Tech News

The Fraunhofer Institute for Reliability and Microintegration IZM is marking its thirtieth year with a high-profile international conference in September. The Institute that now employs more than 400 people at its three sites was founded by twenty-one German scientists on a mission. Its main site in the historic architectural brickwork masterpiece in Berlin is not just a place with lots of history. With many scientific advances born here, it is the place where the future of packaging and interconnection technologies for microelectronic systems is made.

What do I do after school? The choice for high school graduates today is no longer easy. All paths are open. And everyone wants them to be a part of their institution. But what if their interest is piqued beforehand? With various elective courses, individual career events and more, Fraunhofer IZM and the Gabriele-von-Bülow-Gymnasium want to intensify the already close cooperation between school and research institute even more.

Electronic devices are shrinking all the time. At the same time, the computer chips inside them are getting more and more powerful, but they are also using more energy, and running hotter. This makes it essential to find new ways toreduce the power consumption of high-performance computers. A new EU-funded project has brought together a high-profile consortium from science and industry to investigate how changes to the magnetic properties of semiconductors could achieve a hundredfold reduction in the power consumption of computer chips. Researchers at Fraunhofer IZM are on the team to investigate how the semiconductors’ tiny contacts could be connected.

The combined radar expertise of Fraunhofer IZM is making the sensors needed for self-driving cars not just cheaper, but more reliable and accurate at the same time. The researchers joined a group of industry partners to design a radar system with an angular resolution of below one degree at 180° coverage. One advantage of the system: Autonomous cars need fewer than half of the radars they need nowadays. This feat was made possible by combining innovative electronics and packaging solutions with the power of AI to improve radar detection.

Heating homes with solar power in midwinter – the renewable energy revolution wants to build a climate-friendly future for the world. But the move away from fossil fuels will remain a challenge as long as efficient means to store green energy are still lacking. A German research consortium led by Fraunhofer IZM has set itself the ambitious goal to tackle exactly this problem with cheap-to-make zinc batteries that not only store electrical power, but can also be used to produce hydrogen. First tests promise 50% efficiency when storing power and 80% when producing hydrogen – with an estimated life expectancy of ten years. With its fundamental research and practical work on a working demonstrator, the Zn-H2 project has the potential to be a breakthrough for a successful energy revolution.

Any prospective buyer of an electronic device interested in knowing more about the products they have set their eyes on will have to cope with limited information on print or online manuals or engage in time-consuming research. This may change soon, as the European Commission introduced a standardised digital product passport for the upcoming legislation. A project consortium has been formed with partners from industry and academia to set ground for the developments. The idea is for the proposed passports, supported by EU regulations, to make all product information available along the entire value chain and easily accessible e.g. by QR code.

The makers of electronic equipment built into cars or industrial machines know the problem only too well: Electronics fail earlier than they should, because humidity seeps into their sealed housings. Reliability tests are conducted to prevent that from happening. Now, researchers at Fraunhofer IZM teamed up with the European Center for Power Electronics (ECPE) to learn more about the climatic conditions inside electronic systems. They used a battery of simulations and analytical tests to include environmental factors already from the initial choices for case designs and avoid costly later failure analyses.

This year, teams from Fraunhofer IZM once again traded cars and trains for bicycles and set a personal record - with more than 20,000 kilometers in the city cycling competition! An incredible distance, equivalent to the route from Berlin to Australia!

During pregnancy, regular medical check-ups provide information about the health and development of the pregnant person and the child. However, these examinations only provide snapshots of their state, which can be dangerous, especially in high-risk cases. To enable convenient and continuous monitoring during this sensitive phase, an international research consortium is planning to further develop the technology of smart textiles.

To tackle the climate crisis, Infineon in Villach is launching two European research projects with enormous thrust: The "ALL2GaN" project is about easily integrated energy-saving chips made of gallium nitride. They have the potential to improve energy efficiency by 30 percent in a wide range of applications and thus save an extrapolated 218 million tons of CO 2 worldwide. The "AIMS5.0" project focuses on artificial intelligence (AI) to create resource-efficient manufacturing across industries as well as optimize supply chain management in Europe.