The Fraunhofer Research Institution for Materials Recycling and Resource Strategies IWKS in Hanau, Hesse, and Alzenau, Bavaria, has been able to attract a top young researcher in Dr. Sebastian Klemenz. As part of the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft's Attract funding program, Sebastian Klemenz will conduct research with «green²ICT» on sustainable materials made from secondary raw materials for information technologies (ICT) at Fraunhofer IWKS.

The funding program aims to support young scientists with outstanding skills. External researchers can apply for funding over five years with a maximum funding amount of 2.5 million euros. As part of their research at one of the Fraunhofer institutes, they are given the opportunity to advance their ideas towards industrial application.

Dr. Sebastian Klemenz will lead a research group on the topic of sustainable materials made from secondary raw materials at Fraunhofer IWKS and in close connection with TU Darmstadt, initially for a period of two years. The focus is on so-called functional materials that have special electronic properties or magnetism. Increasing digitization will further increase the demand for such materials. These classes of materials are used, for example, as magnets in electric motors, as catalysts for hydrogen production, or as superconductors and thermoelectrics in special applications. In order to establish a sustainable life cycle, further research into the properties of these materials is required. The aim is to evaluate the findings for recycling processes and thus enable the production of new functional materials from recyclates without limiting their functionality (no downcycling).

«We are very pleased to have gained Sebastian Klemenz, an outstanding scientist in the field of sustainable magnetic and energy materials. Many of these functional materials have properties that are known but not yet extensively researched. And new materials and classes of materials are being added all the time. If we succeed in using this knowledge to make old materials available to industry efficiently, in high quality and in large quantities for new products, we can significantly improve sustainability and raw material supply,» says Prof. Dr. Anke Weidenkaff, head of Fraunhofer IWKS.

Specifically, Sebastian Klemenz will initially work on the additive manufacturing of thermoelectrics together with the Energy Materials research area at Fraunhofer IWKS and support the Magnetic Materials research area in the production of magnets from scrap material. In cooperation with university groups, research is also being conducted into new quantum materials and their application is being promoted.

Sebastian Klemenz studied chemistry at the Technical University of Darmstadt and was a scholarship holder at the Darmstadt Graduate School of Excellence Energy Science and Engineering (GS ESE). In 2017, he completed his PhD as Dr. rer. nat. at the Technical University of Darmstadt. After graduation, he worked as a research associate at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Physics of Solids in Dresden and at Princeton University (NJ, USA). Since February 2021, he has been working at Fraunhofer IWKS in the area of magnetic materials as part of the Fraunhofer Attract funding program.