Press releases | News

On Wednesday, June 29, 2022, the InSignA High-Performance center was officially opened at the Fraunhofer Institute for Digital Media Technology IDMT in Ilmenau. Due to Corona, the official opening could only take place one year after the actual project start. Five Thuringian Fraunhofer Institutes, the TU Ilmenau and the IMMS Institut für Mikroelektronik- und Mechatronik-Systeme gemeinnützige GmbH have already been working together in the performance center since March 2021. Together with businesses, the performance center aims to bring solution approaches in the field of sensor technology and signal analysis into application. IKTS with its Battery Innovation and Technology Center BITC in Arnstadt contributes, among other things, to the pre-processing and optimization of data sets.

Shipping is one of the fastest-growing sources of greenhouse gases, and this is leading shipbuilders and operators on a search for environmentally friendly alternative propulsion systems. Researchers at Fraunhofer have joined forces with partners to develop the HyMethShip concept, in which hydrogen is obtained from methanol. This technology does not require large hydrogen tanks to be carried on board, making it much safer. In the future, it may also prove to be an attractive solution for cruise liners.

Sasol and Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin (HZB) will lead a consortium to develop and optimize next-generation catalysts that will play a key role in decarbonizing the aviation sector through sustainable aviation fuels (SAF). Fraunhofer IKTS will contribute know-how in the development and shaping of Fischer-Tropsch catalysts to the project.

The availability of water of suitable quality is a growing challenge worldwide. A number of processes are available for the treatment and processing of industrial and municipal wastewater, which are adapted to the substances contained in the wastewater. The treatment of wastewater containing salts represents a particular challenge, as the separation of salt and water requires a very high technical and energy input. By separating salts from water, they can be put to further use and the discharge of saline wastewater into water bodies can be reduced or even avoided altogether. Using the example of saline leachates from residual waste piles in the potash industry, the “HaSiMem” project will investigate whether the membrane distillation process is advantageous compared to the classic form of evaporation of saline wastewater. The joint project, which is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research, is headed by K-UTEC AG Salt Technologies and will be implemented over the next three years with the partners Fraunhofer Institute for Ceramic Technologies and Systems IKTS, Solarspring GmbH, K+S AG and LMBV mbH.

Prof. Alexander Michaelis, Director of the Fraunhofer Institute for Ceramic Technologies and Systems IKTS, received the prestigious "Acta Materialia Hollomon Award for Materials and Society" and the "Rustum Roy Lecture Award". Both awards recognize his commitment to the materials sciences for the benefit of society.

The separation of substance mixtures is a basic technical and biological operation. Nature uses a variety of membranes for substance separation, such as vessel walls, cell walls or membrane proteins. In industrial and technical applications, however, conventional separation processes still dominate: distillation/rectification, extraction, crystallization or adsorption/absorption. Compared to these processes, membrane separation requires only a fraction of the energy. With the material properties adapted to the separation task in each case, membranes are an ideal solution for many applications. It is worth investing in membrane development. This is what DGMT Deutsche Gesellschaft für Membrantechnik e.V., VDI Verein Deutscher Ingenieure e.V. and the ProcessNet specialist group Membrane Technology of DECHEMA Gesellschaft für Chemische Technik und Biotechnologie e.V., advocate in their current position paper. The results of the investigations of the German Ceramic Society (DKG) and the German Society for Materials Science (DGM) have also been included here.

On March 28th, 2022, Prof. Dr. Henning Heuer, head of department Systems for Testing and Analysis at Fraunhofer IKTS, signed a Memorandum of Understanding in Dresden. The contractual partner is Samyong Inspection Engineering from Seoul, Korea. The agreement is aimed at close R&D collaboration to increase safety of nuclear fuel rods using non-destructive testing (NDT).

Glass objects which glow in the dark, glass containers that heat up and cool down, or glass control knobs and switches that eliminate viruses and bacteria by themselves – all this seems to completely contradict our everyday experience of what glass can do. And yet, it is now within reach. To create such functionalized and precision-molded glasses, research teams at Fraunhofer IKTS in Dresden have transferred their experience with ceramic processes to glass manufacturing.

The Fraunhofer Institute for Ceramic Technologies and Systems IKTS recently became a partner in the TWI Innovation Network (TWIIN), a European program to promote research and technology.

