Institute for New Materials

The Institute for New Materials

In the interest of a dynamic combination of basic research and application, the INM has the organizational form of a non-profit making GmbH (limited liability company). Income from industry makes up 70% of the high share of the third-party resources - evidence of the high demand for the INM nanotechnologies. As a Leibniz institute, the INM receives a basic financing of 50% from the Federal Government.

Organizational structure

The organizational structure of the INM for basic research and technology development
The fact that the managing director of the INM was able to rapidly implement the strategy for the broad development of the chemical nanotechnology and thus achieved a leading position in an important future technology has been favored since 1990 through the framework created by research politics:

Initially, the INM received the organizational form of an independent non-profit making GmbH. This offered the scientific director the necessary entrepreneurial freedom of action during building up the new field of technology. Secondly, the research center could make use of an adequate basic financing in order to be able to conduct broad basic research and selective technological development.

Partners of the INM GmbH are the university of Saarland (51%) and Saarland (donator, 49%). The basic financing of the INM was borne during the first years by Saarland. As early as 1993, the German Scientific Council after evaluation recommended admission to the Leibniz Association, the group of independent scientific institutions sponsored by the Federal Government out of national interest. From 1996 on, the Federal Minister for Research and Development took over 50% of the basic financing of the INM. In 1999 followed admission to the Leibniz Association and thus the takeover of more than 60% of the basic financing through the Federal Government and the Federal Government/ Länder Commission.

Establishments for users

In recent years, the INM has produced three establishments which support industrial application of the INM nanotechnologies in various ways:

• The application center NMO (new materials for surface technology), a profit center of the INM, concentrates on nanosurfaces for SMEs.
  
  
• The European Center for Product Innovation and Coatings (EPC), startup of the INM develops products with nanomaterials.
  
  
• The Expert Center for Nanotechnology for New Materials (CC NanoChem "functionality through chemistry") sponsored by the Federal Ministry for Research and Development, facilitates joint projects of companies and research institutes.

Personnel

As a research GmbH, the INM can concentrate strictly on the research and development aims in the choice of its employees. Therefore, the staff has a high interdisciplinary composition. In the INM, chemists, physicists and material researchers go down the long route from fundamental research to broad application together with engineers, process technicians and EDP specialists.

Basic principles

Ten years ago, nanoscience was dominated by physics. In 1990, Prof. Schmidt entered new technological territory in the INM with the chemical nanosyntheses. The sol-gel process became the central manufacturing process for new customized high-tech materials. Today, it is hardly possible to get a clear overall view of the new world of chemical nanomaterials. The research competition is getting increasingly tougher.

The chemical nanotechnology, which has been highly developed by the INM and represents a new dimension in nanoscience. It opens up the industrial manufacture of nanostructured materials via chemical syntheses. By means of suitable process techniques, these materials are processed into materials for the manufacture of components.

Due to the nature of the nanoparticles materials with completely new properties are possible.

Prospects of the research

Thousands of parameters can be varied in the material syntheses practiced in the INM. However, it is decisive which strategic starting points a material principle permits. The chemical nanotechnology, with the capability of controlling the properties and the reactivity of the particles via the surface chemistry, permits utilization of the extraordinary potential of this form of matter in a technical process.

In the basic research, which laid the foundation for today´s wide range of technology, the INM concentrated on systematically investigating the new degrees of freedom, which the chemical nanotechnology opens up for material development, and to understand its prospects.

Technological competence

Following the market pull, the broad research basis of the INM led to various technological focal points aiming at materials of chemical nanotechnology enjoying high demand: surface technology, optics, glass, ceramics and materials for life sciences. In the meantime, the INM has pressed ahead many different lines of development up to industrial maturity and excellent market success in these five focal points. The chemical nanotechnology has grown like a centuries-old tree the branches of which are spreading ever more. The economic dimensions of the application range from the innovation of a small company up to cooperations with industrial multinationals.

Basic technologies

Results of basic research only then achieve industrial significance if they are converted into technologies which bridge the wide gap between science and the market. This is above all decisive when small to medium-sized enterprises want to acquire innovative applications. Effective basic technologies with reasonable "times to the market" play a key role for them. The INM is one of the few research centers which, on the basis of research, selectively develops technologies up to industrial production scale serving as basis for broad application:

• Nanoceramic technologies: Slip casting, cold and hot pressing, electrophoresis, tape casting, injection moulding with debinding with supercritical media or solvents, printing techniques, spray drying, pelletizing, catalysts, sensors.
  
  
• Material production: Reactors to produce nanoparticles in batches of 50 kg per day. Synthesis of polymermatrix nanocomposites and hybrid materials in 100 l batches.
  
  
• Coating technologies: Dip coating, spin and roler coating with optical quality, spray robot, screen printing, pad printing, flexo printing, flat spray coating technique on glass with optical quality, fully automated sprayer with online quality control, clean room technique, inkjet printing.
  
  
• Micro and nanostructuring: Embossing processes, holographic processes, laser structuring, photolithography.
  
  
• Pilot production plants: Batch and tubular reactor, plastic process engineering, kneading, kompounding, extrusion.
  
  
• Technological service packets: For example, hygiene techniques in the foodstuff industry and in hospitals saving water and wastewater, on-site coating service, permanent service on call.

The INM currently employs just less than 200 employees.

The scientists in the INM do not only come from Germany but also from other European countries, from overseas and the Far East. An important role is also played by university students writing their dissertations and graduates both working on application-oriented problems for their degrees. Currently, 30 PhD theses are being written in the INM.

The Leibniz Association

The Leibniz Association is a merger of currently 80 German research institutions having different aims, whose basic financing is covered 50% by the Federal Government for reasons of national interest. The Leibniz Institutes are distributed throughout all Federal Länder.

The INM is the only Leibniz Institute of Saarland.

The basic financing of the Leibniz Association by the Federal Government and Länder amounts to currently around 950 mill. Euro. Added to this are about 210 mill. Euro earned from third-party resources.

Institute for New Materials
Im Stadtwald Geb. 43
66123 Saarbrücken
Tel: +49 (0)681 / 9300-313/314
Fax: +49 (0)681 / 9300-223
E-Mail: contact@inm-gmbh.de

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Further Information: www.inm-gmbh.de/