Rheinisch-Westfälische Technische Hochschule Aachen (RWTH)

Rheinisch-Westfälische Technische Hochschule Aachen (RWTH) was founded in 1870. RWTH Aachen is a state university of the state of North-Rhine Westphalia with nine faculties and 260 institutes with more than 10,000 employees and 45,000 students (~30% international students) studying in >170 programs. Since 2008, RWTH Aachen is funded as a university of excellence by the federal and state excellence initiative. In 2020, RWTH Aachen celebrated its 150-year anniversary.

At Materials Chemistry (MCh), directed by Prof Jochen M. Schneider, approximately 20 scientists (PhD students and post-docs) work on quantum-mechanically-guided materials design to design coating systems with desired elasticity, ductility, and phase stability. This design effort includes the interactions between coating and ambient (gas, liquid, and solid). Targeted application fields are metal current, forming operations, tribological contacts and energy conversion. Computational tools based on ab-initio calculations provide predictions that are critically appraised by thin film combinatorics experiments: by means of co-deposition from multiple sources, thin films with concentration gradients are produced, which are then spatially resolved/analysed with respect to composition, structure, elastic properties and phase stability.