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In 2025, the international SuSteelAG consortium - led by Federal Institute for Materials Research and Testing (BAM) - launched its mission to decarbonize steel production using hydrogen, including when working with lower grade ores. Now, the first industrial scale pilot test has been successfully completed in Namibia: In an electrically powered hydrogen rotary kiln, 80 tonnes of Australian iron ore were converted climate neutrally into direct reduced iron (DRI). With this, SuSteelAG is paving the way for a sustainable value chain linking Australia, Namibia, and Germany -from iron production and refinement to green steel.

The industrial transformation toward climate-friendly processes is one of the central challenges of our time. Hydrogen plays a key role in this transition – especially in energy-intensive industries where conventional energy sources have so far been difficult to replace. At the Salzgitter site, concrete solutions are being developed, tested, and transferred into practice for this purpose. The Wasserstoff Campus Salzgitter brings together expertise from research, industry, and education to advance innovative technologies along the entire hydrogen value chain.

The transfer of the COAD® process, developed at the Fraunhofer Institute for Surface Engineering and Thin Films IST, into industrial applications has been recognized with its inclusion in the final selection for the 2026 IHK Technology Transfer Award. For 40 years, the Braunschweig Chamber of Industry and Commerce has been honoring projects that successfully translate research results into industrial solutions, thereby strengthening the region’s innovation capabilities.

How can relevant data from batteries be digitally recorded, linked, and made usable for informed decisions along the entire value chain? In practice, data on battery composition, environmental impacts, and optimal recycling pathways are often incomplete or inconsistent. This is where the new publicly funded research project “DiVaBatt – Digital Value Chain Resource Planning” for circular battery cell production, which started on February 1, 2026, comes in. The aim of the joint project is to create transparency in the battery value chain through digital and AI-supported solutions, thereby enabling a sustainable, economical, and regulation-compliant battery circular economy. The project started with collaborative kick-off meeting of all partners on February 3 and 4, 2026, in Hamburg.

When investors, start-ups and researchers come together, environments are created in which scientific findings can be applied in practice and achieve commercial success. Such a setting was provided by the Business Angel Matching Evening, which was organized by the BANSON e. V. initiative in collaboration with the Competence Network Industrial Plasma Surface Technology e.V. INPLAS and took place at the Fraunhofer Institute for Surface Engineering and Thin Films IST on 10 February 2026. In addition to five selected start-ups, two Fraunhofer IST spin-offs also presented themselves, thereby taking the opportunity to showcase their technologies and development prospects.

How can coating and etching processes be made more efficient, robust, and data-driven? This question was the focus of the industry workshop “Plasma Process Simulation Tools for Industrial Coating and Etching Systems – Latest Developments and Future Trends,” which the Fraunhofer Institute for Surface Engineering and Thin Films IST organized on January 28 and 29 in collaboration with boltzplatz and PlasmaSolve.

For many people in the remote regions of Namibia, the journey to the nearest clinic or doctor presents an obstacle that is almost impossible to overcome. The indigenous population in particular, including the San community, suffers from a lack of medical care. High rates of tuberculosis and HIV, and a lack of hygiene infrastructure, combined with long distances mean that preventive and therapeutic care is difficult to provide. Now, however, a technological innovation is offering hope: the self-sufficient PreCare platform, mounted on a standard pick-up truck, is designed to make primary healthcare available in even the most remote, hard-to-reach areas.

On Thursday, 27 November, a delegation from the German National Hydrogen Council visited the Wasserstoff Campus Salzgitter. The National Hydrogen Council, which is comprised of 23 high-ranking experts from business, science and civil society, was appointed by the German government in June 2020 and acts as an independent, non-partisan advisory body. The visit provided an opportunity to present the activities, expertise and innovative strength of the Campus at a national level.

Climate change, increasingly frequent extreme-weather events and the growing demand for high-quality food are creating major challenges for agriculture worldwide. In order to secure yields while ensuring the efficient utilization of resources such as water, fertilizer and energy, farmers require ever more precise information regarding the condition of plants and soils. Hyperspectral remote sensing can provide crucial support here; until now, however, it has only been possible with large, complex and cost-intensive systems. This is precisely where the ESA-funded RAINBOW project comes into play. In collaboration with Airbus Defence & Space, VISTA Geowissenschaftliche Fernerkundung GmbH and the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Optics and Precision Engineering IOF, the Fraunhofer Institute for Surface Engineering and Thin Films IST has developed a new generation of compact hyperspectral sensors for small satellites.

Compile an emissions balance sheet, evaluate climate-protection measures and implement the most efficient of these first: Researchers from three Fraunhofer institutes have developed a method with which companies from all sectors are able, based on scenarios, to evaluate their climate-protection measures in accordance with ecological and economic criteria.

