Press | Media

From 5^th - 6^th December 2019, the 18th International Conference on Reactive Sputter Deposition RSD took place in Braunschweig, Germany for the first time. Organized by the Fraunhofer Institute for Surface Engineering and Thin Films IST, the conference and accompanying exhibition provided an excellent platform for the around 100 participants from 22 countries to discuss the latest trends and their implementation in new technologies and innovative products.

Solar cells with the highest level of efficiency provide electricity cost-effectively and thereby consume less space and fewer resources. They also enable the creation of new products, such as electric cars, which can be charged via solar cells. Due to the physical limitations, the efficiency of silicon solar cells can no longer be increased arbitrarily. With tandem solar cells comprised of several light-absorbing layers, however, efficiency levels of more than 35 % are possible, as a result of which they have become the focus of current solar-cell research. In the Fraunhofer lighthouse project “MaNiTU”, six Fraunhofer institutes are developing sustainable, highly efficient and cost-effective tandem solar cells on the basis of new absorber materials.

This year, a total of three Fraunhofer IST apprentices successfully completed their training. Two apprentices were even honored by the Braunschweig Chamber of Industry and Commerce for their particularly good performance in the final examinations.

On 3^rd September, the time had finally come: After eleven years, Project Manager Torsten Hochsattel held in his hands the – for the time being – final antenna component for the Sentinel-1C and D missions to be coated by him and the galvanic team from the Fraunhofer Institute for Surface Engineering and Thin Films IST.

The Fraunhofer Battery Alliance bundles the expertise of the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft in the field of electrochemical energy storage devices. Only recently, the Fraunhofer Institute for Surface Engineering and Thin Films IST, represented by the engineers Sabrina Zellmer and Stefan Blume, has also been a member.

On 5^th July 2019, the Fraunhofer Water Systems Alliance (SysWasser), represented by the Fraunhofer Institute for Surface Engineering and Thin Films IST, and the Sharjah Research Technology and Innovation Park (SRTIP) in the United Arab Emirates signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU). The goal of the future cooperation is the further development of technologies in the field of water management.

On 10^th July, the Hochschule Mannheim - University of Applied Sciences and the Fraunhofer Institute for Surface Engineering and Thin Films IST signed a cooperation agreement on the expansion of joint research activities in the field of tribology and surfaces. The Kompetenzzentrum Tribologie has been working closely with the Braunschweig institute since 2018 within the framework of the newly created DFG (German research foundation) priority program SPP2074 “Fluid-free lubrication systems”.

At this year’s 19^th Fachtagung für Plasmatechnologie (plasma technology conference), which took place from 17^th to 19^th June in Cottbus, Prof. Dr. Claus-Peter Klages was awarded the Rudolf Seeliger Prize for his achievements in the field of plasma research.

Optical functions – e. g. anti-reflective coatings or filters for specific spectral ranges – can be realized by means of interference coating systems. These systems deploy a sequence of high and low-refractive layers (e. g. Ta₂O₅ und SiO₂) whose layer thicknesses are precalculated according to the desired optical function. At the Fraunhofer IST, such coating systems are produced by means of magnetron cathode sputtering; applications are optical components in the field of precision optics.

The “Hacking Engineering” Hackathon is a new format which was initiated by the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft and the VDMA, Europe’s largest industry association for mechanical engineering, and which took place in Berlin from 17th to 19th May 2019. The idea is to bring together companies from the fields of mechanical engineering and systems engineering with startups from research and interested students in order to collaboratively develop innovative future-oriented technologies. The teams of participants had 48 hours in which to solve one of four specified challenges. One of the winning teams chose for its solution the multifunctional thin-film sensor system developed at the Fraunhofer Institute for Surface Engineering and Thin Films IST – and thereby won “Kill the valve”.