Fraunhofer
1/18 special
issue

magazine

HealthResearch
in 4DLife Sciences
The allergy detectives
SpaceFighting lethal threats in orbit
Digitalization
Blockchain technology

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Fraunhofer magazine 1.18

EDITORIAL - 3

Breaking
new groundProf. Reimund Neugebauer© Fraunhofer/Bernhard Huber

In Germany, healthcare expenditure is rising faster than theOECD average, and healthcare costs continue to grow fasterthan GDP. Although this causes a cost burden, it also opens
up a market for cost-effective solutions. According to Germany’s Federal Statistical Office, the threshold of one billion
euros per day in healthcare expenditure was exceeded forthe first time in 2016. The figures are based on a comparisonof countries conducted by the OECD in 2017. This is where
Fraunhofer researchers come in. Collaborating in interdisciplinary teams, they develop efficient solutions and work
to translate research results into medical applications andtherapies as quickly and efficiently as possible. Up until now,
it has often taken decades to turn the results of basic research
into new medicines and pharmaceutical production methods.
The bottleneck in this process is the step from lab research toclinical testing, in other words the gap between the discoveryof new active ingredients and the development of corresponding drugs by the pharmaceutical industry.
As a specialist at the interface between research and industry,Fraunhofer has a broad array of technologies at its disposal.
Out of a total of 72 Fraunhofer Institutes, 45 are active in
healthcare research, addressing the four major areas ofbiomedical science – drugs, diagnostics, devices and data, or
the 4 Ds. You can find out more about this in the lead article(starting on page 8).
In the competitive international research marketplace,
Fraunhofer is a highly sought-after partner. The guiding
principle of our partnerships is to create scientific value for
Fraunhofer and generate positive effects for Germany, Europe
and the partner country in question. This has given rise to acomplex network of direct commissions, consortium projects,
strategic partnerships and Fraunhofer subsidiaries. Ultimately,
the international dimension of our research is a crucial factor
in qualifying Fraunhofer employees for demanding tasks inboth the global economy and the globalized world of science.
Fraunhofer’s high level of international revenue underscores
its success on the international stage. Last year, the organization’s revenue from projects with international customers andpartners amounted to 311 million euros.

The use of biotechnology in the medical field, in manufacturing and in agriculture offers considerable potential for value
creation and sustainability. One of the articles in this issue ofour magazine showcases the EU-sponsored SteamBio project,in which wood, a renewable raw material, replaces fossil fuels
as feedstock for the production of valuable chemicals (seepage 22).
Nature provides the blueprint for many of our innovations.
Fraunhofer is driving the Biological Transformation by making
increasing use of natural resources and principles in technical systems. Information technology enables us to model
complex biological processes and structures at the molecularlevel. The result is nanostructured materials, for example, ortherapeutics that are tailored to each patient. This approachto research encourages a new way of thinking, one that aims
for a holistic, balanced interplay of processes and material
streams. Today, many processes are organized with the goalof obtaining maximum output from minimum input. That
can have negative consequences: in intensive agriculture, forinstance, which depletes the soil of nutrients and makes it
unusable for future crops. Nature, on the other hand, teaches
us that it is better to optimize a system so as to establish astable equilibrium, rather than trying to maximize the output
of individual processes. We believe the Biological Transformation will have as profound an effect on the economy and on
society as the digital transformation.
I hope you enjoy reading this issue of our magazine.
Sincerely,

Reimund Neugebauer
President of the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft

04 - CONTENT

Fraunhofer magazine 1.18

08

Lead Article
Health Research in 4D
No less than 45 of the 72 Fraunhofer
Institutes work in fields of interest to thefour key areas of medical science – drugs,
diagnostics, devices and data, or the 4 Ds
for short.

18

Augmented reality inthe operating theater
Novel data glasses help
physicians locate andremove diseased lymph
nodes.

24

Lignin –the new petroleum?
This forestry waste productcould soon be put touse as feedstock for the­chemical industry.

38

A lethal threat:
Space debris in orbit
The radar system in­Wachtberg near Bonndelivers high-resolution
images from space.

