52 PCB007 MAGAZINE I APRIL 2018
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Tara Dunn is the president of Omni
PCB, a manufacturer's rep firm spe-
cializing in the printed circuit board
industry. To read past columns or to
contact her, click here.
New developments require new materials. Until recent-
ly, these have been developed mostly by tedious experi-
ments in the laboratory. Researchers at the Fraunhofer
Institute for Algorithms and Scientific Computing SCAI in
Sankt Augustin are now significantly shortening this time-
consuming and cost-intensive process with their "Virtu-
al Material Design" approach and the specially developed
Tremolo-X software. By combining multi-scale
models, data analysis and machine learning, it
is possible to develop improved materials much
more quickly. At the Hanover Trade Fair from April
23 to 27, 2018, Fraunhofer will be demonstrating
how the virtual material design of the future looks
(Hall 6, Booth A30).
In almost every industry, new materials are
needed for new developments. While an automo-
bile used to consist of just a handful of materi-
als, modern cars are assembled from thousands
of different materials. Whether it's making a car
lighter, getting better fuel economy or developing
electric motor batteries, every new development
requires finding or developing the material with
the right properties. The candidates have usually
been selected from huge material databases and
then tested. Although these databases provide in-
sight into specific performance characteristics,
they usually do not go far enough into depth to al-
low meaningful judgments about whether a material has
exactly the desired properties. To find that out, numerous
laboratory tests have to be performed. The scientists at
the Fraunhofer SCAI have chosen a different approach.
The requirements for the substance are broken down to
the inner structure of the material: that is, down to the
atomic level.
From the Quantum Level to the Car Battery
