This special issue of Advanced Engineering Materials contains a series of papers covering a selection of current materials science and engineering research activities at the Friedrich‐Alexander‐University of Erlangen‐Nürnberg (FAU). FAU was founded in 1743 by Margrave Friedrich von Brandenburg‐Bayreuth and expanded in 1769 by Margrave Alexander von Brandenburg‐Ansbach and Brandenburg‐Bayreuth, where it was subsequently moved to the state of Bavaria in 1810. It has been housed in the former margraviate residence in Erlangen since 1818, which is currently the main administration building of the University (the “Schloss”, the castle). In the summer semester of 1890, the number of students enrolled at the University reached 1,000 for the first time. Today, approximately 40,000 students study at the FAU campuses in Erlangen, Nürnberg, and Fürth. The Faculty of Engineering was established, along with the Department of Materials Science and Engineering (MSE), in 1966, making it the first independent materials science study program in Germany. The MSE Department at FAU has developed significantly since its founding, now representing a major center both for materials science education and materials research in Germany. At an international level, FAU stands out as an innovative university founded on diversity with an outward‐looking, international perspective. In 2019, FAU was listed as the most innovative university in Germany (second in Europe), according to the Reuters ranking.

In August 1965 Bernhard Ilschner was appointed as the first Professor in materials science to the Chair of MSE I (General Materials Properties). Shortly thereafter, the two additional chairs were established: MSE II in 1966 (today Chair for Materials Science and Engineering for Metals) and MSE III as Chair for Glass and Ceramics in 1968. The first stage of expansion to six chairs occurred in the early seventies with the creation of the chairs of Surface Science and Corrosion – MSE IV (1970), Polymer Materials – MSE V (1973), and Materials of Electrical Engineering (today Materials for Electronics and Energy Technology – MSE VI) in 1974. In 1989 a seventh chair on Microcharacterization was added. Its scope was changed to Biomaterials (MSE VII) in 2009. A new Chair for Materials Simulation – MSE VIII was created in 2010, and in 2014 the working group Electron Microscopy (originally belonging to MSE VII) was expanded into a separate Chair of Micro‐ and Nanostructure Research – MSE IX.

Many of our former colleagues have played an important role in the development and expansion of our Department over the years. Among these colleagues are Hael Mughrabi, Bernhard Reppich, and Wolfgang Blum of MSE I, Ulrich Zwicker and Robert F. Singer of MSE II, Heribert Oel, Rudolf Weißmann, Andreas Roosen, and Peter Greil of MSE III, Helmut Kaesche and Martin Stratmann – now president of the Max‐Planck‐Society – of MSE IV, Friedrich Schwarzl and Helmut Münstedt of MSE V, Herbert Weiß, Karl Heinz Zschauer, Albrecht Winnacker, and Georg Müller of MSE VI, and Horst P. Strunk of MSE VII, among many others.

Today, the Department of Materials Science and Engineering consists of nine chairs with 16 full‐time professors (Figure 1), in addition to approximately 156 research staff and 64 non‐research staff, providing outstanding breadth across all aspects of materials science and engineering in both research and teaching. Indeed, the Materials Science and Engineering Department at FAU is one of the largest departments of its kind in Germany.

An important milestone of the Department was the establishment of a second materials science location in Fürth, starting in 2001. Today, this site hosts not only the “Neue Materialien Fürth GmbH” (NMF), the joint Institute of Advanced Materials and Processes (ZMP), and the Chair of Materials Simulation, but also several working groups and laboratories belonging to the different Chairs of the Department. Further expansion continued with the foundation of the Energy Campus (2010) and the Helmholtz‐Institute Erlangen‐Nürnberg (HI‐ERN) in 2013, with strong participation of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering. The Erlangen division of the Bavarian Center for Applied Energy Research, ZAE, has also been headed by materials scientists since 2005 and has its own new building near the Materials Science buildings since 2012. Furthermore, the foundation of the Center for Nanoanalysis and Electron Microscopy (CENEM) emerged from the Cluster of Excellence “Engineering of Advanced Materials”. The Department has expanded outside the main campus in Erlangen, as well. In particular, the Chair for Biomaterials received a new building with state‐of‐the‐art facilities for bio‐research in Erlangen‐West, which was officially inaugurated in 2016.

