Fraunhofer Institute for Material and Beam Technology IWSThe core of our work is the development of additive manufacturing technologies based on inks and pastes. We consider the entire process chain starting from the preparation of raw materials, substrate pretreatment, aerosol and dispenser printing, drying, curing, laser and plasma sintering and characterization of the final components. Materials include metals, polymers, ceramics, and composites. Important applications are flexible or conformal thermoelectric generators.
Furthermore, we concentrate our research on the large-area spray deposition of oxide-ceramics (e.g. alumina as passivation layer for photovoltaics), semiconductors (like ZnO:Al) or dispersions made from CNTs (carbon nanotubes) for manufacturing transparent conductive layers.