hey #measuringhero, Jay here. We are about an 11 minute walk from my flat. We're right here
up in Aalen University. We thought we would take you here to have a look at the
Materialforschung Institut here at Aalen University or the materials research institute
here at Aalen and Tim, thanks for coming to show us around. We really appreciate it.
Hi Jay, welcome to Aalen University. It's a bit cold, let's just go inside. Let's go inside.
So Jay, let's just start here at our, I call it the core facility.
What we do here is we get our materials in every funky form. We have to cut little pieces
out of it, that are better for preparation. Therefore we have these different types
of cutting machines, all water cooled cutting machines, because you do not want to alter the
microstructure due to heat. Except you're doing heat treatment, but that's another story.
The next thing, if you have these little pieces you want to have them handleable.
So, we embed it in these standard round specimen and with this we go to the next area here, where we do
the semi-automated preparation. So grinding and polishing. Our students they have to learn
to do it manually, but if you are advanced you will have you can go to the semi automated machines.
Let's just go here this is. That's what my dad used to tell me to do when he first taught
me how to shave, he made me use a razor and then after I cut myself over and over again he gave
me the electric razor, so that I could. Basically, same principle here, same principle here, yeah.
What these machines basically do is they take these specimens here and they press
them against a rotating grinding disc, where we have different grain sizes, different diamonds
suspensions to polish away layer by layer the the material and to get to a mirror finish.
What we have here is a steel sample you see the mirror finish.
Under the light microscope you will basically see nothing except you have some oxides or
sulfide inclusions there, you have to etch it. This is done here in these few mods.
So you selectively remove faces and material and get a good contrast in the light microscope.
So, basically a long story short, because you're obviously a materials research facility so you
know your materials. You know what it takes to prepare a sample. Yeah, for observation
that's correct and we have all different kinds of materials here. So we have
energy conversion and energy storage material. So hard and soft magnetic materials, where we
have experts. We have experts in battery technology, energy storage and battery aging and battery
production and of course standard construction materials as well as additive manufacturing.
So we also do metal 3D printing here. Materials develop, mostly materials development not so much process
development and for the special materials like magnets and batteries we also have special
preparation equipment, because magnets tend to corrode under standard atmospheric conditions,
so they have to be prepared water free with alcohol-based suspensions and for the batteries
we have these special fume hoods here installed, because the aerosols that are created during
preparation are not that healthy. Not good for you. Not good for you. Don't breathe there. No don't breathe.
Okay and if when we are finished with preparation, when we have this nice and shiny defect-free
surface we go straight to the light microscopy lab and I think we should go there and have a look
Where the magic happens. Yeah, where the magic happens.
So yeah. Now this is where the magic happens. This is our light microscopy lab.
We basically, we have your whole portfolio of upright materials microscopes here. All automated
and also, yeah. So, the computer always knows what the microscope is capable of and what the
setting of the microscope is, so no time or no room for errors like scheduling or whatever. Sure.
And we also do a lot of machine learning based image analysis okay so therefore we need
large areas and therefore we definitely need automated microscopes. Right, right.
What we also have here is confocal microscopy. So you can do measurements of where and
Oh sure, the smart proof. Yeah, the smart proof. Oh man I love that machine. And also a
digital microscope then like right behind you the Smartzoom 5, yeah. And just
we also have two manual microscopes so I was not totally honest but also ZEISS microscopes, just for
quality control or controlling your preparation quality. Great, great. So I think what I'm
seeing so far is the fact that in your research institute you can absolutely start from material
preparation, sample preparation. Independent of what the materials are you have a full facility
based on the different materials and then to be able to prep it, get it ready and then you have the
entire suite of light microscopic portfolio to do observations. Yeah yeah, exactly this
and also include all the let's call it translating the from a nice image
to sheer numbers. So quantitative analysis and if the resolution here for the light microscope
is not sufficient anymore, we just grab our samples go down to the basement to the SEM lab.
So Jay, I already showed you what we are capable of doing with cutting, grinding, polishing, light
microscopy and here we are in the in the lab where we also assemble batteries. We also do materials
development for batteries there are some solid-state battery stuff I'm not allowed to
talk about, but there's also lithium-ion battery, which is state-of-the-art technology. And what
we do here is we do aging tests. So, here we have a lot of these pre-assembled cells, that we
assemble in the glove box and then all this wiring you see here.
