Press releases

The technical hurdles to recycling clothing made of cotton have been too high in the past, but now a team of researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Polymer Research IAP and a Swedish company have cleared that obstacle. They are the first to produce a viscose filament yarn made of recycled cotton. This fiber can even serve to mass-manufacture textiles.

Roll-to-roll (R2R) processes, in which, for example, films, textiles, flat membranes, metal foils or even ultra-thin glass are functionalized, play an important role in numerous industrial processes. In the R2RNet network, founded on June 10, 2020, 21 European partners from industry, research organizations and universities are pooling their expertise in the continuous functionalization of surfaces in the roll-to-roll process.

FlexFunction2Sustain – Open Innovation Test Bed launched on 1st April to boost innovations for sustainable plastic and paper products to reach the market faster.

In many areas of life, petroleum-based plastics are being replaced with biobased and biodegradable plastics. This also applies to microcapsules, which are used, for example, to encapsulate fragrances in detergents or cosmetics. Although the biobased plastics are produced from renewable raw materials and supposed to be biodegradable per se, they often have to be chemically modified in order to improve materials’ durability, for example. But to what extent are these modified biobased microcapsules still biodegradable? A team of researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Polymer Research IAP is focusing on this question.

In the future, novel polymers should make it possible to individually manufacture artificial elastic tissue replacements for pericardium, heart valves or blood vessels. In the PolyKARD project, biomimetic polymers are being developed that can imitate the mechanical properties of pericardial tissue. Using 3D printing and electrospinning, these polymers will be used to produce tailor-made implants. In addition, a 3D printer that can produce class III medical products is to be developed for the first time. The PolyKARD partners - AdjuCor GmbH, the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Polymer Research IAP, the NMI Natural and Medical Sciences Institute, Young Optics Europe GmbH and pro3dure medical GmbH - plan to advance the production of the implants until the first clinical studies, probably in 2022.

Acute respiratory distress syndrome requires immediate action. In an emergency situation like this, patients are often ventilated using a heart-lung machine. This involves circulating the blood outside the body, adding oxygen and removing carbon dioxide via membranes. A team of researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Polymer Research IAP has developed a new kind of membrane structure that allows faster gas exchange in order to make the blood oxygenation easier on patients.

The Korea Electronics Technology Institute KETI and the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Polymer Research IAP in Potsdam will work even closer together in the field of polymer research. On December 10, 2019, the Korean Minister of Commerce, Industry and Energy, Sung Yun-mo, and the KETI President, Dr. Yongsam Kim, visited the Fraunhofer IAP to seal the expansion of the collaboration with a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU).

Carbon fibers are made from fibrous polymer precursors. Petroleum-based polyacrylonitrile (PAN) is the precursor used for 95 percent of the carbon fibers on the world market. Precursors made from renewable raw materials are currently being developed at the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Polymer Research IAP in Potsdam. A new oven, which generates temperatures of up to 2900 °C, now makes it possible to produce bio-based carbon fibers whose properties partially achieve those of conventional PAN-based carbon fibers. The Fraunhofer IAP will be presenting various innovative precursor materials at the K Trade Fair in Düsseldorf from October 16 to 23, 2019.

A new 3D printing process, which should be clearly superior to the current processes in terms of print quality and speed as well as material homogeneity, is being developed in the research project "Belt deposited, double UV-cured materials for 3D engineering - overcoming the property limits of today's Rapid Manufacturing, BUERMa". Under the leadership of the Polymer Materials and Composites PYCO research division of the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Polymer Research IAP, Freie Universität Berlin and Technische Hochschule Wildau are two Berlin-based companies working on the key technology of additive manufacturing (AM).

The global release of plastics into the environment must be stopped. The Fraunhofer Cluster of Excellence “Circular Plastics Economy” concerns itself with how plastic must be designed so that it can be recycled, degraded quickly and without residues, or, at best, not be released into the environment. At K 2019, the five Fraunhofer Institutes involved are using the example of plastics to present the research approach that should convert energy flows and mate-rial streams in a recycling chain into a circular form of economy. Hall 7, Stand SC1.