About Us

The objectives of the Department of Materials at ETH-Zurich are to conduct world-class materials research and to produce materials scientists and engineers who are educated at the highest level.

The Department of Materials is one of the fifteen departments belonging to the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich. It is responsible for the education of engineers and scientists in the general field of materials science and engineering, and for the education in materials related topics of students from other departments.

Besides education, the Department's main task consists in contributing to the development and improvement of new materials by research, and to reveal basic principles of materials science.

In both research and education, the Department is committed to the idea of materials science spanning many orders of magnitude in size scale, from atoms to products, and also stretching from highly fundamental studies to those with direct technological implications.

Active research areas include polymer physics, polymer synthesis and polymer technology, biomaterials and biointerfaces, metal physics and technology, nanometallurgy, structural and functional ceramics, surface functionalization, tribology and crystallography.

Brainpower in conjunction with modern research facilities form an excellent basis for the Department of Materials' successful activities.