We do aging cycling tests so charging discharging and until the battery dies and then we can see
Then you learn. Yeah, then we analyze and learn how to, how to do it. Also it's not just
figuring out at the end what materials work best for batteries, you're actually on the cutting
edge of what's to come. Yeah, we can also put new stuff in the batteries and see what comes out.
Yeah, well I look forward to using your technology in my next car or my next phone or. Yeah, probably.
But what you know what is also important, it's not just the battery to store the energy, you want
to convert the energy. On the one side from wind to the battery or from the battery to the motor
of your new bike, e-scooter or car. So let's just head over to the next lab and I will show you
where we do our magnetic magic. Where magnets, hard and soft magnets, are produced. Awesome, let's go.
So, Jay here we are in the magnetic manufacturing lab and what we do here is we make our own
magnets, so experimental alloys. We first meld all the alloys here and as they are
very sensitive to oxygen we transfer them again to a glovebox system. Right here?
Right behind you. We do the milling so we have the powder and as normal magnets are powder metallurgy
stuff, we then press them in a strong magnetic field and also do the sintering process.
So, basically baking the magnets finished in the glovebox system and when they are finished
sintering they are magnets. And of course magnets have to be measured magnetically
and this is done in the basement and there we will go now. Okay, let's do it.
Okay, that's really loud, what's going on in here? Yeah this is exactly the lab we were going to.
This is where we do the magnetic measurements. What you hear is the helium reliquifier.
Helium re-liquefier? Yeah, basically we need the
liquid helium to cool down the measurement device. This is a vibration magnetometer
to basically measure magnetic properties and it can be cooled down 2 Kelvin.
That's cold. That's very cold, but it is loud and so I think we should just move on
to the next lab. So this is the lab where we do the magnetic measurements and right next door
is the EM lab, so let's just go on.
Jay, welcome to the basement in our electron microscopy lab
as I said when the resolution of the light microscope is not sufficient anymore,
we go down to electron microscopy. And there we can do all the correlative microscopy stuff so
easily finding the areas of interest in the light microscope in the SEM, as we have both ZEISS
systems and they sure like talk to each other. Finding how we designed it that way, right? Yeah.
What we have here is our Sigma. It's basically our working horse SEM, with all the analytics.
So we have EDS, WDS and EBSD for chemical analysis and crystallography and basically all of our research
groups be the additive manufacturing, magnets, batteries they all use this system. It's very
highly frequented and if this is still not sufficient anymore, we will go over
to our or to my baby here the crossbeam, where we have not just the electron beam, but also
the focused ion beam to very precisely prepare cross sections and do
do milling. And we also have analytics here so two EDS detectors, EBSD for 3D EBSD, 3D microstructure
characterization down to the nanometer scale. That's insane, down to the nanometer scale.
Yeah, that's insane. This is basically it. But yeah basically here ends the microstructural thing.
The next thing would be crystallography based so, you know, X-ray diffraction analysis.
We have a very special device here, so let's just go to the next lab and I can show you here.
Now what we have here is the XRD system, so basically XRD X-ray diffraction is
standard analysis in crystallography. What we have here as a specialty is, we can put an oven inside
and do in-situ testing. So, if you heard of heat treatment of steel like martensitic
transformation we can observe this here. Wow! We can heat up the sample and see the crystallography change.
Wow, internal structure obviously? Yeah, internal structure based on the and the atom
lettuce scale. Yeah, and with this I think we can wrap up the whole story. We can have the except for
TEM we have the whole materials characterization stuff here at the institute. Well yeah you do
definitely do a lot from material prep, to research, to battery, way more than I never
thought was happening here so close to my house. Yeah, you mentioned something about
additive manufacturing. What do you guys do? Yeah basically this is what I
did not show you because it's my research and I would like to invite you for a separate tour,
where I show you all the additive manufacturing stuff we do, as this is my special type of research
and my little thing too. I'd like to tell you. I am definitely gonna take you up on that because
additive is definitely something in the future I've talked to some of the team over
in the United States I'm definitely gonna take you up on that and come back. So you will see
me a lot. Always welcome, but for now I think have a safe trip home, this 11 minute walk
and then see you soon. All right Tim, thank you for joining us and showing us around, we really appreciate it. Bye Jay.
And with you out there I want to thank you for joining us this and every thursday.
We hope you continue to stay safe and stay healthy and we'll see you next thursday. Tschüssle.