New materials for a new world

Nobel Prize winner Peter Grünberg and prominent material researchers hold a meeting in Bayreuth

by Stefan Fössel

Bayreuth – Will we soon be able to purify drinking water with magnetic effects? Will there be no finger print any more on CDs due to nano technology? Presently, the prominently engaged “International Materials Forum” in Bayreuth has to do with the implementation of findings of material research last but not least.

Discovery for all computers

The centre of excellence New Materials North Bavaria and the universities of Bayreuth and Erlangen-Nürnberg have summoned researchers and developers into the city, which is regarded as one of the four centres of polymer research. In the previous years, functional substances have seized a rapid progress and open up international markets evermore. Trend-setting materials in information technology, electronics and medical engineering should take centre stage at the meeting.

Professor Peter Grünberg of Jülich, Nobel Prize winner in Physics of 2007, reported about the possibility of magnetic storage of data. Grünberg is the discoverer of the giant magnetoresistance, thereupon the reading function of the read/write head of almost every computer hard disk is based nowadays. But magnetic effects can also be applied in medicine, perhaps for the isolation of viruses from body fluid or for the treatment of cancer.
Masanobu Jamamoto arrived from Japan and gave a lecture on the development of the “Blu-Ray Disc” by Sony. Blu-Ray is considered as the currently leading optical storage medium on a swiftly growing market. With 50 gigabyte, it can store as much as 70 CDs and thus is conducive to the reduction of the carbon dioxide emission according to Jamamoto.

Superiority of spider silk

Richard Friend from Cambridge dedicated himself to the macromolecules, which are also applied in the manufacturing of flat screens. Professor Thomas Scheibel of Bayreuth deals with the topic spider silk, “which features properties that exceed our today’s plastics by far and induces technical innovations.”
Parallel to the conference, the centre of excellence New Materials of Bayreuth informed about its work. There, new materials, procedures and processes are developed, links are forged between economy and science. At the centre of excellence, continuous filaments are for example incorporated directly into the polymer melt, which provides injection-moulded items with more stability. The susceptibility to cracking in terms of welding could be reduced considerably due to additives.
“Upper Franconia is regarded as the Ruhr area of plastics”, Hans Rausch, executive director of the Franconian network of plastics (KNF) stated. Meanwhile, 92 Franconian businesses with more than 30 000 employees have joined this network.

Source: Bayerische Rundschau. Download (PDF, 761 KB)

Further information about International Materials Forum 2008 can be found here.