The concept of the MSE department in Erlangen has always been to cover all aspects of the interdisciplinary fields of materials science and engineering in one department with the main building located in the engineering campus of FAU (Figure 2a). Therefore, chairs for all different classes of materials have been established to form a modern and unique MSE Department. Cutting‐edge research is performed at the highest scientific level in different research fields, as documented by the publications in this special issue. Of course, funding of the research activities from industry and public sources is quite important. In this respect the Cluster of Excellence for Engineering of Advanced Materials, which was funded in the framework of the German Excellence Initiative from 2007 to 2019, was particularly important, since all Chairs of the MSE Department were involved in different topics ranging from the development of materials for novel lightweight structures to nanoelectrics, optics, and catalysts as well as advanced characterization and modelling techniques. This initiative also led to the establishment of the new Interdisciplinary Center for Nanostructured Films, IZNF (Figure 2b), and the construction of a large research building, where now several research groups of the MSE Department are hosted with excellently equipped research laboratories.

An important research field of the Department focuses on high temperature materials based on Co‐ and Ni‐based superalloys, which has been supported by the German Research Foundation (DFG) through the Research Training Group 1229 from 2006 to 2015 and since 2012 by the DFG funded Collaborative Research Center 103 on superalloys together with the University of Bochum. Several papers in this special issue show new results from this research. In addition, two further Research Training Groups have been established in the MSE Department: GRK1896, started in 2013, on in‐situ microscopy with electrons, x‐rays and scanning probes and GRK2423, funded since 2018, which aims to improve understanding of the fracture behavior in brittle heterogeneous materials by developing simulation methods that are able to capture the multiscale nature of failure. Recently (2019), the International Research Training Group IGK 2495 (Energy Conversion Systems: From Materials to Devices) was established with our partner institute, the Nagoya Institute of Technology, Japan, in order to better understand lead‐free perovskite materials for electro‐optical‐mechanical energy conversion systems. Biomaterials research activities are funded by large national and European projects, and, in the fields of biofabrication and 3D bioprinting, by the Collaborative Research Centre TRR/SFB 225 in collaborative arrangements involving researchers from the three universities in northern Bavaria: Würzburg, Bayreuth, and FAU as well as in close collaboration with the FAU Medical Faculty. The Chair for Polymer Materials (MSE V) is involved in the Bavarian Polymer Institute (BPI), which is also a joint initiative of the universities Bayreuth, Erlangen‐Nürnberg, and Würzburg. The BPI fosters cutting‐edge interdisciplinary research in the polymers field by enabling strategic and infrastructural collaborations with joint research projects and the establishment of common know‐how‐chains. Several professors from the department are also involved in the Collaborative Research Centre SFB 953 on synthetic carbon allotropes, such as fullerenes, carbon nanotubes, and graphene, which currently represent one of the most promising material families with enormous potential in the fields of nanoelectronics and other nanodevices. Additive manufacturing, nowadays a “hot” research topic for processing of many different materials, plays also a major role in our Department. This field is funded since 2012 by the Collaborative Research Center 814 – Additive Manufacturing and by many industrial projects.

Researchers from the Department are successful on several fronts, demonstrated by several ERC and Emmy Noether grant recipients as well as a Leibniz prize awardee. Several of our colleagues are regularly included in the Highly Cited Scientists list. Members of the Department are active in national and international scientific committees and serve the community as editors, co‐editors, and members of editorial boards of several high‐ranking international journals, including Advanced Engineering Materials. Our Department has many long‐standing collaborations with numerous universities and research institutes worldwide and new international partnerships are constantly being developed. Moreover, the Department has a long‐standing tradition of collaborating with industrial partners from Germany and around the world.

We hope that the present special issue will give the readers an overview of the variety of topics currently under research in the different chairs of the FAU Department of Materials Science and Engineering and will open avenues for new research collaborations in the near future.

