Mr. Kai Walter studied Material science and engineering at the Technical University Bergakademie Freiberg (TUBAF) in Saxony, Germany and received his diploma there in 2021. During his studies, he specialized on material characterization especially by means of X-Ray diffraction (XRD) but also electron microscopy (SEM & TEM, EDX & EBSD). The material science education of TUBAF familiarized him with a wide range of material such as ferrous and none-ferrous metals & intermetallics, hard coatings, superconductors, ceramics and composite materials.

His diploma thesis on Ta additions in Nb3Sn opened the door for superconductors to him. Sticking to the subject of superconductors, he decided to apply for a PhD program at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) in Germany. Here he currently is a PhD candidate at the Institute for Technical Physics (ITEP) under Prof. Bernhard Holzapfel. His work revolves around finding ways to characterize defects such as oxygen vacancies, dislocations, stacking faults and nanoparticles in REBa2Cu3O7-δ (REBCO) thin films. Therein a special focus on non-destructive methods such as inductive measurements and XRD is put. These methods lay the ground work for industrial quality insurance to produce long length of high quality REBCO tapes and enable the spread of superconducting applications.