Compilation of information material for LASER 2025

At the Fraunhofer Institute for Surface Engineering and Thin Films IST we open up the potentials for future-oriented products and the associated competitive and scalable production systems. Our research encompasses plant engineering, entire process chains of process engineering, process technology and manufacturing technology all the way through to the consideration of entire factories. Taking the requirements of sustainability as a starting point, we maintain an overview of the entire product life cycle – from the material, through the process of creating the component and product, and on to recycling.

Based on our technology and competence fields, the technical departments of the Fraunhofer IST create solutions especially for the sectors plant and mechanical engineering, tools, vehicle construction, aerospace, energy, optics, medical and pharmaceutical process engineering, agricultural and food industry, as well as environmental technology. this includes solutions for battery production, the establishment of hydrogen technologies and the production of tribological, sensory and precision optical systems, methods and technologies in the areas of analytics, simulation and digital services as well as the systematic consideration of sustainability requirements and a circular economy using life cycle engineering.

Optical systems and applications for surface technology are an important focus of the Fraunhofer IST. For the widest variety of applications of optical components, thin-film technologies provide an important contribution towards the development of innovative solutions. Across all sectors, optical components are just as necessary for automated production processes as for the application itself. This requires layers – ranging from one single layer to several hundred – which are stable against environmental influences and which must be deposited with an accuracy of only a few atomic layers. At the Fraunhofer IST, we develop such precision optical systems and the associated production processes. 

With the coating platform EOSS® (Enhanced Optical Sputtering System), a production-ready system for high-precision interference filters is available and, in combination with the process monitoring and control software MOCCA+®, complex filters with many hundreds of layers can also be achieved, which we design based on the requirements of our customers. For the optimization of processes and facilities we create customized simulations and virtual coating runs. We link these with optical measurement technology for process control and quality assurance.