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At the INNOspace Masters conference on July 5th, 2022, Dr. Andreas Dietz of the Fraunhofer Institute for Surface Engineering and Thin Films IST was delighted to reach 3rd place in the INNOspace Masters innovation competition. The “Ferrotherm” project, on which Dr. Dietz is working together with researchers from the Fraunhofer ICT, was awarded a prize as part of the DLR Challenge 2021/2022. The aim is to develop carbon-free energy generation through iron combustion and electrochemical recycling that can also be used on the moon.

Living on the Moon? This may perhaps sound somewhat unrealistic today, but the urbanization of the Moon is one of the future topics in space travel. Limited resources on the Moon, the lack of fossil fuels, and extreme conditions such as very high and very low temperatures and a different day/night rhythm necessitate new ideas for energy supply and for the production of the required components and parts. The Fraunhofer Institute for Surface Engineering and Thin Films IST is developing new concepts in order to secure the energy supply by means of lunar resources. At the ILA in Berlin from 22 to 26 June 2022, visitors can obtain an overview of current projects and ideas.

Great success for the Fraunhofer Institute for Surface Engineering and Thin Films IST: In the certification process for the Zukunftgeber award, which is presented by the Employers' Association for the Braunschweig Region (Arbeitgeberverband - AGV), the institute earned top marks and was rewarded with the Zukunftgeber employer seal.

Whether in the production of food and medicines, in horticultural businesses, in hospitals, or in every private household - disinfection and the reduction of pollutants in water and on surfaces play an important role in many areas of application. The addition of chemicals should, however, be avoided as extensively as possible in all these applications. This can be made possible through, for example, treatment with electrochemically produced ozonated water, a process which the Fraunhofer IST has been researching and developing for many years now.

The precise regulation of mold temperatures and flow rates in injection molding is a major prerequisite for the resource-efficient, economical and reliable production of high-quality plastic parts. In order to optimize the design and monitoring of mold temperature control, the real temperatures, pressures and flow rates must be continuously recorded during the injection-molding process. For this purpose, a sensor system is being developed at the Fraunhofer Institute for Surface Engineering and Thin Films IST with which, for the first time, the temperature can be measured directly inside the three-dimensional temperature-control channels.

The measurement of force, pressure, temperature, wear and other variables, directly in main load zones or on tool active surfaces by means of thin-film sensor technology, provides valuable data for the optimization of existing production processes or simulation models. With the wear-resistant thin-film sensors developed at the Fraunhofer Institute for Surface Engineering and Thin Films IST and adapted to the respective application, measurements can also be undertaken in areas which were previously difficult to access. For the first time, the researchers have succeeded in carrying out a spatially resolved temperature measurement in rolling contacts subjected to mixed friction.

Green batteries produced by 3D printers? While this may sound futuristic at first glance, it is nevertheless the objective of the project “Nachhaltige, flexible additive Fertigungstechnologien für Natrium-Ionen-Festkörperbatterien” (Sustainable, flexible additive-manufacturing technologies for solid-state sodium-ion batteries - 3D PrintBatt for short), in which the Fraunhofer Institute for Surface Engineering and Thin Films IST is involved. The company Blackstone Technology GmbH, which is managing the project, plans to launch 3D-printed solid-state sodium-ion batteries on the market as early as the beginning of 2025.

In the presence of the German Federal Minister of Economic Affairs and Climate Action, Robert Habeck, a delegation from the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft and the Ministry of Energy and Infrastructure of the United Arab Emirates (MOEI) signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) in Abu Dhabi.

Automate, standardize, digitalize - buzzwords that are currently important in virtually all fields, including the manufacture of medical products or pharmaceuticals. An important goal thereby is quality assurance with a simultaneous reduction in costs. In their white paper “Scalable manufacture of ATMPs”, researchers from nine different Fraunhofer institutes, including the Fraunhofer IST, use the example of novel and personalized cell and gene therapeutics to discuss which core building blocks are necessary for standardized and automated production.

For the economical and ecologically sustainable processing of plastics, long-lasting and correspond-ingly wear-resistant machine components are required. The Fraunhofer Institute for Surface Engi-neering and Thin Films IST and the Southern-German Plastics Center SKZ are working together on the AiF project “Surface modification for the reduction of wear on highly stressed tool surfaces in extruders for plastics processing (extruder wear)”.