Conference on Cellular Materials − CELLMAT 2018 – was held in October 2018, in the Monastery Banz, located in Bad Staffelstein Germany, a small city with mediaeval charm, within the Francionian Switzerland. David Smith from the University of Limoges, France, gave the opening lecture of this three days conference; his talk was entitled ́Thermophysical properties of porous materials: microstructural design parameters for thermal insulatioń. Within three parallel sessions more than 100 experts from 20 countries discussed topical research in the area of cellular matter in about 80 talks, among them seven keynote and 10 invited lectures; about 20 posters were displayed and discussed in the first evening of the conference while having beer and pretzels. Thursday night, for the first time, a Highlight Lecture was given: Christoph Neugrodda, PhD student of the Chair of Brewing and Beverage Technology of the Technical University of Munich, introduced the conference attendees with a very special and close-to-the-topic talk. Qualified as a brewer he presented his studies entitled “Beer Foam and its Significance for Beer Quality”; we have learned the real things one has to know about foams; thanks again to Christoph! As a good tradition, poster prizes were granted to young researchers on Thursday night. The winners of the first prize are Eduardo López, Miguel Ángel Rodríguez Pérez, University of Valladolid (Spain); Cristina Saiz Arroyo, CellMat Technologies S.L, Valladolid (Spain); their poster was entitled “Crosslinked open cell ethylene butyl acrylate copolymer (EBA) foams: properties and applications”. The second price was granted to Mikel Mugica, Victoria Bernardo, Judith Martín de Léon, Miguel Ángel Rodríguez Pérez, University of Valladolid (Spain); Cristina Saiz Arroyo, CellMat Technologies S.L, Valladolid (Spain), and the poster title was “Production of microcellular PMMA using the bead foaming technology” and the third price was granted to Alexander M. Matz (Sp), Bettina S. Matz, Johann Heimann, Norbert Jost, Pforzheim University of Applied Sciences (Germany) with the poster title “Interface formation of Mg2X (X = Si, Sn) in cellular Si infiltrated by Mg(Sn) alloys”. The poster prices were sponsored by Methodisch-Diagnostisches Zentrum für Werkstoffprüfung (MDZWP) e.V., Magdeburg, Germany. Congratulation to our awardees! The topics of last year's conference were related to manufacturing of cellular materials, characterization techniques and properties, specific applications in energy conversion, prosthetics, or in transportation. A very positive trend was recognized with an increasing number of contributions from the polymer community, and we have had more young scientists as in the previous years. The entire conference would not have been possible without sponsorship and activities from industry, research institutions and academia. Organizational issues were completely and excellent covered by the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Materialkunde e. V. (DGM) and the INVENTUM GmbH. Thus, in the name of the organizers we may express our gratitude to all contributors. We also thank all members of the program committee, and a special thank is given to Alexia Ploetz, INVENTUM GmbH, for her unresting and perfect support. Finally, we would like to thank all attendees for their contributions and fruitful discussions! The papers in this section of Advanced Engineering Materials reflect a small selection of the presentations at CellMAT 2018; thanks to all authors for their valuable contributions. The next CellMAT conference will be held in autumn 2020, and we look forward to seeing you there. Michael Scheffler Otto von Guericke University Magdeburg, Germany