In times of increasingly stringent hygiene and food-safety requirements, the need for effective but simultaneously environmentally-friendly disinfection methods is growing. One possible alternative to conventional disinfectants is provided by plasma-activated water. The Fraunhofer Institute for Surface Engineering and Thin Films IST, in collaboration with the Fraunhofer Institute for Electron Beam and Plasma Technology FEP, has investigated the effectiveness and durability of this innovative solution, and has summarized the results in a study.

In high-precision internal-gear hubs, all the components must function reliably within an extremely confined space - even in cases where the installation space does not allow the insertion of conventional shaft seals. In such cases, liquid sealants are utilized; their adhesion to metallic surfaces, however, often poses a challenge. The collaborative work of the Fraunhofer Institute for Surface Engineering and Thin Films IST, Rohloff AG, and the Danish plasma and corona equipment manufacturer Tantec A/S has now resulted in an innovative solution that specifically improves the adhesion of these sealants.

Premiere at the Joint Campus Wolfsburg: From 8 to 12 September, the first Summer School on the “Automotive Circular Economy” will take place. Students from various disciplines will be brought together by Technical University of Braunschweig, the Open Hybrid LabFactory, Ostfalia University of Applied Sciences and Fraunhofer CCEM to develop ideas for sustainable automotive production.

A state-of-the-art research platform for hydrogen and fuel cell technologies is being built at the Lower Saxony Research Centre for Vehicle Technology (NFF) at Technische Universität Braunschweig. The aim is to comprehensively expand a gaseous and liquid hydrogen infrastructure to support both basic and application-oriented research in the field of energy storage and propulsion. On 21 August, Science Minister Falko Mohrs officially presented funding approvals totalling around 4.3 million euros to TU Braunschweig and the Fraunhofer Institute for Surface Engineering and Thin Films IST, of which just under 4 million euros will go to TU Braunschweig and over 300,000 euros to the Fraunhofer IST.

Whether in medical technology, electronics, or automotive manufacturing, the demands on functional coatings are constantly increasing. In addition to an efficient performance, they must also be highly reliable and wear- and corrosion-resistant under extreme conditions. High-power impulse magnetron sputtering (HIPIMS) is a key technology for solving these challenges. Through the creation of highly ionized plasmas, coatings can be produced which are particularly dense, adherent, and precisely controllable. The 15th International Conference on Fundamentals and Industrial Applications of HIPIMS, which took place in Braunschweig at the end of June, focused on how this technology is developing and where it can be applied in the future.

With the utmost precision, the Fraunhofer Institute for Surface Engineering and Thin Films IST has won this year’s Manufacturing Challenge at the Optical Interference Coatings Conference (OIC2025) in the USA. In this international competition, a spectroscopically precisely defined optical filter had to be manufactured as accurately as possible – a task that demands both creativity and the highest precision in design, production, and measurement technology. The first place among the worldwide entries is impressive proof of the institute’s outstanding expertise in the field of optical coatings.

High-performance, environmentally stable infrared optics are essential for modern applications in analytics, security and aerospace. At LASER World of Photonics 2025, the Fraunhofer Institute for Surface Engineering and Thin Films IST will be presenting newly developed coating solutions that offer maximum precision and long-term stability – even under extreme conditions.

Around the world, there is a lack of comprehensive medical care for people living in remote areas. Researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Surface Engineering and Thin Films IST and the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE have devised a solution for this in the PreCare project: a flexible, modular health platform that can be installed on the bed of a pickup truck. It is already in use in South Africa and Namibia. The team was presented with the Innovations for a Better Future award from the Fraunhofer-Zukunftsstiftung (Fraunhofer Future Foundation) for this development.

For a long time, hyperspectral imaging was considered complex and space-consuming. New technologies are, however, now paving the way for compact and efficient solutions. Interference filters that can be integrated directly into CMOS image sensors enable customized spectral analyses in the smallest of spaces. They thereby open up new application possibilities in environmental monitoring, agriculture and industrial quality assurance. The Fraunhofer Institute for Surface Engineering and Thin Films IST will be providing an insight into this key optical-sensor technology on the Fraunhofer joint stand at this year’s LASER World of Photonics in Munich.

For the resource-conserving and, at the same time, economical production of plastic components, the utilization of intelligent, automated processes is crucial. At automatica 2025, the Fraunhofer Institute for Surface Engineering and Thin Films IST will be showcasing an innovative sensor system that records process data such as temperature and pressure in real time - directly in the tool. The wear-resistant thin-film sensors and the adoption of machine learning methods enable precise monitoring, automated quality assurance and sustainable optimization of the injection-molding process.