Overview

Sustainable materials are a crucial building block for mastering the challenges of the 21st century with the aim of fulfilling the needs of current generations while at the same time preserving the development opportunities of future generations. Sustainable materials are key to conserving resources, utilising energy specifically for selective chemical processes and enabling closed-loop material circles. The university research focus Sustainable Materials Design essentially pursues two goals: (i) to improve the understanding of fundamental processes of light-matter interactions that will enable the sustainability of materials and their production in the future, and (ii) the energy-efficient and environmentally friendly production and sustainable use of functional materials. To this end, light-matter interactions are investigated using state-of-the-art spectroscopic and microscopic methods in order to gain a fundamental understanding of processes related to sustainability. Furthermore, new approaches to sustainable materials, e.g. using light as an energy source, through biosynthetic or bio-inspired methods, or using renewable raw materials, are being researched.