News

The Saxon Academy of Sciences in Leipzig has elected Andrés Fabián Lasagni as a full member of the Technical Science Class. With this appointment, the TU Dresden professor joins the list of more than 200 renowned members of various disciplines. During the hybrid public fall session of the Academy on December 11, 2020, Lasagni will be formally admitted to the Academy in the presence of Sebastian Gemkow, Minister of State for Science of the Free State of Saxony.

Optical lithography has been considered a key technology for microchip production for more than 40 years. The new development towards EUV lithography extended the limits of the classi-cal technology by far. The Fraunhofer Institute for Material and Beam Technology IWS contribut-ed to the fact that now the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft, ZEISS and TRUMPF have been awarded the “ Deutscher Zukunftspreis 2020”. The project "EUV Lithography – New Light for the Digital Age" focuses on the manufacturing method of the latest EUV microchip generation. Along the way to this success Fraunhofer IWS, together with Fraunhofer IOF and Fraunhofer ILT, has established several milestones in recent decades.

Prof. Martina Zimmermann becomes the first female president of the German Materials Society (DGM). She starts work on January 1, 2021. Together with Prof. Gerhard Schneider (Aalen University) she consti-tutes the dual leadership of the DGM for the period 2021/22 - both were elected at the virtual DGM gen-eral meeting at the end of September 2020.

A novel multimode fiber laser allows individual modifications of the laser beam shape within a few milliseconds – without using external optical elements. Researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Material and Beam Technology IWS can now realize various applications from heat conduction welding to deep penetration welding with only one laser system. Following intensive tests of the high-power fiber laser in Dresden's laboratories, industrial customers are invited to cooperate with Fraunhofer IWS experts to discover the laser’s advantages for their specific applications.

The Fraunhofer Institute for Material and Beam Technology IWS expands its equipment portfolio to advance its competencies in the research field of additive manufacturing. In addition to a binder jetter, a new cold-wall furnace has been added, allowing the two post-processing steps debinding and sintering to be carried out in one system. Along with the binder jetter, the Dresden institute now maps the complete manufacturing and machining process of components and makes it available to interested users as well as researchers who are involved in this additive manufacturing process.

The Fraunhofer Institute for Material and Beam Technology IWS enters into cooperation with the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) in Melbourne to support the modernization of the Australian economy. The partners are aiming to highlight new potentials in digital Additive Manufacturing (AM) for the Australian economy and open the way to Industry 4.0. The mutual exchange of scientific expertise creates a "win-win situation" to drive global developments towards intelligent industrial processes.

The University of Applied Sciences Dresden (HTW) appoints Udo Klotzbach, head of the technology field "Microtechnology" at Fraunhofer IWS, as honorary professor for his commitment as lecturer.

The COVID-19 pandemic poses new challenges for many parts of society. Very acutely, these include the personal protection of special professional and personal groups who are daily exposed to the danger of direct virus infection. Masks and face shields are an additional supporting tool to reduce the risk of droplet infection via the mucous membranes of eyes, nose and mouth. Basing on the laser remote cutting technology, Fraunhofer IWS has developed a solution for a fast and environmentally friendly production of an innovative face shield: the Intense Wearable Shield ("IWShield").