On behalf of all members of the Department,

https://www.fau.de

https://www.tf.fau.eu/faculty-of-engineering/departments-and-chairs/materials-science-and-engineering

本期《高级工程材料》包含一系列论文，涵盖埃尔兰根-纽伦堡的弗里德里希-亚历山大-大学（FAU）当前的材料科学和工程研究活动。FAU由Margrave Friedrich von Brandenburg-Bayreuth于1743年成立，并于1769年由Margrave Alexander von Brandenburg-Ansbach和Brandenburg-Bayreuth扩大，随后于1810年移至巴伐利亚州。自1818年以来一直在埃尔兰根（Erlangen）办公，目前是大学的主要行政大楼（城堡）。1890年夏季学期，该大学的入学人数首次达到1,000名。如今，大约有40,000名学生在位于埃尔兰根，纽伦堡和菲尔特的FAU校园学习。成立工程学院，1966年与材料科学与工程系（MSE）一起，使其成为德国第一个独立的材料科学研究计划。FAU的MSE部门自成立以来取得了长足的发展，现已成为德国材料科学教育和材料研究的主要中心。在国际上，FAU脱颖而出，是一所立足于多元化，具有国际视野的创新型大学。根据路透社排名，FAU在2019年被列为德国最具创新力的大学（欧洲第二）。现在是德国材料科学教育和材料研究的主要中心。在国际上，FAU脱颖而出，是一所立足于多元化，具有国际视野的创新型大学。根据路透社排名，FAU在2019年被列为德国最具创新力的大学（欧洲第二）。现在是德国材料科学教育和材料研究的主要中心。在国际上，FAU脱颖而出，是一所立足于多元化，具有国际视野的创新型大学。根据路透社排名，FAU在2019年被列为德国最具创新力的大学（欧洲第二）。

1965年8月，Bernhard Ilschner被任命为MSE I（通用材料性能）主席的第一位材料科学教授。此后不久，又增加了两把椅子：1966年的MSE II（今天为金属材料科学和工程学的椅子）和1968年的MSE III作为玻璃和陶瓷的椅子。第一阶段扩展到六把椅子是在70年代初。并于1974年创建了表面科学和腐蚀教席-MSE IV（1970），聚合物材料-MSE V（1973）和电气工程材料（今天的电子和能源技术材料-MSE VI）。1989年增加了第七届微特征研究主席。2009年将其范围更改为生物材料（MSE VII）。2010年创建了新的材料模拟主席– MSE VIII，

多年来，我们许多以前的同事在我们部门的发展和扩展中发挥了重要作用。这些同事包括MSE I的Hael Mughrabi，Bernhard Reppich和Wolfgang Blum，MSE II的Ulrich Zwicker和Robert F. Singer，MSE III的Heribert Oel，RudolfWeißmann，Andreas Roosen和MSE III的Peter Greil，Helmut Kaesche和Martin Stratmann –现在担任MSE IV的Max-Planck-Society总裁，MSE V的Friedrich Schwarzl和HelmutMünstedt，HerbertWeiß，Karl Heinz Zschauer，Albrecht Winnacker和MSE VI的GeorgMüller，以及MSE VII的Horst P. Strunk很多其他的。

如今，材料科学与工程系由9名 教职员工和16名全职教授组成（图1），此外还有大约156名研究人员和64位非研究人员，在材料科学与工程的各个方面提供了出色的广度。研究和教学。确实，FAU的材料科学与工程系是德国同类中最大的系之一。

该部门的一个重要里程碑是从2001年开始在菲尔特建立第二个材料科学基地。如今，该站点不仅托管着“新材料有限公司”（Neue MaterialienFürthGmbH）（NMF），还包括先进材料与工艺联合研究所（ZMP）。 ），材料模拟主席，以及属于该部门不同主席的几个工作组和实验室。在材料科学与工程系的大力参与下，随着能源校园（2010年）和埃尔姆根茨-纽伦堡亥姆霍兹研究所（HI-ERN）的成立，2013年继续进行进一步扩展。ZAE巴伐利亚应用能源研究中心的Erlangen部门自2005年以来一直由材料科学家领导，自2012年以来在材料科学大楼附近拥有自己的新大楼。此外，纳米分析和电子显微镜中心（CENEM）的基础来自“先进材料工程”卓越集群。该系也已扩展到Erlangen的主校区之外。特别是，生物材料主席在Erlangen-West收到了一座配备了先进的生物研究设施的新大楼，该大楼于2016年正式启用。

