The reliability of such material systems is of major significance for the society concerning functional materials for energy conversion and storage as well as for information technology and requires state-of-the-art mechanical characterization and modelling. Materials of interest span from batteries beyond the Lithium era towards materials for fusion reactors on the one hand, and from advanced conductors to materials for sensors and actuators on the other hand.
We aim for a mechanism-based understanding of material degradation, which requires scale-bridging mechanical as well as microstructural characterization combined with advanced multi-physics modelling and data analysis. We also run KIT´s Fusion materials lab and, therefore, can handle and characterize radioactive and toxic materials.
HeadProf. Dr. mont. Christoph Kirchlechner
Tel.: +49 721 608-24815 |
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ManagementDr. Johanna Lampert
Tel.: +49 721 608-23754 |
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Administration
Jana Herzog
Tel: +49 721 608-24816 |
The KIT Presidential Board has approved a further extension of Prof. Dr. Claus Mattheck's status as KIT Distinguished Senior Fellow until the end of 2028. With this special award, KIT honors outstanding personalities from science in order to preserve their experience and knowledge even after retirement.
In the beginning of October Alexander Frisch, Oliver Preuß, and Xufei Fang won the Roland B. Snow Award during the Ceramographic poster competition at the MS&T24/ACerS (American Ceramic Society) in Pittsburgh, USA. The award is worth $1,500.
Alexander is pursuing his PhD in the group Dislocations in Ceramics. He is working on room temperature ductile oxides and the impact of external fields on the dislocation behaviors in oxides within the European Research Council (ERC) Starting Grant (project MECERDIS) led by Dr. Xufei Fang. Funding by the ERC for his PhD project is gratefully acknowledged.
Chukwudalu (Dalu) Okafor was awarded the 2nd poster prize during the poster competition at the ECI Conference on Nanomechanical Testing in Materials Research and Development IX (October 2024, Sicily, Italy) - THE nano-/micromechanics conference for the relevant community.
Dalu is pursuing his PhD in the group Dislocations in Ceramics and is working on point defects - dislocations interaction in oxides. Funding by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) for his PhD project is gratefully acknowledged.
Maria Vrellou was awarded the "2025 EUROfusion Bernard Bigot Researcher Grant" (ERG) in September. The EUROfusion consortium has awarded a total of sixteen such research grants to talented post-doctoral researchers across Europe. The ERG grants enable young scientists to develop innovative ideas and techniques to advance the EUROfusion roadmap for fusion energy.
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On September 23rd, Alexandra Wahn successfully defended her dissertation “Partikelbasierte Methoden für die Berechnung von effektiven Transporteigenschaften und Mechanik in granularen Mehrphasen-Elektroden”, written as a part of the DFG Research Training Group GRK 2218 “SiMET-Simulation of mechano-electro-thermal processes in lithium-ion batteries”. The focus was on the development of an extended discrete element method for the simulation of the compaction of electrodes of lithium-ion batteries, taking into account the viscoelasticity of the binder. Congratulations!
On June 13th, Eloho Okotete successfully defended her dissertation "Stable crack growth as a strategy to circumvent FIB artefacts in small scale fracture testing". Her work focused on measuring the fracture toughness and interface toughness of materials at the micrometer and submicrometer scale.
Congratulations!
Markus Short successfully completed his doctoral thesis “Experimental and Theoretical Developments on Accurately Measuring and Modeling Grain Boundary Diffusion in Solids” with the defense on April 11th. Congratulations!
On April 19th, Luigi Spatafora successfully defended his dissertation "Entwicklung eines Metall-Keramik-Verbundes für thermo-mechanisch hochbelastbare Sichtfenster", a project of the Institute for Applied Informatics (IAI), which was co-supervised by the IAM-MMI in materials science. Congratulations!
Xufei Fang started his ERC Starting Grant awarded by the European Research Council (ERC) at IAM-MMI on April 01st, 2024.
His project MECERDIS (funding period 2023.04 to 2028.03) aims to fundamentally understand the mechanisms of dislocations in ceramics and help tailor new functional ceramic materials.
