Press releases 2020

The wastewater treatment plant is turned into a vegetable farm, bio-based substances recovered from waste are being utilized to prevent oxidative spoilage in food packaging or provide environmentally-friendly and safe water-repellent coatings on functional textiles. In the EVOBIO project coordinated by Fraunhofer IGB, 19 Fraunhofer Institutes are working on solutions for a sustainable economy by developing new concepts that utilize material flows in bioeconomy process cycles to produce optimized materials for innovative products.

Fraunhofer consortium to jointly develop therapies and platform technologies against COVID-19 and other infectious diseases.

Innovative insulating materials made of shape memory polymers are beeing developed and tested by the Fraunhofer Institutes for Applied Polymer Research IAP, for Chemical Technology ICT and for Building Physics IBP within the Fraunhofer Cluster of Excellence Programmable Materials CPM. The high-tech foams are to be used as functional materials, for example in the field of construction.

The development of efficient and gentle methods for the diagnosis of breast cancer based on blood is the focus of the new "Nanocellular Interactions" working group at the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Polymer Research IAP. The group has been headed by Dr. Neus Feliu Torres at the CAN site in Hamburg since July 1, 2020. She is one of five "high potentials" that Fraunhofer was able to attract in 2019 with its "Attract" program. Using the "Liquid Biopsy" process, which she intends to develop in the LIBIMEDOTS project, it should be possible to monitor the status and course of breast cancer patients' disease in real time.

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.