PETRA IV

Sustainable technologies for the production, storage and use of energy, for environmentallyfriendly transport and for information systemswill depend crucially on the development ofnovel materials with tailor-made functions. Re-alising these will require sophisticated materi-als design down to the atomic scale, which inturn can only be accomplished if suitable diag-nostics tools are available. Among the mostimportant challenges here are the investiga-tion of the mechanisms of the desired materialand molecular phases, the precise determi-nation of nanoscale structures and thein-situanalysis of the dynamics of structural and elec-tronic changes on relevant length and timescales. A revolutionary new analytical capa-bility to observe the atomistic mechanisms ofmaterial synthesis with the highest precisionis essential if we are to achieve a basic un-derstanding that allows the transition from theprevious empirical trial-and-error method ofsynthesis to knowledge-based rational mate-rials and process design.