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On February 22th, SWR filmed short interviews with Dr. Klaus Hesch, spokesperson for the FUSION program, and Prof. Dr. Christoph Kirchlechner in the Fusion Materials Laboratory and captured a few impressions of both the work on hot cells and the glove boxes.
Fusion research in the state was to provide a framework for a report on the SWR Aktuell Baden-Württemberg program about the Bundestag debate on funding for fusion research on February 23.
The program is available in the ARD media library.
Link to ARD-Mediathek (German only)
Petra Olschowski, Minister of Science, Research and the Arts in Baden-Württemberg, visited the IAM-MMI's Fusion Materials Laboratory on February 13th, together with Dr. Ronny Feuer, Head of the Department for Mobility, Energy, Aerospace, Industry 4.0 and Alexander Salomon, Member of the Karlsruhe State Parliament.
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On 7.12., Felix Sutter successfully defended his dissertation „Materiell nichtlineare Kontinuumsmodellierung ferroelektrischer Funktionskeramiken mit piezoelektrischen und flexoelektrischen Eigenschaften“, a cooperative project with the Technical University of Munich (Prof. N. Schwesinger).
The subject of the work funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) was the modeling and simulation of ferroelectric piezoelectric materials with special consideration of flexoelectricity.
Congratulations!
Xufei Fang, Athene Young Investigator and ERC Starting Grant group leader in the Ceramics Division at TU Darmstadt, receives this year's Athene-Preis für Gute Lehre (Athene Award for Good Teaching).
The jury's statement emphasizes “his excellent didactic skills, his outstanding commitment and motivation for teaching and students and his patient and cheerful manner”. The prize is endowed with 2000 € from the Carlo und Karin Giersch-Stiftung at TU Darmstadt.
Congratulations to Xufei – a well deserved honour.
read more at TU Darmstadt
On 27.10., Chantal Kurpiers successfully defended her dissertation "Untersuchung der Mikrostruktureinflüsse auf die mechanischen Eigenschaften von Nano- und Mikroarchitekturen" in which she investigated the properties of mechanical metamaterials as part of the Cluster of Excellence "3D Matter Made To Order". Together with her supervisors Prof. P. Gumbsch (KIT) and Prof. R. Schwaiger (FZ Jülich), she determined a.o. the effects of the pressure parameters and the post-treatment parameters of pyrolysis on the mechanical behavior of nano- and microarchitectures.
Congratulations!
Xufei Fang receives the award of the inaugural 2nd Century Trailblazer with his open-access article “Mechanical tailoring of dislocations in ceramics at room temperature: A perspective”.
Finally, Xufei Fang presented his work during the Journal of the American Ceramic Society Awards Symposium at ACerS Annual Meeting at MS&T (Oct. 2023, Columbus, Ohio).
Congratulations to Xufei for this internationally highly visible and prestigious award.
read more at ACerS
Subin Lee successfully obtained funding through the Helmholtz Imaging Projects for his project in the field of imaging and data science. This collaborative initiative, led by Prof. Christoph Kirchlechner and Prof. Stefan Sandfeld (Forschungszentrum Jülich, IAS-9), aims to advance the comprehension of the degradation mechanisms affecting functional materials. The project will be achieved by integrating advanced electron microscope imaging techniques with deep learning (DL). Congrats!
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Ujjval Bansal, postdoctoral researcher at the IAM-MMI, was awarded with a prestigious two-year funding Alexander von Humboldt (AvH) Fellowship in collaboration with Dr. Subin Lee, Prof. Dr. Christoph Kirchlechner, and Prof. Dr. Yolita Eggler.
Congratulations to Ujjval on this prestigous recognition and grant award!
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The European Research Council (ERC) has awarded the prestigious Consolidator Grant to Professor Christoph Kirchlechner. His project TRITIME aims to fundamentally understand the mechanisms of hydrogen embrittlement and help tailor new materials used in the distribution and storage of hydrogen.
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