Prof. Dr. Oliver Gutfleisch

Oliver Gutfleisch is a full Professor (W3) for Functional Materials at TU Darmstadt and a scientific director at Fraunhofer IWKS. He studied Material Science at TU Berlin, did his PhD in Birmingham, UK, and was a group leader at Leibniz Institute IFW Dresden. 2012 he joined TU Darmstadt. His scientific interests span from new permanent magnets for power applications to solid state energy efficient magnetic cooling, ferromagnetic shape memory alloys, magnetic nanoparticles for biomedical applications, and to solid state hydrogen storage materials with a particular emphasis on tailoring structural and chemical properties on the nanoscale. Materials are synthesized by advanced processing incl. non-equilibrium, field-assisted, severe plastic deformation and additive manufacturing methods. Resource efficiency on element, process and product levels as well as recycling of rare earth containing materials are also in the focus of his work.

He has published more than 430 papers in refereed journals, and has given more than 230 invited talks. In 2011 he was an IEEE Magnetics Society Distinguished Lecturer on the topic of Magnet Materials for Energy. He is on the Intl. Advisory Committees of JEMS, of the Int. Workshop on Rare Earth Permanent Magnets and their Applications and of the Magnetic Refrigeration Intl. Working Party, and of the TMS Magnetic Materials Committee. He served on the IEEE Magnetics Society AdCom (2011-2013). He was EU ERAMIN (Network on the Industrial Handling of Raw Materials for European Industries) advisor on substitution, a member of the EU ERECON (European Rare Earths Competency Network) and is on the REIA (Rare Earth Industry Association) Steering Committee and chairs the DGM Fachausschuss Functional Materials. He coordinated the State of Hesse LOEWE Excellence Programme Response from 2014-2017. He did hold visiting fellowships and Professorships at CNRS Grenoble, NIMS Tsukuba, Imperial College London and Chinese Academy of Science NIMTE Institute in Ningbo and is a visiting Professor at University of Parma. In April 2017 he was awarded an EU ERC Advanced Grant (Cool Innov) and in September 2018 he received the Prize of the German Materials Society (DGM Prize 2018). He is the speaker of the DFG Cooperate Research Center 270 (Sonderforschungsbereich) Hommage Hysteresis Design of Magnetic Materials for Efficient Energy Conversion. He was elevated to IEEE Fellow in 2020 and has started the external Max-Planck Research Group De Magnete at MPI for Iron Research Düsseldorf in October 2020.

Lectures

• Material Science for Energy Systems
• Critical raw materials for the transition to renewable energy
• Hysteresis in functional magnetic materials: fundamentals and applications
• Werkstoffherstellung und –verarbeitung (Bachelor)
• Functional Materials

We live in a cryogenic age. Today a total number of 3 billion devices associated with cooling are used in household, commercial and transport refrigeration, air conditioning systems and heat pumps. Over 120 years our cooling technology has not changed in its underlying principles and remains based on vapour compression. The overall contribution of the refrigeration sector to climate change is often neglected – but it is huge: approximately 12% of total greenhouse gas emissions stem from cooling alone and almost 20% of the global electricity is consumed for refrigeration and air-conditioning. Today’s refrigeration systems are inefficient and use refrigerants with a high global warming potential. Solid state caloric cooling could be an alternative. The talk will briefly explain the challenges for magnetic refrigeration and give examples for resource efficient material, process and device solutions.

ERC Advanced Grant: https://coolinnov.eu/

SFB: https://www.tu-darmstadt.de/sfb270/