Thermodynamics and diffusion play important role in processes of production and treatment of materials. The development of both make it possible to understand and control processes of crystallisation and growth of new phase, recrystallisation and recovery, creep, fatigue, rupture, wetting, magnetisation, resistivity and many others.
The Seminars devoted to this problem has a long-term tradition in Brno. First of them was held at 1972 and furthers followed in 4 years period till 1988 as national forum. It is a honor for us, to remind founders of this tradition, prof. Kučera and prof. Stránský, at this occasion.
The Seminar, which is held in year 2002, is the first international event in this series. It streams to be the forum for discussion of problems, which are of interest for participating researchers and institutions not only in Czech Republic. Therefore keynote speakers were invited to present state-of-art in the measurement of thermodynamics and diffusion quantities and in calculations of equilibrium state and driving forces for transport processes in various kinds of materials. Various problems of practical interest will be also addressed during the Seminar, among them design of advanced superalloys, lead-free solders, nanomaterials and many others.

The seminar Diffusion and Thermodynamics of Materials maintains the long-term tradition of scientific meetings oriented on the interaction between the people working both in basic science and in industry. It represents an international forum for discussing recent progress in these scientific fields and their impact on the industrial application and makes thus the participants familiar with the modern trends in materials science. The seminar continues our series of D_&T seminars. The last international seminar - D_&T^,02 held in September 2002 in Brno, Czech Republic - was the eight one.