SGTE, Scientific Group Thermodata Europe, was established 25 years ago with the aim of coordinating database development across a number of European organisations involved in the critical assessment of thermodynamic data and their use in the calculation of phase equilibria. While in 1979 this consortium was based narrowly around seven groups in Western Europe, the last few years has seen a major expansion to 13 groups from Europe, the USA and Canada.
In spite of its geographical background, SGTE has always seen its rôle as part of the broader international effort to unify thermodynamic data and assessment methods and this can be seen through its involvement in the CODATA Task Group concerned with Chemical Thermodynamic Tables which sought to unify the traditional strands of data for pure substances and the calculation of phase diagrams. SGTE has been a keen sponsor of the Ringberg workshops which aimed to provide the ideas and the groundwork for future developments of databases, modelling of thermodynamic data and the application of phase diagram calculations to real industrial problems. It has also been a major contributor to a series of international European collaborative projects such as COST507 concerned with data for light alloys and, more recently, COST531 on lead free solders and COST535 on the thermodynamics of highly alloyed aluminides.
This paper will be concerned with the database activities undertaken within SGTE starting from the well established Substance, Solution and UNARY Databases, to the planned release of a number of new materials specific databases, the publication of selected data from the SGTE databases as part of the Landolt-Börnstein series and finally plans for the next generation of databases.