Press releases 2021

A new generation of particle accelerators aims at taking cancer therapy, drug detection and material analysis to a higher level: These linear accelerators are so compact that they are becoming affordable even for smaller hospitals, airports and laboratories. To support this development, the Fraunhofer Institute for Material and Beam Technology IWS, together with the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Switzerland, Latvia's Riga Technology University (RTU) and Politecnico di Milano (PoliMi), is focusing on laser-based 3D printing: As part of the I.FAST project, aimed at enhancing innovation in accelerator and co-funded by the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 program, researchers succeeded for the very first time worldwide to additively manufacture essential quadrupole components for linear accelerators from pure copper.

Nearly frictionless motors and gearboxes shall ensure electric bicycles with greater range on a single battery charge as well as industrial machines with significantly lower power consumption in form of friction and waste heat. The Fraunhofer Institute for Material and Beam Technology IWS Dresden is collaborating with industry and research partners in the joint projects “Prometheus” and “Chephren”. The researchers want to significantly improve the energy and eco balance of cars and other engines or machines through improved superhard carbon coatings.

Metal processing with lasers and plasma releases many different pollutants into the ambient air. The Fraunhofer Institute for Material and Beam Technology IWS, together with partners, has developed a filter system that efficiently removes these substances from the air. The filter can be adapted to the various materials and substances released in each case. In the future, the technology will be used in other applications, such as additive manufacturing.

Conventional processes for manufacturing battery electrodes involve mostly toxic solvents and require a lot of space and energy. This is not the case with DRYtraec® – a new dry-coating process developed by the Fraunhofer Institute for Material and Beam Technology IWS. The technology is environmentally friendly and cost effective and can be used on a large scale, giving it the potential to revolutionize the manufacturing of battery electrodes.

The research project “SoLiS – Development of Lithium-Sulfur Solid State Batteries in Multilayer Pouch Cells”, which started in July 2021, aims to transfer a promising battery concept from basic research into an industrial application. Thanks to high storage capacities and low material costs of sulfur, this cell technology potentially enables the construction of very lightweight and cost-effective batteries. Under the leadership of the Fraunhofer Institute for Material and Beam Technology IWS in Dresden, the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) is funding five partners from science and industry with a total of nearly 1.8 million euro. The research results could, for example, enable applications in electric aviation.

Laser experts from Saxony and Israel are jointly testing a novel laser for industrial use at the Fraunhofer Institute for Material and Beam Technology IWS in Dresden. The system is based on the “Coherent Beam Combining” (CBC) method, which is still new for high-power lasers. The 13-kilowatt laser can generate different energy distribution patterns particularly quickly during operation and thus process even demanding high-tech materials very precisely and quickly. The Fraunhofer researchers intend to make the innovative laser technology from Israel available to companies worldwide in the near future. Within a European network project, Fraunhofer IWS is already investigating the beam shaping, which is accelerated by a thousand times, for the first time for additive manufacturing together with the laser manufacturer Civan Lasers and A. Kotliar Laser Welding Solutions.

In a collaborative effort to tackle the enormous challenge of building a common National Research Data Infrastructure NFDI, all across Germany entire research areas are working together in subject-specific consortia. As one of ten consortia in the second round, “NFDI-MatWerk” is going to receive five years of funding for Materials Science and Engineering. The consortium consists of renowned research organizations, including 10 applicants and 15 associated partners and is represented by the speaker Prof. Dr. Chris Eberl from the Fraunhofer Institute for Mechanics of Materials IWM. It focuses on the infrastructure development for a shared materials data space.

It's all about high-tech dentures, prostheses that autonomously detect inflammatory reactions in the body, or individually adapted seats for wheelchairs. A German-Polish Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft High-Performance Center is researching new technologies for the use of 3D printing processes, known as additive manufacturing technology, in medical technology. For Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft, it is one of two international High-Performance Centers launched in March that are explicitly dedicated to cross-organizational cooperation. The Fraunhofer Institute for Material and Beam Technology IWS in Dresden and the Fraunhofer Institute for Machine Tools and Forming Technology IWU in Chemnitz are involved in the ”Additive Technologies for Medicine and Health” (ATeM) Center on the German side. They cooperate with the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering and the Center for Advanced Manufacturing Technologies (CAMT) at Wroclaw University of Science and Technology. The German Federal Ministry of Education and Research is providing financial support for the project.

Five years after the launch of the Fraunhofer Application Center for Optical Metrology and Surface Technologies AZOM at Westsächsische Hochschule Zwickau University of Applied Sciences (WHZ), the research institution has been positively evaluated by external reviewers. The application center will thus continue to strengthen and expand Zwickau as a location for research and higher education.

A researcher team from industry and the Fraunhofer Institute for Material and Beam Technology IWS is spinning off a high-tech company called “Fusion Bionic”. The company aims to bring lotus effects and other functional microstructures from nature to technical surfaces such as air wings and implants using globally cutting-edge solutions for laser interference technology. The team received support from Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft’s AHEAD project, which specializes in technology transfer.