Interdisciplinary Research Key Topics

Shaping our future in terms of sustainable technologies, new materials and industrial processes is one of the most important topics of our generation and we are in need of scientific and engineering answers. How can we avoid the use of carbon as energy and reductant carrier? How can we make better and rare-earth free permanent magnets for electrical vehicles? How can we render alloys sustainable and improve recycling rates? Which are the novel materials that can withstand embrit­tlement caused by hydrogen? And what is the potential of new thermoelectric and so­lar cell absorber materials for green power generation? [more]

For millennia, materials design relied on random discoveries and empirical rules — later refined into predictive theories and simulations. Today, this classical approach is being transformed: automation, advanced characterization, and simulations generate vast amounts of data, which we turn into insight. By combining materials science expertise with advanced data analysis and artificial intelligence, we move beyond collecting knowledge and use it to accelerate progress. [more]

Advanced materials have been key enablers of technological progress over thousands of years, lending entire ages their name. The accelerated demand for both, load-bearing and functional materials in key sectors such as energy, sustainability, construction, health, communication, infrastructure, safety and transportation is resulting in predicted production growth rates of up to 200 per cent until 2050 for many material classes. This requires not only to better understand the fundamental relationships between synthesis, manufacturing, basic mechanisms, microstructure and properties but also to discover novel materials that meet both, advanced application challenges under harsh environments. [more]

Corrosion and hydrogen embrittlement are among the most serious threats to the durability and safety of metals, causing an estimated €2.5 trillion in damage each year — around 3.4% of global GDP. Enhancing corrosion resistance is therefore crucial for sustainable and safe infrastructures and industry. While corrosion, driven largely by galvanic reactions in microstructures, leads to material loss and failures worldwide, hydrogen embrittlement is a hidden and often catastrophic threat, especially to high-strength alloys — and a key challenge for hydrogen-based technologies.
At MPI-SusMat, we are at the forefront of corrosion and hydrogen research, deploying state-of-the-art methods from advanced Kelvin-probe techniques to single-atom hydrogen detection with atom probe tomography. [more]

At the heart of materials science is the relationship between a material’s microstructure and its properties. Understanding and controlling this interplay is key to developing optimized, often multifunctional, materials. Properties like fracture toughness, strength, ductility, thermal and electrical conductivity, corrosion resistance, or magnetic behaviour can all be tuned by tailoring the material’s “architecture.” [more]

The development of novel types of materials and processes that  take upscaling, safety and sustainability into account requires methodologically state-of-the-art and often long-term research projects. They regularly result into the development of innovative tools for experiments, characterization, processing, simulations and machine learning. [more]