Forschungsschwerpunkte 2001 - 2002

Research projects at the Institut für Materialphysik are usually carried out by small groups or by individuals supervised by one of the professors. A substantial part of the research activities is pursued by graduate students within time-limited research grants during their dissertation. Research projects often require cooperations with groups at our own university, at other universities in Germany and abroad, and at national or international research centers.

The service facilities of the institute include a mechanical and an electronic workshop. The institute is equipped with various facilities for teaching and research in the area of materials science. We mention some of the more important examples: well equipped laboratories for work with radioisotopes in diffusion research, various detection facilities for radionuclides, mechanical and sputtering devices for depth profiling, electron microprobe analyser, analytical transmission electron microscope, precision ion mill for cross section preperation, X-ray facilities including powder diffractometer, Laue- and Debye-Scherrer camera, optical metallography, spark erosion facilities, a variety of high-temperature furnaces for melting materials, for growing single-crystals, and for annealing, UHV sputter chamber for thin film deposition, tensile testing machine, spreading resistance devices and an electrochemical capacitance-voltage device for depth profiling of doping elements in semiconductors, deep level transient spectroscopy for semiconductors, impedance spectroscopy for ion conducting materials, high pressure cell for pressures up to 0.8 GPa.

In January 2000 a Sonderforschungsbereich (SFB 458) was established by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft at the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster and granted for a further funding period (2003 - 2005) in autumn 2002. In close cooperation, research groups from the Faculty of Natural Sciences coordinate their efforts towards the topic "Ionic motion in materials with disordered structures". The aim of the Sonderforschungsbereich is a better understanding of ionic motion from the elementary jump process of ions up to their macroscopic transport properties. Presently, the Institut für Materialphysik contributes three research projects in the areas of ion-conducting glasses and polymer electrolytes to the program of the Sonderforschungsbereich.