Vision & Goals

Hard materials are essential ingredients in the solution for many of society’s most outstanding issues within e.g. energy, production and CO2 storage. They are ubiquitous in nature in the form of e.g. bones, wood, soil and rocks. In the same way that animals and plants are built in a hierarchical way with cells, tissues, organs, etc., most hard materials have a complex internal structure that extends across length scales from nanometers to centimeter. A major research challenge is to therefore to understand and tailor the materials internal structure on the various scales, as strength, efficiency, storage capacity  etc. thereby can be radically changed. This is the core of "materials science" as a discipline. Similarly, the interplay between the many length scales is essential for the understanding of a wide range of diseases of bones and teeth and for the design of implants.

The vision of our center of excellence is to visualize the internal structure of such materials, their creation and change in use – in 3D and on all the relevant length and time scales. This means we can generate and apply a new generation of far more realistic multiscale material models. This would be a fundamental "game changer" in materials science, as better models are exactly the piece that is missing in order to be able to realize the dream of designing new materials using computer models.  Similarly, multiscale 3D description will be the key to improved understanding of basic issues in bone and dental biology, and thus for the development of new drugs and diagnostic methods e.g. in osteoporosis. Moreover, the new high throughput 3D imaging methods will facilitate massive digitalization of fossils and as such be invaluable for progress in understanding human evolution and climate change.

SOLID is a cross-disciplinary center that seek to exploit the strong synergy in methods and science across materials science, geoscience, bone research, forensics and archeology. To enable the 3D visualization the group is engaged in building instruments at the world most powerful neutron and X-ray sources, ESS in Lund and ESRF in Grenoble, and is in charge of two national X-ray infrastructures, DanMAX at MAX IV and DANFIX at DTU as well as the regional data analysis center QIM supplying the advanced data analysis required. 

SOLID also serves a Danish competence center for neutron and X-ray imaging in general, with extensive collaboration with industry via DANFIX and an industry portal.