Newsletter of the Fraunhofer IST

The new Fraunhofer Project Center for Energy Storage and Systems ZESS was inaugurated on February 7, 2019 in Braunschweig. It is a joint initiative of the Fraunhofer Institutes IKTS, IFAM, and IST – in close cooperation with the TU Braunschweig. The purpose is to develop existing energy storage systems, both mobile and stationary, to the level of industrial maturity, and to demonstrate new solutions.

On January 28^th, 2019 in South Africa, Prof. Reimund Neugebauer, President of the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft, and Prof. Eugene Cloete, Vice Rector of Stellenbosch University, signed the contract for the implementation of an ICON project between the university and Fraunhofer. The participants are the Fraunhofer Institutes IGB, ISE, IOSB and IST.

Over 100 million people in Southern Africa have no access to clean water – many sources in rural areas are contaminated. In the SafeWaterAfrica project, African and European partners are working closely together to develop a decentralized system solution for water purification that can be operated and maintained autonomously by rural inhabitants. Researchers at the Fraunhofer IST are coordinating the project.

At the Fraunhofer IST, a piezoresistive thin-film system for measuring force is being manufactured which will be deposited directly on the complexly formed kingpins.

Under the catchphrase “Additive mechatronization”, the development of new processes which combine the additive generation of mechanical structures with electrical functionalization is moving to the fore. Cold plasma spraying, developed at the Fraunhofer IST, enables polymer components to be selectively metallized without wet chemistry and without pre-treatment or post-treatment steps.