Corporate Technology - Rolf Hellinger

Wolfgang Rossner
Wolfgang Rossner never tires
of developing new applications
for ceramic materials,
which are key components
for Siemens. Because of his
achievements in this area he
was named one of the top
innovators at Siemens AG.
King
of Ceramics
Dr. Wolfgang Rossner and his team at the Ceramic
Materials and Devices Global Technology
Field in Munich, Germany are mixing ceramic
powders, which consist of artificially
produced chemical substances that are as fine
as the finest sand. The team use these powders
to bake ceramic materials with new qualities.
Their innovative research work consists primarily
of designing materials — starting with their
atomic structure — in such a way that the various
components are tailor-made to fit the requirements
of their respective areas of application.
“Today, we accomplish this on the basis of
both scientific and empirical findings. But in the
future, given the increasing complexity of new
types of ceramic materials, we hope to be able
to do the same thing on a computer in the virtual
world,” explains Rossner. Simulation tools
will find the appropriate mixture ratios for different
chemical elements much faster than empirical
processes ever could. This is still a vision, but
at some point it will be possible to “play” with virtual
materials on the computer, simulate their
behavior, and digitally forecast their properties
such as hardness, reliability, and resistance to
changes of temperature.
Ceramic materials can be found in products
as diverse as X-ray detectors, light-emitting
diodes, and turbine blades. The special quality
of these materials, which fascinates Rossner
again and again, is the fact that they are the key
components of a whole spectrum of products
that influence the way systems function overall.
For example, the ceramics contained in X-ray detectors
very quickly and efficiently transform the
48 Corporate Technology
X-rays into light signals — and that’s a crucial element
in the technology of medical X-ray computer
tomography. The ceramic coatings in gas
turbines, on the other hand, have a completely
different function: their main job is to protect
the metallic turbine blades from the extremely
high temperatures of the fuel gases. But ceramics
can do even more. For example, they can insulate
protected zones from strong electric voltages,
change their shape when subjected to an
electric charge (the piezo effect), or generate
electricity directly as the result of a difference in
temperature (the thermoelectric effect).
Rossner and his team are busy employing
such material characteristics in order to come up
with other possible applications for this crosssector
technology. That requires a highly interdisciplinary
team — and Rossner’s 30 colleagues
therefore represent a colorful spectrum of experts
from the specialized disciplines of materials
science, physics, chemistry, mathematics,
and electrical engineering.
Rossner, who studied materials science, has
been working at Siemens since 1984. He knows
how long the road from an idea to a product can
be. At Siemens, he developed ceramics for X-ray
detectors in the late 1980s.
By the mid-1990s he and his team had
reached the point where they could transfer
their findings to medical technology and move
their product from the laboratory to the production
line. This step proceeded quickly, taking less
than two years in all. The product soon became
a success on the market, and today ceramic is an
essential component of the best X-ray detectors.
“For me as a researcher, that’s the exciting thing
— Initiating this value chain and supporting it as
it develops, from basic materials to finished
product,” says Rossner.
In the process, he too has overcome quite a
few difficulties. “There are always skeptics,” he
says. That’s why the basic requirement for researchers
is to believe in their own ideas and
their own approaches. If that is the case, then
they will be able to convince decision-makers
not only with the facts but also through their
own enthusiasm.
At the same time, however, they also always
have to deal with technical obstacles. A tiny but
difficult problem can sometimes stand in the
way of overall success. “If you haven’t got good
and creative colleagues, you don’t have a
chance,” says Rossner.
Furthermore, it’s essential for a researcher to
engage in a dialogue with application experts —
preferably from the very start. Of course not
every idea will become a technical and commercial
success. But if you talk with potential users
at an early stage in the process, you can quickly
find out what they would expect from a product
and what factors are crucial to its success. If
these findings are built in, the researcher has already
taken an important step forward.
Of course, new ideas also come from the
company’s competitors. “We keep a close eye on
one another,” Rossner says with a grin. However,
through his inventions, Rossner is creating
unique selling points for Siemens. And in cases
where competitors are caught unaware, he’s
particularly pleased.