The Fraunhofer Material and Components Group has profound materials science expertise in all classes of materials, in non-metallic materials such as organic or hybrid polymers this includes the methods of chemical synthesis.

The Fraunhofer Material and Components Group has mastery of the structural evolution processes from solutions, melt, powders and in some cases the gas phase right down to the component and its surface refinement in experiments and simulation methods with a range of products including fibers, foils and components of varying complexity.

The general alignment of the research and development efforts of the Fraunhofer Material and Components Group is towards demand, so that in many cases it is the market or specific customers who set the schedule for properties or performance. However, from case to case, the Group has to anticipate the necessary components or materials from likely system innovations in order to maintain innovative power in the long term. This is the reason why the Group maintains a reserve of system expertise required in specific fields such as solar and electrochemical power engineering to carry on its own basic research. In a series of other fields, the Group taps the system expertise of adjacent groups in the Fraunhofer Society.

The Group has a comprehensive state-of-the-art range of methods for physical/chemical and structural characterization of materials and their precursors and it also utilizes them to derive systematic structure/properties relationships. The Group has developed a high degree of expertise in this area, although it has identified a major priority in extending this expertise to complex properties and structures by advancing its physical modeling capabilities. Current focuses of the Group are developments of organic and hybrid functional polymers and of fiber composite materials with a ceramic matrix for extremetemperature applications.

The Group institutes are pooling their talents with those of the Microelectronics Group in functional polymer issues to come up with a range of materials for the foreseeable applications in polymer electronics and organic light-emitting diodes.

The Group has established wet-chemical and gaseous-phase supported synthesis routes with major manufacturing capabilities for nanoscale materials. As monodispersive particles with a defined granular structure, these materials are increasingly in demand as carriers of biomedical analysis procedures and therapy or as the antibacterial equipment for organic materials in the form of silver nanoparticles. The Fraunhofer Material and Components Group is joining forces with the Fraunhofer Life Science Group to develop this nanoscale powder with defined properties and optimized mechanisms of action and to manufacture the quantities required for evaluation.

Compact materials, composites and layers with nanoscale microstructures may show new ways to improve strength, hardness, wear resistance, and optical properties. The Group has devised a wide range of these materials including ceramics, carbon-based mechanically resistant materials and polymers as well as inorganic/organic hybrid materials that are composites on the molecular level. Pioneering fields of application are in power engineering, mechanical engineering and safety engineering.

The Group has a great deal of experience in regenerative raw materials. Timber is a time-honored material in home building and interior decoration and the current trends are going towards boosting its weather exposure stability for outdoor uses. Composites made of wood fibers or other natural fibers in a polymer matrix engender enhanced mechanical properties while making it possible for them to be used in forming methods for plastics engineering.

One prominent group of materials poised for the future is what is known as »smart materials«. Their hallmark is actuator and sensor functions. They include piezoelectric ceramics and polymers, shapememory materials, optical materials with switchable or self-switching transmission. These materials have already found their fields of technical application. There are also later developments in carbon nanotubes and certain biological cells that have electrochemically stimulated actuator mechanisms, without forgetting suspensions and elastomer-based composites that make major changes in their viscosity or stiffness under the influence of electrical or magnetic fields.

The Group has already gathered substantial experience in developing such smart materials requiring special technologies (often in forms such as fibers or thin films) while participating in efforts to accelerate the design, construction and analysis of systems that make best use of the specific properties of these »smart materials«.