news 2018

Conventional lithium ion batteries, such as those widely used in smartphones and notebooks, have reached performance limits. Materials chemist Freddy Kleitz from the Faculty of Chemistry of the University of Vienna and international scientists have developed a new nanostructured anode material for lithium ion batteries, which extends the capacity and cycle life of the batteries.

Research team at TU Graz discovers atomic-level processes which can provide new approaches to improving material properties. Aluminium alloys have unique material properties and are indispensable materials in aircraft manufacturing and space technology. With the help of high-resolution electron tomography, researchers at TU Graz have for the first time been able to decode mechanisms crucial for understanding these properties.

By Birgit Baustädter Batteries are a broad field of research. Energy storage systems of the future should be more powerful, more environmentally friendly, smaller and even safer - work is being done on this at TU Graz. Batteries are many things: cylindrical metal capsules with a plus sign at the top and a minus sign at the bottom, small black packs in our mobile phones, silver buttons in all possible sizes, invisibly integrated in our electric toothbrushes or flat and stacked up in a row in our e-vehicles.

By Werner Schandor In the CHIP project, Ceratizit Austria, TU Darmstadt, Material Center Leoben and TU Graz are improving the recording and analysis of heat flows in milling machining. With sensational results. "What is sensational about our project can be found hidden away in this rather inconspicuous chart," says Franz Haas from the Institute of Production Engineering as he points to a diagram reproducing a saw-toothed temperature progression for the period of a tenth of a second (Figure 2).

By Cecilia Poletti The Christian Doppler Laboratory for Design of High-Performance Alloys by Thermomechanical Processing has recently opened. The leading team, Cecilia Poletti and Friedrich Krumphals, will introduce it. The motivation behind the CD-Laboratory is given by the complexity of simultaneously physical phenomena taking place during industrial processes that involve plastic deformation and heat, as well as during service under thermomechanical loads.

Research includes the fabrication of 3D nano-probes, radio-based positioning systems and the porosity of paper at three new Christian Doppler Laboratories to be opened at TU Graz on 25th April. Despite an abundance of CD lab launches at TU Graz, this was the first time it was necessary to open three CD labs at the same time.

By Birgit Baustädter In the last four years, 14 young scientists worked in the field of advanced materials across Europe in the training network Thinface and are now completing their cross-border doctoral degrees. Joint research and international collaboration are the main cornerstones on which the work which is intensively promoted by TU Graz is built.