Production and processing of metallic materials currently account for 40% of all industrial greenhouse gas emissions. The extraction of the associated minerals also produces several billion tons of by-products every year, some of which are harmful. It is therefore imperative that future metallic materials become more sustainable. In the Priority Program 2489 DaMic, funded by German Research Foundation (DFG) essential scientific foundations for this development are created and a contribution is made to establish a new field of research at the interface of digitization and sustainability.

The aim of DaMic is to develop digital methods for inverse materials design and to use them to create new, sustainable and recycling-adapted structural metals. Alloys with a reduced number of elements, in particular critical elements, and thus better compatibility, so-called lean alloys, and material systems with a high tolerance to impurities from the use of secondary raw materials in the sense of the science of dirty alloys are of particular relevance for improving recyclability and sustainability. Possible negative effects of the modified alloy compositions are to be minimized through targeted alloy, microstructure and process design so that the resulting properties are comparable with currently available construction materials.