Dr. Franziska Scheibel

Since 2018, I am a postdoctoral researcher in the functional materials group of Prof. Gutfleisch at the Technische Universität Darmstadt in the department of materials science. My research focuses on magnetocaloric and multicaloric materials for energy efficient caloric cooling. Therefore, I study the effect of microstructure and other extrinsic and intrinsic properties on the magneto-structural phase transition and characterize the magnetic, structural and caloric response to different external stimuli (magnetic field, stress field and temperature) including the transition dynamics in pulsed magnetic field.  Microstructure, defects and inhomogeneity affect not only the transition hysteresis but also the mechanical response and stability. Therefore, I also investigate the processing by additive manufacturing and other powder-based processing methods for microstructure design and shaping, including the upscaling of powder processing for these methods. The materials investigated are Ni-Mn based shape memory Heusler alloys, Mn3GaC antiperovskites, Mn-Sb based pniktides, as well as rare earth Laves phase for low temperature magnetocaloric cooling.

Before coming to Darmstadt, I did my PhD at the University of Duisburg-Essen in the group of Prof. Farle. In my PhD thesis I synthesized and characterized different magnetocaloric materials with respect to the minimization of thermal hysteresis and its effect on the magnetocaloric effect. I studied physics at the University of Ulm, where I worked on the preparation and characterization of FePtCu thin films by laser ablation.