位于Erlangen的MSE部门的理念始终是在一个部门中涵盖材料科学和工程学的跨学科领域的各个方面，其主楼位于FAU的工程园区内（图 2a）。因此，已经建立了用于所有不同类别材料的椅子，以形成现代而独特的MSE部门。正如本期特刊中所记录的那样，前沿研究是在不同研究领域中以最高科学水平进行的。当然，从行业和公共资源为研究活动提供资金非常重要。在这方面，在2007年至2019年由德国卓越计划资助的先进材料工程卓越集群尤为重要，因为MSE部门的所有主席都参与了不同主题的研究，包括研发和创新。用于纳米电学，光学和催化剂的新型轻质结构材料，以及先进的表征和建模技术。

该部门的一个重要研究领域集中于基于Co和Ni基超级合金的高温材料，该研究已获得德国研究基金会（DFG）通过2006年至2015年的研究培训小组1229以及自2012年以来由DFG提供的支持与波鸿大学共同资助了超级合金合作研究中心103。本期特刊中的几篇论文显示了这项研究的新结果。此外，MSE部门还成立了另外两个研究培训小组：GRK1896，于2013年开始，采用电子，X射线和扫描探针进行原位显微镜检查； GRK2423，自2018年以来获得资助，旨在增进人们对MSE的了解。通过开发能够捕获破坏的多尺度性质的仿真方法，来研究脆性异质材料的断裂行为。最近（2019年），我们与日本名古屋工业大学的合作伙伴研究所成立了国际研究培训小组IGK 2495（能量转换系统：从材料到设备），以便更好地了解用于电子设备的无铅钙钛矿材料。光学机械能转换系统。生物材料研究活动由大型的国家和欧洲项目资助，在生物制造和3D生物打印领域，由TRR / SFB 225合作研究中心资助，合作安排来自巴伐利亚北部三所大学的研究人员：维尔茨堡，拜罗伊特和FAU以及与FAU医学院的密切合作。巴伐利亚材料研究所（BPI）的聚合物材料教席（MSE V）这也是拜罗伊特大学，埃尔兰根纽伦堡大学和维尔茨堡大学的联合倡议。BPI通过与联合研究项目进行战略和基础设施合作以及建立共同知识链来促进聚合物领域的前沿跨学科研究。该系的几位教授也参与了有关合成碳同素异形体（例如富勒烯，碳纳米管和石墨烯）的SFB 953合作研究中心的研究，它们目前是最有前途的材料家族之一，在纳米电子学和其他领域具有巨大潜力纳米设备。如今，增材制造已成为处理多种不同材料的“热门”研究课题，在我们系中也发挥着重要作用。

该部门的研究人员在多个方面都取得了成功，一些ERC和Emmy Noether资助接受者以及莱布尼兹奖的获得者就证明了这一点。我们的一些同事经常被列入“高被引科学家名单”。该部门的成员活跃于国家和国际科学委员会，并以高级工程材料等几种高级国际期刊的编辑，副编辑和编辑委员会成员的身份服务社区。。我们系与世界各地的许多大学和研究机构有许多长期合作关系，新的国际伙伴关系正在不断发展。此外，该部门拥有与德国和世界各地的工业伙伴合作的悠久传统。

我们希望本期专刊能够为读者提供在FAU材料科学与工程系的不同主席中目前正在研究的各种主题的概述，并在不久的将来为新的研究合作开辟道路。

代表新闻部所有成员，

https://www.fau.de

https://www.tf.fau.eu/faculty-of-engineering/departments-and-chairs/materials-science-and-engineering