© Helmut Riedl-Tragenreif

The photo shows the winning team in the university research category of the 2026 Houska Prize

Since 2005, the B&C Private Foundation has awarded the Houska Prize every year. With a total prize fund of 760,000 euros, the Houska Prize is Austria’s largest private award for applied research. This year’s prize was awarded in three categories: university research, non-university research, and research & development in SMEs, with three projects reaching the final in each category. In the university research category, the project “The Hotter, the Better – Micrometre-thin layers for maximum performance”, led by Professor Helmut Riedl-Tragenreif, was nominated and won first place.

The “The Hotter, the Better” project in detail

Since April 2019, the Christian Doppler Laboratory for Surface Technology of High-Performance Components at TU Wien has been working on high-tech coatings that improve the performance and efficiency of heavily stressed components in turbines or power plants. High-performance gas turbines, such as aircraft turbines, are a central component of our modern energy and transport infrastructure. During operation, they are exposed to both extreme temperatures and mechanical stresses, leading to significant wear and tear on the turbines. Conventional materials reach their limits at temperatures of around 1,000 degrees, which promotes material damage and leads to long-term losses in performance and efficiency. 

As aircraft turbines have extremely long development cycles of around 20 years, it is more effective to build on existing products and optimise them using thin films rather than developing new ones. It was precisely this approach that was adopted in the “The Hotter, the Better” project. A thin film of 20 micrometres was applied to turbine components, after which various stress tests were carried out. In this way, Helmut Riedl-Tragenreif and his research team developed novel, micrometre-thin high-temperature coatings that combine particularly resilient materials. The ceramic protective coatings designed in this way withstand temperatures of over 1,000 degrees, oxidation, corrosion and erosion, and increase the service life of turbine components by more than 50 per cent. This enables the efficiency and service life of turbine components to be sustainably increased.