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Every single material that we put into use, whether in computers, airplanes or catalytic

converters, began as a blank.

Its properties had to be brought to life first.

The Cluster of Excellence Engineering of Advanced Materials in Erlangen brings materials to

life.

It takes the smallest of components, molecules and particles, and develops them over numerous

stages, and with the help of many scientific experts into finished prototypes.

And in order to achieve this, we use building blocks and construct new materials from them.

You can compare this to Lego bricks, where one piece fits into another, where the size

and the shape of the bricks have to match, where the interaction of the pieces has to

be right in order for them to fit together.

All this resembles a production process.

We refer to it as process chain.

At the beginning of the process chain there are often particles.

They are produced from molecules during particle synthesis.

Here is a model of a mixing chamber in which the flow field is being analysed in a reactor.

When they are finished, the particles look very different from the starting materials,

the ones you see here are partially coated with metal.

These are a special design for one of the groups within the cluster.

Aside from the first step of making the particles, we characterize them.

So for instance here in the scanning electron microscope, but also we characterize their

optical properties and we see immediately which types of particles, which designs of

particles would lead to the better optical applications.

The synthesis of particles makes up the first step in the process chain.

Functional assemblies are then constructed out of these building blocks.

These larger structures will continue to be worked on in the next stage of the process

chain.

Professor Halleck and his team need to ensure that the particles that have been produced

for nanoelectronics have the right structure so that in the end a functioning component

can be produced, for instance a thin film transistor.

What we see here is this small gap, which is the actual functional area of the structure.

Naturally, when such structures are created, defects can come about.

When that occurs, when this type of flaw appears in one of the layers, the structure ultimately

doesn't function or doesn't function properly.

And when that happens, the defects must be found.

To do that, researchers go to the transmission electron microscope, or TEM for short, one

of the cluster's most recent acquisitions.

Since the TEM's arrival at the institute, Professor Erdmann Spieger has been receiving

a healthy flow of samples for analysis from colleagues.

This is a nanoparticle produced by a colleague who wanted to know what the inner structure,

the atomic structure, looks like and why particles of this kind develop the way they do, and

what form they take.

With the TEM we are able to study at the atomic scale what kinds of defects are in this nanoparticle

and how they affect its form and properties.

When defects are recognized, they can sometimes be eliminated, and this is an advantage not

only in the field of nanoelectronics.

Many areas in the cluster of excellence, such as lightweight construction, catalysis, photonics

and optics, profit from the use of the TEM.

In the cluster of excellence, cooperation is not limited to the process chain of particles