Surface design and surface properties
For sustainable materials development of high-performance components and their transfer to industry, it is necessary to extend the application limits of materials via novel surfaces and surface-related areas, such as boundary layers and edge zones. The existing scientific experience with plasma processes at the institute, including the existing plasma facilities, as well as the scientific expertise on surface design, surface interactions with the environment, corrosion and corrosion protection concepts, enable numerous new approaches to research under space conditions for a sustainable future on Earth and in space.
The following research areas are the focus of the research team and close the gap between basic science and industrial application: development of plasma surface technology, surface modifications and development of diagnostic and analytical methods. Plasma processes to create new surfaces and materials are investigated under laboratory and microgravity conditions (to suppress convection in the process gas) to enable a new understanding of surface-plasma interactions and thus better control of surface processes, e.g. to achieve advanced surface modifications or sustainable reduction processes from ore to metal.
The understanding of surface interactions of advanced materials under laboratory and microgravity conditions further serves as a prerequisite to provide surface and material modifications with improved properties, e.g. for materials in the fields of energy, space and aeronautics, taking into account chemistry, microstructure and processing of surfaces and materials. Scientific and infrastructural prerequisites are in place to investigate newly developed surfaces and materials and their interactions with different environments, e.g. using the electrochemical mechanism for energy materials, additively manufactured materials under microgravity conditions or microbially induced corrosion under 1g and 0g conditions.
In addition, model systems of classical condensed matter, e.g. Janus particles as active matter and quantum dots as charge sensors, are used to develop sensor systems, for example.