Press releases

Researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Polymer Research IAP are working with Israeli and German partners to develop long-wearing contact lenses that can release medicine. The active ingredient is encapsulated in liposomes and bound to the inside of the contact lenses. This enables it to remain in the eye for longer. Sugars are added to make the contact lens particularly comfortable to wear.

ESJET printing is a new printing technology for large-scale, solution-processed displays of the future. It enables higher resolution and drop on demand printing. The Potsdam Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Polymer Research IAP, together with its project partners imec and TNO/Holst Centre, has developed this printing technology for solution-processed displays of the future.

Natural rubber from rubber trees is a raw material with a limited supply. Synthetically produced rubber, on the other hand, has not yet been able to match the abrasion behavior of the natural product, rendering it unsuitable for truck tires. But now, for the first time, a new type of synthetic rubber has been developed that achieves 30 to 50 percent less abrasion than natural rubber.

Light emitting diodes (LEDs) provide significant energy savings over conventional light sources. In terms of light quality, however, conventional lighting solutions are still superior to LEDs as the latter are unable to reproduce the entire color spectrum. Most importantly, LEDs lack an efficient red phosphor to produce warmer white light. Four partners have teamed up as part of the EuroLED project to develop a nanoscale phosphor system for white LEDs based on a fundamentally new concept. By generating an energy-efficient warm white light, they hope to increase the public’s acceptance of energy-saving LEDs.

At ICE 2019, the Fraunhofer Institutes for Applied Polymer Research IAP, for Interfacial Engineering and Biotechnology IGB and for Organic Electronics, Electron Beam and Plasma Technology FEP will present innovative technologies for sustainable food packaging. They each have extensive expertise in processing, process development and control, the development of special polymer films and the deposition of ultra-thin layers for the packaging industry.

Additive Manufacturing (AM) has many advantages: custom manufacturing, flexible production and easy customization, for example. Yet many products have a high surface roughness and porosity. The post processing of the thus fabricated parts is time consuming and often a significant cost factor for manufacturers. Technical coatings open up new possibilities for the AM market, especially in industrial production. In a joint project, researchers from the Belgian NPO Sirris and the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Polymer Research IAP have investigated technical coatings for additive manufacturing (TCAM) with promising results.

When sewage sludge is used as an agricultural fertilizer, the polyacrylamide copolymers (PAMs) that are used as flocculants are released into the environment. According to the Fertilizer Ordinance, these cannot remain in the soil. Fraunhofer researchers have developed a method to test under realistic conditions whether PAMs degrade in the environment and how quickly this happens. The study has found that the degree of degradation complies with the requirements of the Fertilizer Ordinance. The new method can also be used in other areas to investigate the persistence and degradation of polymers and microplastics in the environment.

On September 1, Dr. Christian Dreyer assumed the professorship for Fiber Composite Material Technologies in the department of Engineering and Natural Sciences at the Technical University of Applied Sciences Wildau. Dreyer is also the acting director of the research division Polymer Materials and Composites (PYCO) at the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Polymer Research IAP at its Teltow and Wildau sites. The professorship focuses on the efficient production of light-weight building materials, e.g. for applications in the aerospace industry, the automotive industry and for wind turbines.

Professor Horst Weller was presented with the 2018 ECIS-Solvay Prize at this year's conference of the "European Colloid and Interface Society" (ECIS) held from September 2 to 7 in Ljubljana, Slovenia. Since 2001, the prize has been awarded to European scientists who have been long-standing pioneers in the field of colloids and interfaces.

For years, a French company sold breast implants made of cheap industrial silicone components. Headline news when it broke in 2010, this scandal is still keeping the courts busy today. Now, a research team at the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Polymer Research IAP has come up with a method to prevent this sort of fraud. It gives manufacturers the opportunity to counterfeit-proof implants – by tagging them with encapsulated tomato DNA.