International Materials Research Meeting in the Greater Region: “Current Trends in the Characterisation of Materials and Surface Modification”

Abstract

PrefaceDear ladies and gentlemen,On 6th and 7th of April 2017 took place the “International Materials Research Meeting in the Greater Region” at the Saarland University, Saarbrücken, Germany. This meeting corresponded to the 9th EEIGM International Conference on Advanced Materials Research and it was intended as a meeting place for researchers of the Greater Region as well as their partners of the different cooperation activities, like the EEIGM program, the ‘Erasmus Mundus’ Advanced Materials Science and Engineering Master program (AMASE), the ‘Erasmus Mundus’ Doctoral Program in Materials Science and Engineering (DocMASE) and the CREATe-Network.On this meeting, 72 participants from 15 countries and 24 institutions discussed and exchanged ideas on the latest trends in the characterization of materials and surface modifications. Different aspects of the material research of metals, ceramics, polymers and biomaterials were presented. As a conclusion of the meeting, the new astronaut of the European Space Agency Dr. Matthias Maurer, who is an alumni of the Saarland University and the EEIGM, held an exciting presentation about his activities. Following the publication of selected papers of the 2009 meeting in Volume 5 and 2012 meeting in Volume 31 of this journal, it is a great pleasure to present this selection of 9 articles to the readers of the IOP Conference Series: Materials Science and Engineering. The editors are thankful to all of the reviewers for reviewing the papers. Special praise is also given to the sponsors of the conference: European Commission within the program Erasmus Mundus (AMASE and DocMASE), Erasmus+ (AMASE), and Horizon2020 (CREATe-Network, Grant agreement No 644013): the DAAD (Alumni Program), and the German-French University (PhD-Track).List of Author signatures, Conference topics, Organization, Conference impressions and list of the participants are available in this PDF.