International Materials Forum 2006 - Frontiers in Materials Science & Technology
Termin:
Montag, 31.07.2006 bis Dienstag, 01.08.2006
Buchungs-Status
frei
Veranstaltungsort:
Bayreuth, Kompetenzzentrum Neue Materialien Nordbayern GmbH
Focus: Materials for Energy Technology
Impressions:
Conference Report
by Prof. Dr. Dietrich Haarer, Universität Bayreuth
The International Materials Forum 2006 - Frontiers in Materials Science & Technology, Focus: Materials for Energy Technology on July 31 and August 1, 2006 in Bayreuth, Germany, offered a platform for a high ranking materials based dialogue between the field of industrial development and scientific research including the area of technical and commercial applications, organized by the Center of Excellence New Materials and the Universities of Bayreuth and Erlangen-Nuremberg. Prof. Dietrich Haarer, member of the Scientific Committee, gives the conference report:
We are living in a world of experts: Not only are we specialized and, in a way, divided between physics, chemistry and engineering sciences, but among these disciplines there are sub-groups of experts, dealing with specific topics.
The International Materials Forum 2006 took a complementary strategy: It dealt with the broad field of materials involved in modern technologies of energy conversion and storage, where energy conversion is commonly referred to as "energy production" (mostly electricity from gas, oil or coal). Here we had a dialogue between various disciplines of energy production whose members are not always in good "speaking terms". We had experts of wind energy, photovoltaics, nuclear energy, and - last but not least - we had the middle of the road disciplines of producing energy with gas, coal and oil. In this mix of talents it was interesting, that the subject of materials science was the common ground on which much progress has been made in the past decades, pushing the yields of energy efficiently up in all related fields be it wind, solar or conventional. Even in the field of atomic energy production long time radiation exposure experiments allowed to expand the range of safe usage of certain steel alloys beyond the time limits which had been predicted.
For one of the most underdeveloped and, thus, "needy" areas of the energy business, namely energy storage, we had experts in hydrogen technology and in the field of novel battery developments which are suddenly demanded by the rapid appearance of hybrid car technologies. Here it was obvious, that European companies and traditional chemical companies are asked to venture into new fields of materials science (for instance battery materials) and accelerate the progress in related fields like fuel cells, a subject in which predictions and progress have come out of step.
The conference was headed each day by the view of a Nobel price laureate. Dr J. Georg Bednorz, IBM Zurich Research Laboratory (Switzerland), presented in a summary the progress of high temperature superconductors, whose technical applications will come in some time from now, but much later than the original enthusiasm about the discovery of this novel effect had predicted.
On the second day Nobel laureate Prof Dr Robert Huber, Max-Planck-Institute for Biochemistry (Martinsried, Germany), showed how proteins are involved in the most important energy conversion mechanism, the photosynthesis and in other life enabling biological processes. Here one could see that nature has developed, in millions of years, a very complex but extremely efficient and soft way to convert energy and, thus, keep us all alive.
Their lectures had been be accompanied by invited lectures given by internationally leading top managers and scientists.
The general echo of the participants to this uniquely board exposure of energy related subjects was very positive. Rarely does one have the chance to see the most vital field of human kind -energy- under such diverse aspects, where the limitations are mostly given by materials properties.
A broad view of such a scenery is obviously needed -once in a while- so that the experts can benefit from cross fertilization, a method, in which the biological evolution has shown its own masterpiece: Yet we have to make this progress in less than a million years!