A one day seminar “Interactive meet on Electrophoretic deposition: Challenges & Opportunities (EPD-2009)” was organized by Colloids & Materials Chemistry Department, IMMT Bhubaneswar on 24th March 2009 to deliberate on fundamentals and application of electrophoretic deposition in traditional ceramic forming and coatings as well as new areas of its application in composites, nanostructured materials laminates, biomaterials and energy materials. This seminar on the important topic of electrophoretic deposition was the first of its kind to be organized in India. About 40 delegates from research institutions, universities and industry including delegates from Japan participated in the seminar. A total of 10 papers including 5 invited lectures and 5 original contributions were presented in the seminar that spanned over two technical sessions. The technical sessions were followed by an open house interactive session.

It was felt that the EPD is indeed a very promising technique in many applications of materials processing. It was also noted by participants from other institutions that IMMT is doing a wonderful job in applying it for biomaterials and energy materials research. But much more is needed to be done to popularize this inexpensive technique. It was felt that the fundamental mechanism needs to be understood better through innovative experimentation and modeling the EPD process. It was pointed out that more work on characterization of the coatings, organic-inorganic hybrid materials, non-oxide materials and composites in addition to development of aqueous EPD will give a boost and provide pathway for translating the technique from laboratory to industry.