Our colleague Johanna Sonnenberg talks about her personal and professional involvement in the fight against microplastics, how an underwater vehicle is supposed to help, and what everyone can do to prevent pollution of the sea and from beaches.

On January 5th, 2022, Dr. Roland Weidl, head of the Battery Innovation and Technology Center BITC, signed a Memorandum of Understanding on behalf of IKTS Institute Director Prof. Alexander Michaelis. The contractual partners are Hyundai Heavy Industries (HHI) and Korea Shipbuilding and Offshore Engineering (KSOE). In the MoU, the cooperating parties agree on close R&D collaboration in the fields of hydrogen, fuel cells (especially SOFC), e-fuels and digitalization.

The joint project LEGIOPLAS, funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), is developing a mobile measurement system for on-site analysis of Legionella contamination in drinking water.

Germany must become climate-neutral by 2045 – that is the target set by the German government's Climate Protection Act. This ambitious goal requires the transformation of energy generation to 100% renewable energy from wind, solar, hydropower and biomass. This energy generation, which will be more and more volatile in the future, requires stabilizing measures to ensure a secure energy supply. Electricity storage in batteries can enable this transformation and will become increasingly important. In the project “KeNaB-ART” (ceramic-based sodium battery with beta-aluminate for applications above room temperature), the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research is supporting the development of new ceramic sodium batteries for the storage of renewable energy in the funding initiative “Battery 2020 Transfer”.

Congratulations to Nadja Steinke on the Silicon Science Award 2021! With her dissertation entitled “Plasmonic sensor for the on-site detection of diclofenac molecules” she convinced the jury. The award ceremony takes place on December 8, 2021 during the 15th Dresden Sensor Symposium.

A defective heart valve is the second most common form of heart disease. Most cases involve a narrowed aortic valve, but often the mitral valve can also be affected. Prostheses significantly increase the life expectancy of those with the disease. While bioprosthetic heart valves have some advantages over me-chanical ones, they can become calcified relatively quickly, limiting the length of their useful life. A team of researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Ceramic Technologies and Systems IKTS is attempting to prevent such calcification with a new chemical pretreatment of the bioprostheses.

The global demand for water is increasing due to ever more intensive water use. At the same time, the usable water supply is becoming progressively smaller. To ensure that water does not slow down key industries, the energy transition and food security, several research groups at the Fraunhofer Institute for Ceramic Technologies and Systems IKTS are working on projects that at-tempt to solve current problems in the water, agriculture, and energy sectors in a holistic approach. One goal here is to use wastewater as a resource. This in-cludes, for example, new recycling methods for municipal and mining wastewater, which can provide important raw materials for sustainable agricul-ture as well as for the growing demand for hydrogen.

The automotive industry is undergoing an unprecedented transformation process: the emergence of electromobility in conjunction with advancing digitalization and the introduction of Industry 4.0 technologies are changing the sector significantly. As the industry changes, so do the demands on the professions that are deployed here. In the project “BeaT - Renewing Vocational Training for the Automotive Transformation”, funded by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy, Fraunhofer IKTS and its partners are investigating which new qualification requirements the change in the automotive sector brings with it and how these requirements can be served in modern education and training programs. In collaboration with IKTS, the Institute of Sociology and the Service Center Research and Transfer of the Friedrich Schiller University Jena as well as the network automotive thüringen e.V. are partners.

The “Pilot Center for Powder Synthesis and Extrusion” was officially inaugurated after a two-year construction period and adds approximately 600 m² of usable space to the facilities of the Fraunhofer Institute for Ceramic Technologies and Systems IKTS in Hermsdorf. Research topics in the new building are stationary energy storage and ceramic membranes for material separation. The construction was funded by the federal government and the Free State of Thuringia with 6.4 million euros.

High-performance ceramics provide key components for liquid filtration, sensors or solid electrolyte high-temperature energy storage systems – but only if they are defect-free. To detect rejects at an early stage, researchers at Fraunhofer IKTS have developed a fast, non-destructive and in-line inspection method based on laser speckle photometry.

