Blog

Since this year, the Center for Economics and Management of Technologies (CEM), based in Halle (Saale), has been integrated as a new structural unit at Fraunhofer IKTS. In this interview, its director, Dr. Daniela Pufky-Heinrich, and the deputy director of Fraunhofer IKTS, Prof. Dr. Michael Stelter, provide an insight into the future collaboration.

Our Tuesday feature: In the #diensttalk, our employees give a little insight into their work and reveal the vision that drives them. Christiane Schuster works on optical testing methods and nanosensor technology at the IKTS site in Dresden-Klotzsche. As head of the working group of the same name, she explains what lies behind this and reveals her personal research highlights to date. We also find out what she is most passionate about.

People at Fraunhofer IKTS are driven by the aim to develop holistic economical and sustainable systems as well as services for practical applications. They work together across various disciplines to gain insight into the complex questions of our time, and drive innovation.

Carbon (or simply: C) has a bad reputation. At the same time, carbon is everywhere. It is the atom of life and shapes our entire economy. Carbon is part of our DNA, the foods we eat, and the products we use every day. Carbon is part of the fuels that power our vehicles and factories or heat our homes, and the materials we use to build our cities. In industry, carbon is both a source of energy and a raw material – all of organic chemistry and the downstream added value, including the building materials and plastics industries, is based on carbon.

The Tuesday feature. In the #diensttalk series, our employees give a brief insight into their activities and reveal what vision drives them. This time, Dr. Stefanie Seitz, transfer expert at IKTS, gives us an insight into how she develops innovative formats for vocational training, e.g. for the automotive industry, and supports researchers in putting their ideas, knowledge and developments into practice.

Wastewater treatment in sewage plants is conventionally carried out in three stages: First, there is mechanical filtration, followed by biological treatment, and finally secondary sedimentation, in which the treated wastewater is separated from the sewage sludge. Increasingly, however, a fourth treatment stage is being used, which is intended in particular to remove micropollutants such as pesticides or detergents from wastewater. In this treatment stage, ozonation takes place. The ozone (O3) reacts with organic compounds, bacteria, viruses and other pollutants in the water and causes their oxidation or destruction.

In the Paris Agreement on climate protection, the global community for the first time made a binding commitment under international law to ambitious climate protection targets. The countries involved want to work together to drive forward the global energy transition. This requires breakthrough technologies such as those that have been the focus of developments at Fraunhofer IKTS since the institute was founded in 1992. In particular, high-temperature electrolysis-based system chains, which, for example, produce hydrogen, synthetic fuels and fertilizers particularly efficiently from green electricity, air and water, are now about to make an evolutionary leap from the laboratory to international practical use.

A clever idea is paying off: coating stirrers in biogas plants with specially developed polymer concretes can double their service life. The researchers at Fraunhofer IKTS now intend to conquer other markets with their extremely wear-resistant coating technology. Industries that have to stir or pump aggressive substrates and suspensions could benefit enormously. The focus is on the chemical industry and the food and construction industries. But exciting solutions are also on the horizon for wind power rotor blades, which could reduce erosion damage.

The Tuesday feature. In the #diensttalk series, our employees give a brief insight into their activities and reveal what vision drives them. This time, PhD student Micha Philip Fertig provides insights into doctoral studies at Fraunhofer and his research on sustainable solid-state batteries.

The necessary moment for the scale-up of sustainable battery technologies was yesterday. In China, cars with sodium batteries are already on the market. Yet Germany itself is only the blink of an eye away from launching them – if the right course is set now. The decisive aspect here is the intelligent use of regionally and technologically diversified know-how. The ”New Via Regia of Batteries“ holds opportunities.

The Tuesday feature. In the #diensttalk series, our employees give a brief insight into their activities and reveal what vision drives them. This time we follow Dr. Olga Ravkina. As a scientist and group leader, Olga researches ceramic materials and processes for gas separation, such as an environmentally friendly ammonia synthesis route.

Stephan Heilmann develops software for test systems with the aim of ensuring maximum operational reliability – and this job has already taken him high up on wind turbines, on the railways, into the Paris sewers and to the bottom of the sea.

Wear-resistant, electrically or thermally insulating, corrosion-resistant - the demands on component surfaces are very high in many industrial processes and require extreme precision. Atmospheric plasma spraying (APS) is a particularly cost-effective form of thermal spraying which meets the high demands required in industry. The technology has been refined at IKTS for almost thirty years and qualified for various ceramic coatings. Now technologies and know-how are being transferred to commercialization.

Hardmetals will celebrate their 100th anniversary next year and have now been largely optimized. Nevertheless, there are current challenges that lead to novel developments and competitive advantages through higher wear resistance and lower costs, as well as to the efficient use of resources.

How do nanoparticle surfaces react with proteins in blood? How must the surface of the foundation structures of offshore wind turbines be designed to prevent biofilm from growing on them? What properties should the surface of an implant have to grow in well? How to produce customized suspensions for ceramic manufacturing. These are questions that the "Powder and Suspension Characterization" research group at the Fraunhofer Institute for Ceramic Technologies and Systems IKTS is addressing. The team provides reliable data for a wide range of topics. The many years of experience in analysis and evaluation are a distinctive feature of the group.

Failures of electronic components or even complete circuit boards can be expensive. Electronics, power electronics and sensor system manufacturers now could use functional ceramic phosphors developed at the Fraunhofer Institute for Ceramic Technologies and Systems IKTS to determine exactly how hot a defective component has become or where the hotspot was on a printed circuit board. This gives manufacturers advantages in the event of complaints and can contribute significantly to quality improvement and product quality assurance.

