Materials as the key to innovation and sustainability
Across the spectrum of Siemens’ businesses, many innovative and sustainable products are made possible by new materials and electronic components.
At the MHM Cluster, Siemens experts in 14 Global Technology Fields (GTFs) are conducting interdisciplinary research into materials and production methods that in many cases will make new technologies for sustainable developments possible. This work is being conducted at eight locations around the world, with focal points in Germany, India, China, Austria, and Romania.
Nanotechnology, for example, presents materials research with entirely new opportunities for customizing material properties. The insulating properties of plastics, for instance, can be improved through the addition of nanoparticles. Scientists from the Polymeric Materials GTF are using this fact to improve the performance and lengthen the service lives of generators used in power plants.
Researchers working in the High-performance Metals & Alloys GTF use nanocarbon to harden materials such as aluminum. Special mills grind aluminum into an ultra-fine powder that is then mixed with carbon nanoparticles called fullerenes and pressed to yield a new material that has a high degree of robustness and good electrical conductivity. This material could be used to reduce the weight of turbine rotors, as a coating for superconducting cables, or to improve the performance of magnetic resonance tomographs.
Materials for tomorrow’s lights
Researchers at the Ceramic Materials & Devices GTF are partnering with Siemens’ subsidiary Osram to make a major contribution to energy efficiency. They are developing ceramic phosphors that are used in light-emitting diodes (LEDs). Special phosphor mixtures, called conversion phosphors, enable LEDs to shine in a wide variety of shades. The researchers are constantly working to enhance the luminosity of these tiny light sources, with great success. Today the luminous efficiency of an LED is already 100 lumens per watt, whereas that of a conventional incandescent bulb is just 12 lumens per watt.
LEDs are used in a variety of fields ´- for example, as backlights in monitors, accent lighting in buildings, and cockpit lighting or even front headlights in vehicles. A further development is OLEDs, which are organic light-emitting diodes based on luminescent plastics. They are especially suitable for creating light sources that cast colored or white light evenly across a large area. This opens up entirely new areas of application, from light-emitting ceilings or wallpaper to transparent, light-emitting walls.
In another project, experts are developing magnetic ceramic films that can be used to shrink the power electronics circuits for such things as lighting systems. This type of electronic circuit adapts the voltage, current, and frequency to the consumer’s needs. In order to save space, the researchers incorporate such components as resistances or coils into the individual layers of ceramic printed circuit boards, thus creating metallic surfaces or conductors. For example, the film can be used to reduce the amount of space required on discharge lamp automobile headlights so that the upstream devices that are associated with the high voltage required to generate the light can be integrated directly into the lamp.
MHM is researching not only materials for LEDs and OLEDs but also magnetic ceramics so that the space required by lighting elements can be reduced.
New coatings, new possibilities
Researchers from the Coatings GTF provide an excellent example of how innovations can result from the clever combination of new production processes and new materials. For example, they are applying innovative coatings to the surfaces of various materials in order to improve their properties.
Take cold-gas spraying, for example - an application that was developed to maturity by Corporate Technology (CT) and is now setting new standards in the field of corrosion protection. With this process, experts coat machine parts that are exposed to hostile environmental conditions and to corrosion, for instance, with a metal powder that is sprayed by a transport gas traveling at several times the speed of sound. Even metallic compounds can be precisely applied to contours by means of this process, because the metal does not have to be melted during the coating process.
CT’s willingness to take new approaches is not restricted to the investigation of new materials, however; it also extends to the material analysis conducted in the High-end Material Analytics GTF.
In late 2009, for instance, scientists refined an analyzer that can precisely determine the atomic structure of substances on the basis of a sample just a thousandth of the size of a common grain of salt. Inside this device, called a microdiffractometer, a bundled X-ray beam scans the material sample point for point with a local resolution as low as 50 micrometers. A highly sensitive flat-panel detector records the scattered X-ray beams, and this data is then used to derive the crystal phases and also the internal stresses within the material. The new microdiffractometer is particularly advantageous for investigations in which the sample is very small or must not be destroyed, and it opens up new possibilities for the analysis of defects or impurities in materials.
The design and the innovative structure ofelectronic modules are also among the competences of the MHM Cluster. Printed circuit boards such as those found in all electronic components are becoming ever more complex and must satisfy increasingly stringent requirements. They should enable data to be processed quickly and reliably, and they should occupy as little space as possible. This feat requires the use of cutting-edge methods for the simulation of printed circuit board layouts. Experts from the Electronic & Photonic Assembly GTF have developed the first-ever printed circuit board with integrated fiber optic components. This enables the data on the printed circuit board to be transported at speeds of up to 240 gigabits per second - twice that of the conventional models currently available on the market. The researchers performed this work as part of a consortium comprising a variety of companies and institutions. Applications for this type of printed circuit board include communication systems with particularly exacting requirements with respect to speed and the data transmission’s non-susceptibility to interference.
One of the primary factors for success in the future will be the efficient use of raw materials. For instance, electric motors for automobiles and the drive systems for wind turbines will require more and more magnetic materials such as neodymium, which is one of the rare earth metals. Today, 97 percent of these materials come from China, which has recently announced restrictions on its exports. The recycling of electric motors and their components therefore not only benefits the environment, it is also rapidly gaining economic importance. The Material Substitution & Recycling GTF is therefore researching technologies with which such rare materials can be reused or replaced by other materials. Scientists are concentrating their efforts on industrially feasible solutions that can be deployed economically for large-volume production.
Be it structural-design technology for electronics, atomic structures, or insulation for generators - MHM is researching structure sizes from nano to macro.