Max-Planck-Institut für Eisenforschung GmbH

Mobility, Energy, Infrastructure, Medicine and Safety –these fields of high public interest require advanced customized materials. The Max-Planck-Institut für Eisenforschung GmbH (MPIE) with its young and international team conducts basic research on alloys and related materials to enable progress in these fields.

The institute pursues a strong interdisciplinary approach by combining chemistry, physics, metallurgy and material sciences to develop new high-performance materials for use as high-tech structural and functional components.

The MPIE is structured into four departments:

  • Computational Materials Design (Prof. J. Neugebauer)
  • Interface Chemistry and Surface Engineering (Prof. M. Stratmann)
  • Microstructure Physics and Alloy Design (Prof. D. Raabe)
  • Structure and Nano-/Micromechanics of Materials (Prof. G. Dehm)

Moreover the institute comprises an independent Max Planck Research Group on Nanoanalytics and Interfaces, an independent Max Planck Fellow Group on Self-Reporting Materials anda Max Planck Research Group on High-Temperature Materials.

All organizational units complement each other in terms of methodology and research focus and cooperate with one another as well as with colleagues worldwide. The five main cross-disciplinary topics of mutual interest are the:

  • Development of new structural materials
  • Analysis of microstructure-related material properties
  • Analysis and enhancement of the stability of surfaces and interfaces
  • Development of scale-bridging simulation of materials
  • Enhancement of energy materials

These central research areas are highly interdisciplinary and combine the experimental and theoretical expertise of the departments.

Besides the intra-departmental and external cooperation with other scientific organizations, the MPIE has well-established links with material and manufacturing companies mainly in the fields of structural and functional alloy design, advanced characterization methods in alloy development, surface functionalization, and computational materials science. These links are particularly valuable for the institute's development from a materials-oriented laboratory towards a system-driven institute that deals with complex materials in a holistic context including construction, production and the consideration of extreme environmental conditions. Current areas of growth with strong industrial relations are in the fields of hybrid- and electro-mobility, energy conversion and storage, renewable energy, health, hydrogen-based industries and computational materials science.

Logo of Max-Planck-Institut für Eisenforschung

Max-Planck-Institut für Eisenforschung
Max Planck Straße 1
40237 Düsseldorf
Germany
www.mpie.de

Role

MPIE provides the unique in the consortium expertise of first principles calculations on semiconductors covering a wide range of aspects and properties such as surfaces and interfaces, electronic and optical properties of nanostructures (i.e. QWs, QDs, and NWs), extended and point defects, thermodynamics and kinetics of dopands and impurities incorporation. MPIE will participate in WPs 1, 2 and 5 and will employ first principle calculations in contact with experiments to identifying the relation between material properties and device performance. The atomistic simulations will be further evaluated to guide experiment as well as identify routes to improve device performance and reliability.

Key Contribution

The key contribution of MPIE is to provide an on-atomic scale understanding of the effects point and extended defects and interfaces have on the failure and degradation mechanisms and to contribute to identifying the relation between material properties and device performance.