It will be hosted by the Dresden Branch Laboratory for Powder Metallurgy and Composite Materials of the Fraunhofer Institute for Manufacturing and Advanced Materials (IFAM), and the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Physics of Solids. It is to be staged from January 23 - 25, 2008 in Dresden, Germany.

The conference will be a forum for researcher and applicants of inorganic functional materials and their production processes.

The Technical Programme will cover all aspects of the production and processing of novel functional materials and particulate processing technologies through a programme of plenary presentations and reviews. These will focus on topics of all kinds of production methods for ultra-fine grained materials or functional materials in appreciable amounts. The programme includes: Preparation of nanopowders, rapid solidification, nanopowder consolidation, sintering, including spark plasma sintering (SPS) and microwave sintering, mechanical alloying, shock compaction, severe plastic deformation, new processing concepts, characterisation techniques, diamond tools, cemented carbides, cermets, thermoelectrics, piezoelectrics, magnetic materials, nanostructured and ultra-fine-grained materials, nanocomposites, catalysts, materials for thermal management, electrical / electronic materials, and hydrogen storage materials. http://www.apnfm.de : info@apnfm.de.