Using biomass technologies and nutrient recycling, IKTS researchers are working with partners to develop environmentally friendly and high-yield peat alternatives for edible mushroom cultivation. The focus is on the efficient use of regional renewable raw materials and biogenic residues.

In Germany, almost 70 percent of the energy used in industry is spent on thermal processes. Especially with regard to energy efficiency, CO2 reduction and resource conservation, complex questions must be answered. This almost always involves interactions – for example between temperature, time and gas atmosphere – and what influence these have on product properties and manufacturing processes. The “Thermal Analysis and Thermophysics” working group at Fraunhofer IKTS has been investigating thermal processes for 30 years. Since then, a lot has also happened in the laboratories: The simple measuring instruments with analog data output for thermoanalytical and thermophysical parameters have been replaced by modern, digital equipment. In the course of digitization, data is increasingly being coupled and made usable for modeling thermal processes and component properties.

A digital twin is the virtual replica of an object, its mirror image so to speak. It consists of data and models and can describe or predict the behavior of the object. Virtual tests, simulations and risk analyses can be used to identify problems at an early stage and reduce maintenance costs. The data on which the Digital Twin works must be determined in advance. Fraunhofer IKTS is working on such sensors, i.e. sensing devices that measure and provide the required data.

To reduce the burden of environmentally harmful heavy metals and biocides on the oceans, IKTS researchers in Rostock and Dresden are currently developing new types of ceramic coatings for ships and offshore platforms. These particularly durable and sustainable protective layers are designed to keep organisms from covering the maritime structures as gently as possible. Because things are often stormy in this research.

Whether it is precious metal ink for a drug test kit, ceramic screen-printing paste for high-tech sensors or glass solder paste for the airtight joining of ceramic fuel cells – Dr. Sindy Mosch and her team develop the right functional layer for every application. “A versatile and exciting job”, says the materials scientist.

Mobile communication technology is less than 25 years old and has already taken several decisive steps in its development. But for applications such as autonomous driving, much higher data rates are needed. The global goal is to increase the data rate from 20 gigabits per second at a latency of 1 millisecond (5G) to a full 1 terabit per second at a latency of just 0.1 millisecond (6G) by 2030. Ceramic substrate materials and adapted thick-film pastes and inks can make a significant contribution here.

Photomultipliers are, for example, used in food production or medical laboratories to detect the tiniest impurities in brewer's yeast or tiny genetic fragments in blood samples. These are ultra-precise detectors that can capture and reliably measure light effects of very low intensity. In order for these optoelectronic sensors to be used much more widely in the future, the measurement technology company ProxiVision and engineers from the Fraunhofer Institute for Ceramic Technologies and Systems IKTS have jointly developed additively manufactured photomultipliers. This will allow the sensors to be adapted quickly and flexibly to ever new application scenarios.

High economic and environmental benefits arise when zeolite membranes are used to dewater organic material streams. Researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Ceramic Technologies and Systems IKTS have tested and validated this in pilot trials for indirect natural gas drying and alcohol recirculation. Many plant operators can now benefit from this, whether from the natural gas, pharmaceutical, chemical or food industries.

Piezo system solutions are suitable for a variety of sensory applications in the field of medical technology, ultrasonic generation or even in non-destructive material testing. The manufacturing process is complex and can lead to destruction of the component in case of unsuitable component design or errors in the poling process. For this reason, Fraunhofer IKTS specializes in various prototyping processes: The advantage: time and resources are reduced to a minimum by computer-aided methods, while at the same time optimizing the product properties.

Almost everyone has one: individually printed coffee cups. In the graphics sector, screen printing on round surfaces is firmly established, but in the electronics sector, it has so far only been a niche application. However, tubular screen printing and other new printing technologies, such as dispense jetting, promise significant increases in efficiency. Using optimally coordinated printing processes, thick-film pastes and ceramic substrates, researchers at Fraunhofer IKTS are printing highly efficient miniaturized heaters and sensors onto tubes and 3D-printed components, thus enabling completely new product possibilities for a wide range of applications. In doing so, IKTS is open to companies that want to use these technologies to significantly expand the functionality of their own products.

They are used to operate heat pumps and jackhammers, fill car tires with air, clean surfaces, or for saliva suction in dentistry – the areas of application for compressors are manifold. A compressor compresses gas using mechanical force, thus increasing the pressure. The resulting energy is released when the pressure is discharged and can be used to drive tools and machines. This makes compressors an indispensable part of industrial production.

Pink light shines in the technical center of Fraunhofer IKTS in Dresden. Where otherwise plants for water filtration, fuel cells or 3D printing machines are located, small plants have recently started to grow on several floors. "With our vertical farming test stand, we are testing how we can use ceramic technologies to make plant cultivation – especially in controlled cultivation systems such as greenhouses – more sustainable and resource-efficient", explains Nico Domurath, plant cultivation expert at Fraunhofer IKTS. "We want to think holistically about the three major issues of food, water and energy and leverage synergies, close loops and make optimal use of residual materials by intelligently coupling processes", Domurath continues. Why is this important?

Used correctly, modern membrane technologies can treat polluted industrial wastewater better than classical treatment technologies alone can. Our Membrane Technology Application Center in Schmalkalden operates at the interface between science and industry. Fraunhofer IKTS operates more than 20 laboratory and pilot plants on an area of around 370 m², which have been specially designed for specific application scenarios. Here, new membrane prototypes are characterized, effective cleaning strategies are developed, and feasibility studies and field tests are carried out for industrial customers and research partners.

With the right purification and treatment technologies, wastewater can be a valuable resource: whether for thermal energy, strategic raw materials or treated as valuable drinking or industrial water. Our application centers for electrochemical water treatment show how this can work. Spread over five locations, Fraunhofer IKTS develops, analyzes and tests new ways to acidic water and closed material cycles.