Materials Research Department

“To control materials means to control technologies“

The European Whitebook on Fundamental Research in Materials Science states that the welfare of a knowledge and technology-based society in the 21st century will depend on its capabilities to engineer complex materials systems on the nanoscale (~ 10^-9m) [1]. Nanoscience and Nanotechnology have therefore become omnipresent slogans in every scientific community to achieve the implementation of appropriate funding strategies from its financial backers. However, even in the world of nanoscience and nanotechnology, there is no direct transformation of breakthrough inventions in the lab into innovative marketable products. The incubation period is long, and many of the modern high-tech products coming out of the labs changing our daily life had a gestation period of several decades. It is only through a long-term funding strategy for fundamental research that the success of modern materials science is made possible in Europe. In the race for capitalizing on research breakthroughs, it is the task of applications-oriented materials scientists to bridge the gap from basic research to technology development.

This is exactly the interface at which the IHP Materials Research department is positioned. In close collaboration with their colleagues from the Technology, Systems and Circuit Design departments, the scientists of the Materials Research Department at IHP focus on identifying and engineering complex materials systems with the potential of providing an elegant solution to a topical materials problem in microelectronics. Nowadays Industry is facing the initial transition from micro- to nanoelectronics a period in which the future performance increase of electronic circuits requires scaling plus the integration of new materials. Therefore, materials scientists are just on the eve of an exiting period in which they can make substantial contributions to the development of future technologies.

Materials research is one of IHP’s competencies with a long history. The institute’s success story SiGe:C is a result of the close cooperation between IHP’s materials research and technology. New insulators with a high permittivity are now a considerable focus of the department Materials. New research areas including the connection of biology and medicine with available competencies at the IHP are currently under investigation in the initial stage. Basic research is being carried out in close collaboration with various universities. One outstanding example is the Joint Lab, operated in conjunction with the Technical University of Brandenburg in Cottbus.

[1] European Whitebook on Fundamental Research in Materials Science, Manfred Rühle, Helmut Dosch, Eric J. Mittemeijer, Marcel H. van de Voorde, Max-Planck Institute for Metals Science, Stuttgart (ISBN 3-00-008806-7).

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