ERC Consolidator Grant
Award year: 2023
Category: Scholarship / Grant
Type: ERC Consolidator Grant
Awarding organization: Europäischer Forschungsrat (ERC)
Materials have a tough job: they must endure environmental challenges like heat, cold, and moisture, withstand mechanical forces, and, during manufacturing, each step must be carefully checked to ensure everything works as it should—for example, making sure composite materials are securely bonded together. Inspection processes aimed at screening materials are expensive and complex. That’s one reason why components are often replaced as a precaution, or entire products are simply thrown away instead of being recycled—even though they might still have plenty of life left in them.
Karl Mandel, Professor of Inorganic Chemistry at FAU and Deputy Director of the Fraunhofer Institute for Silicate Research ISC in Würzburg hopes to change that. He wants materials to be able to tell their story. “Materials and components should be made able to perceive, record and inform us of environmental stimuli, across the whole of their life cycle,” he explains.