Martin Stratmann

Martin Stratmann (born 20 April 1954 in Essen, Germany) is a German electrochemist and materials scientist. He is one of the directors at the Max-Planck-Institut für Eisenforschung (Max-Planck-Institute for Iron Research) in Düsseldorf since 2000 and heads its department of Interface Chemistry and Surface Engineering.

Stratman is president of the Max Planck Society since June 2014 after having been its vice president from 2008 to 2014.

After finishing his Abitur (A-levels) with an excellent result in 1973 at the grammar school in Traben-Trarbach (Rhineland-Palatinate, south-west Germany), and after his military service, Stratmann studied chemistry at the Ruhr University Bochum, helped by a scholarship from the German National Academic Foundation. Stratmann received his diploma about NMR-analysis of the diffusion of anions and cations in SrCl2 in 1979. He did his doctorate about electrochemical analysis of phase transitions in corrosion layers at the Max-Planck-Institut für Eisenforschung (MPIE) in 1982. Between 1983 and 1984 he continued his research at the Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland (USA) as a scholarship holder of the Max Planck Society. After his return to the MPIE, he worked till 1987 as a scientific assistant in the group of corrosion science. In 1987 he got head of this group. In 1994 Stratmann was appointed to a professorship for corrosion and surface engineering as a successor of H. Kaesche at the Friedrich Alexander University in Erlangen-Nürnberg (South Germany) and remained there till 1999. In 2000 Stratmann returned to the MPIE as a scientific member and director of the department “Interface Chemistry and Surface Engineering”. Two years later he was chosen to be the chief-executive (rotationally till 2010).

2006-2008 Stratmann chaired the chemical-physical-technical section of the Max Planck Society and got appointed vice president of the Max Planck Society in 2008. Moreover, he is the manager of the Minerva Foundation, an affiliate of the Max Planck Society, since 2008. The Minerva Foundation was established in the 1960s and is an outstanding foundation of the German-Israel research cooperation.

The research interests of Martin Stratmann concentrate on electrochemistry and corrosion science. He connects electrochemical, spectroscopic and interface analytical methods and was the first one who used the scanning kelvin probe in corrosion science. With this method he was able to show that electrochemical reaction analysis possible is even under ultrathin electrolytic films and non-conducting coatings. With the help of the Kelvin probe, Stratmann was able to explain the atmospheric corrosion of iron and iron based alloys, and the de-adhesion of polymer coatings of reactive metallic surfaces. With the insight that the formation of electrochemical elements and especially the reduction of molecular oxygen is the key factor to understand the stability of metal-polymer bonds, Stratmann and his team developed new interface-chemical concepts to increase the stability of these bonds which finally to lead to self-healing processes of defect interfaces. These concepts were also transferred into industrial applications.

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