In the functional coatings group, soft magnetic thin films and functional coatings are developed and produced using physical vapour deposition (PVD) and investigated and characterized with regard to their structure, properties and basic static and dynamic behaviour. Reactive and non-reactive magnetron cathode sputtering as a DC and HF process is used as the manufacturing method.

In the high-performance thin film composites group, new multifunctional thin-film materials with customized microstructures and properties are developed using special concepts for nanoscale layer design and combinations of different hard materials.