With modern non-destructive test methods, scientist of Fraunhofer IKTS and the research group Smart Ocean Technologies (SOT) analyze the battery state of underwater robots, so-called Unmanned Underwater Vehicles (UUV). Such underwater vehicles are being used more and more frequently and for longer periods of time: they inspect drilling platforms, maintain underwater gas pipelines, search for cracks in offshore wind turbines, collect marine data or map the fauna and flora on the seabed. Better battery management should now reduce deployment costs and ensure that these underwater robots can dive for longer.

In the "MAG4INK" research project, researchers from Fraunhofer IKTS, Fraunhofer FEP and the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) aim to demonstrate that flexible magnetic field sensors can be printed cost-effectively at industrially relevant scales. The German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) is funding the project with a total of 1.5 million euros for three years.

The SONIQ RAIL EXPLORER (SRE), a development of Vossloh Rail Services GmbH, Fraunhofer IKTS and WOLFRAM designers and engineers, was awarded 2nd place in the SET4FUTURE Innovation Award 2021 of Saxony's Rail.S rail technology cluster.

As the first event of the Tridelta Campus Sensor Space, the Fraunhofer IKTS Sensor Space Summer School welcomed participants at the Hermsdorf Vocational School from August 6 to 8, 2021. “Learn programming!” – that was the request of all students, and it was fulfilled.

The competition for two large-scale research centers in Lusatia in Saxony and in the Central German coalfields is currently underway. The German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) and the Free State of Saxony want to create perspectives for the coal regions. In mid-2022, the players who will be allowed to implement their scientific concept on site will be selected from the national and international applicants.

The use of hydrogen holds great potential for decarbonizing industry and thus makes an important contribution to protecting the climate. Innovative hydrogen technologies are the key to a promising and growing market. The state of Thuringia is therefore supporting the new hydrogen application center at the Erfurter Kreuz research campus “Industrial Hydrogen Technologies Thuringia (WaTTh)” with 6.9 million euros over three years. The state is providing a further 3.4 million euros for the purchase of a building in which Fraunhofer IKTS researchers can develop and test hydrogen technologies.

The German Federal Ministry of Education and Research is funding the “SAPHIR” innovation concept coordinated by TRIDELTA CAMPUS HERMSDORF e.V. with 12.7 million euros. Including the 19 project members' own contribution, the total financial volume amounts to 17.8 million euros. The funding will be used for research and development by the partners to advance the development of materials as well as products and applications in technical ceramics. The funding plays a significant role in the structural development of Hermsdorf and the entire East Thuringian region.

Due to the energy transition, new technological and resource-strategic challenges arise for the German economy and for society as a whole. Many basic materials for electromobility, fuel cells, electrolyzers, power electronics and information technology will play a much more important role in the future. Often, these high-performance materials must be imported from other countries, which is a risk for material cycles in Europe. In addition, strategically important materials are lost to the economic cycles on a large scale every year because current recycling methods are not yet matured. Fraunhofer Technology Center High Performance Materials THM in Freiberg works on innovative solutions for all of these questions. Saxon Minister of Science Sebastian Gemkow gathered information on site about the progress.

Many devices whose availability and reliability are essential are now electronically controlled. It is simply inconceivable what the consequences would be of the failure of a respirator or a vehicle assistance system. In particular, the soldered joints between the microelectronic components are of special importance. Scientists at Fraunhofer IKTS develop material models based on real measurement data for a wide variety of solder alloys in a uniquely wide temperature range. This makes virtual electronics design more accurate, faster and cheaper.

The reliable operation of safety-relevant structures, such as bridges or pipeline networks, requires holistic lifecycle management. Operators must keep an eye on safety aspects as well as on the reliability of the structure and the safeguarding of the investment. The Canadian-German project, which is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research and the National Research Council Canada, is entitled "Digital Twin Platform for Infrastructure Asset Lifecycle Management" (DTPIALM) and aims to improve the lifecycle management of critical infrastructure.

The Corona pandemic has greatly increased worldwide interest in rapid yet reliable virus testing. The Fraunhofer Institute for Ceramic Technologies and Systems IKTS has now developed innovative “μPCR” laboratory modules to significantly accelerate the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) for such tests. Rapid temperature changes are required for the samples, which are made possible by a combination of ceramic 3D printing and applied electronics.