Program 3: Materials Systems Engineering
Overview
Mission
The Helmholtz Research Program MSE (Materials Systems Engineering) is developing and integrating information-based techniques in material design, development and processing as a major asset for future breakthroughs. Information-driven materials interface design, in particular of nanomaterials, biomaterials and advanced engineering materials, offers great potential for future technological applications by tuning the materials properties beyond the design of bulk microstructures via the functionalization of surfaces and control of interfaces. The management of research data is taken up in MSE in a cross-thematic manner, characterized by the trend-setting development of Electronic Laboratory Notebooks (ELN).
Copyright: Gabrielle Schlipf
Our focus
The increasing demands for newly designed, more efficient, smarter and cheaper materials are challenges for new materials and material concepts, which are met in MSE by means of functionality by computational design, information-driven material interface and process design, combining biological and artificial materials, and scale-bridging manufacturing including life-cycle aspects. MSE, with its solid materials science foundation, provides the prerequisite for the design and fabrication of real materials as well as their digital twins, where computational design is the crucial basis for the creation and integration of (multiple) functions in complex multi-material systems and their applications, e.g. in the fields of IT, energy, separation technologies and (data) storage, healthcare, robotics or transportation.
Copyright: Gabrielle Schlipf
The great potential for future technological applications is tapped by the targeted tuning of material properties via the design of microstructures, the functionalization of surfaces and the control of interfaces. Fully automated structural analysis, data-driven materials design, and modeling and simulation (ab initio, molecular dynamics, multi-scale simulation) are integral parts of materials research in MSE and key elements for decoding complex interface-structure-property relationships. As an integral part of the Helmholtz materials research strategy, MSE positions itself at the center of materials research in the Helmholtz Association, operates research infrastructures such as the Karlsruhe Nano Micro Facility for Information-driven Material Structuring and Characterization (KNMFi) as well as the Ernst Ruska-Centrum (ER-C) at the Forschungszentrum Jülich (FZJ).
Christof Wöll
Speaker of the Program "Materials Systems Engineering"
Karlsruhe Institute of Technology
Participating Helmholtz Centers
