Surface Modification & Properties
For sustainable material development of high-performance components and their transfer to industry, it is required to extend the application limits of materials via novel surfaces and properties. The existing scientific experience on surface design and modification, understanding of surface interaction with different corrosive environments and corrosion protection concepts and the available advanced diagnostic and analytical methods enables innovative research under space conditions and transfer to industry for a sustainable future on earth and in space.
The following research areas are in focus of the research team and bridges the gap between fundamental science and industry application: surface modifications by different surface technologies, development of advanced surface properties and in-situ analytical methods. Understanding surface interactions of advanced materials in laboratory and microgravity (to suppress convection effects) conditions is used as a prerequisite to provide surface and material modifications with improved properties, e.g. for energy, space and aviation materials, considering chemistry, microstructure and processing of surfaces and materials. For this, scientific and infrastructural prerequisites are in place to study newly developed surfaces and materials and their interaction with different environments, e.g. on electrochemical mechanism for energy materials or additively manufactured materials in microgravity and newly designed surfaces tested at the outer skin of MAPHEUS rockets exposed to the harsh conditions in space and especially during re-entry. Furthermore, the experimental understanding and simulation of corrosion mechanism will be applied to Quantum Computing approaches.