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Materials Processing

At the Institute for Materials, we operate and maintain materials processing equipment that allows us to manufacture and tailor materials for our research on a relevant scale. Concerning cast metallurgical materials manufacturing, we utilize two induction melting furnaces, an arc melting device and a Bridgman zone melting furnace. These technologies allow us to prepare ingots and single crystals of a large variety of metallic alloys with a specific emphasis on late-transition-metal-based alloys, Ni-base superalloys but also refractory-element-based alloys with very high solidus and liquidus temperatures. To tailor the microstructures of polycrystalline materials, various forming methods are applied incl. rolling, rotary swaging and wire drawing. Heat treatments can be applied under different atmospheres (air, protective gases, vacuum, sealed in ampules) up to 1800 °C with and without quenching. In collaboration with partners from the Institute for Materials and the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, powder-metallurgical methods can be used to achieve specific microstructural conditions, incl. gas atomization (induction melting), additive manufacturing (powder-bed fusion using laser and electron beam melting), hot isostatic pressing, etc. Furthermore, thermoplastic polymers, e.g. shape memory polymers, are processed by injection molding.