At the beginning of the 21st century, the conventional production industry is undergoing a dramatic change towards an innovative, high-tech, knowledge-based industry. Increasing competition on the global market constantly demand for new and better products and services. At the same time a growing shortage of the resources energy, raw materials and natural environment demand for the highest possible efficiency and sustainability.

Today in many cases the development of top-end products and systems has reached limits set by the limited capabilities of currently existing materials. Examples are performance limits of electronic components due to limited thermal management capabilities of heat sink materials, limitations in the energy conversion efficiency of gas turbines due to excessive degradation of the current materials and compounds, light-weight engine materials suffering from thermal and mechanical load cycles and oxidation, and frequent component exchange intervals in radiation facilities with corresponding reduced availability and radioactive waste accumulation.

To the extend operational conditions become more and more demanding, existing limitations in materials technology act more and more as roadblocks for breakthrough industrial innovation. New horizons of performance of products and systems are directly connected with an intense need for innovative materials and processing routes for those materials or complex compounds to perform multiple functions.

The combined research work of 37 renowned institutions throughout Europe joined in the ExtreMat project will contribute significantly to remove such roadblocks in important industrial fields.

The project shall result in a generation of new commercial materials and multi-materials components and the corresponding crosscutting processing technologies. The availability of this new materials and compounds will give the European industry a decisive technological lead in the world market.
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