![[Translate to English:]](/storages/zentraler_bilderpool/_processed_/e/6/csm_Kopfbild-Mathetower_f9975a407e.jpg "[Translate to English:]")
New Analysis Laboratory for the Ruhr Innovation Lab
- Top News
- Research
Ina Brandes, Minister for Culture and Science of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia, said at the award ceremony: “We are making sure that the funds from the ‘North Rhine-Westphalia Plan for Good Infrastructure’ are consistently invested in those topics of greatest importance for the future and in state-of-the-art facilities at our universities. In this analysis laboratory, which is unique worldwide, scientists are developing sustainable materials that will find their way into everyday products across all areas of our lives. At the same time, we are creating the best possible working conditions for the researchers at the Ruhr Innovation Lab, the planned center of excellence of TU Dortmund University and Ruhr University Bochum. After all, excellent research and teaching require an excellent infrastructure.”
Around €45 million from the “North Rhine-Westphalia Plan for Good Infrastructure”, the regional government’s investment package, are being channeled into the new laboratory. TU Dortmund University is contributing €4.6 million of its own funds. Here, the aim is to make sustainable use of existing infrastructure. The scheduled decommissioning of the DELTA electron storage ring facility in Dortmund at the end of 2026 after over 30 years of successful operation presents an opportunity to repurpose the building for future research projects. Ten new individual laboratories, whose major instrumentation and facilities will be at the disposal of the Ruhr Innovation Lab working groups in Dortmund and Bochum, will be set up there.
AI-driven materials research
Scientists from TU Dortmund University and Ruhr University Bochum are working together to advance innovation in materials science within one of the four main areas of excellent research at the Ruhr Innovation Lab: They are using data-driven methods and artificial intelligence to develop new materials with special functionalities. There is increasing demand for such materials as low-loss superconductors or for energy conversion processes in photovoltaics, for example. Materials that show particular promise in the prediction models are synthesized using complex techniques and then analyzed with the help of laser spectroscopy.
The new analysis laboratory will facilitate such a high throughput that the results can be fed directly back into the process to refine prediction and adjust the synthesis parameters. This creates a continuous “feedback loop” that enables the materials to rapidly achieve a level of quality that makes them suitable for further basic scientific trials and, most importantly, for applications in practice.
“At the Ruhr Innovation Lab, we are together planning research infrastructures and combining the strengths of both universities in the field of materials science to accelerate the transfer of novel materials from basic research to commercial applications. For digital technologies, for example, our society needs new semiconductors composed of raw materials that are readily available on the global market over the longer term,” said Professor Martin Paul, Rector of Ruhr University Bochum. “This is where the new analysis laboratory can make an important contribution. It will place a range of laser analysis methods at our researchers’ disposal that is exceptional worldwide. In the future, external users might also benefit from the new facilities, which we want to develop into a European reference laboratory in the coming years,” said Professor Manfred Bayer, President of TU Dortmund University.
Infrastructure for top-class international research
The new laboratory is hosted by the Department of Physics and the DAEDALUS Research Center, which draws together expertise in the field of spectroscopy at TU Dortmund University. Professor Marc Aßmann and Dr. Jörg Debus are coordinating the setting up of the ten new individual laboratories.
The physicists in Dortmund are collaborating not only with working groups from Ruhr University Bochum (RUB) in the Ruhr Innovation Lab but also within the Research Center Future Energy Materials and Systems of the University Alliance Ruhr. In this research center, which is also funded by the State of North Rhine-Westphalia, Ruhr University Bochum, TU Dortmund University and the University of Duisburg-Essen are pooling their top-class international research to develop high-performance functional materials, understand their basic properties, optimize production and ultimately make them market-ready. In the future, these groups will be able to use the new laboratory for their research.