28

Simple, fast andefficient – courtesyof blockchain
A distributed databaseaccelerates trade throughcontainer ports.

47

Making sustainable
use of scarce water
resources
A sustainable water­management system isbeing established to serve
remote communities in
Mongolia.

Fraunhofer magazine 1.18

CONTENT - 05

Content
06 Spectrum

Lead Article
08 Health Research in 4D

26 International
58 Panorama
59 Particulars
59 Editorial Notes

Space
34 Fully equipped for space

Drugs, diagnostics, data and devices –the 4 Ds are key areas of research

Space debris, a small satellite, rocket fuel andmany more topics of research

17 “We can traverse the interfaces inmedical research”

38 A lethal threat: Space debris in orbit

Interview with Prof. Gerd Geisslinger

Life Sciences
18 Augmented reality in the operating
theater

A new navigation tool helps surgeons carryout operations
20 The allergy detectives

The search for ways to reduce allergens­present in foods

Bio-Economy
22 Making efficient use of biomass

Wood is cheap to transport and can be­processed into valuable materials for thechemical industry
24 Lignin – the new petroleum?

As a raw material, lignin could serve in many
respects as a renewable alternative to fossil
petroleum

Digitalization
28 Simple, fast and efficient –courtesy of blockchain

Innovative technologies for secure transactionsin global trade

The high-performance TIRA radar and fiber
laser can detect tiny bits of detritus floating inorbit
41 A climate watchdog in space

The MERLIN satellite is set to start tracking thegreenhouse gas methane in the near future
42 Microwave amplifiers improve weather
forecasts

The measurement technology at the heart of a
new weather satellite generation

Energy44 A triple-bladed colossus

The world’s largest wind turbine is located in
Bremerhaven
47 Making sustainable use of scarcewater resources

New pipes, pump systems and water­treatment plants in Mongolia
50 Transition to a new energy
economy – Phase two

A study analyzes the path to establishing an
integrated energy system

Material Sciences
52 Programmable materials

30 From computer to thinker

New study: Machine learning – competencies,
applications and research needs

Modifying their structure gives legacy materials
intelligent new functions
54 Magnets without rare earths

32 “We’re far from the end of this­development”

An interview with Prof. Stefan Wrobel

Substitute materials for permanent magnets
56 Alternatives for the original kilogram

Coated silicon spheres – a new calibration
standard

06 - SPECTRUM

Fraunhofer magazine 1.18

Smart glass for­stopping break-ins

Curative contact­lenses

Jewelry shops, art galleries and banks have windows thatare fitted with special safety glass and connected to alarms
for protection. The disadvantage of this setup is that theglass pane, or at least part of it, has to shatter to trigger thealarm. A new alarm system developed by researchers at the
Fraunhofer Institute for Technological Trend Analysis INT and
the Fraunhofer Institute for Photonic Microsystems IPMS,
however, can detect any attempted manipulation of thewindow before the glass breaks.

Infections of the cornea are one of the main causes of
reduced visual acuity all over the world. In fact, the World
Health Organization (WHO) attributes a quarter of all cases ofblindness to corneal clouding. This condition is often causedby microbial keratitis – inflammation of the cornea triggeredby bacterial or fungal pathogens or acanthamoeba.

The system registers changes in temperature as well as
shocks to the glass in real time – leaving burglars without achance. All it takes to set off the alarm is a light tap on thesafety glass or manipulation with a flame. Any attemptedassault on the glass changes its mechanical properties which
the new system immediately registers, activating the alarm. A
demonstrator of the new break-in protection system has now
been completed.

Conventional safety glass has to shatter to trigger the alarm. © iStock

Ophthalmologists’ biggest cause for concern is acanthamoeba keratitis because in this form the disease rarely responds
to the drugs available on the market today. Current forms oftreatment can have severe side effects and may damage thecornea.
Researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Polymer
Research IAP are now taking a new approach to the issue:
contact lenses with antibacterial properties. Initial laboratory
tests of this potential alternative have shown promising
results.

Antibacterial contact lenses could be the key to fighting acanthamoebic
infection in the eye. © Fraunhofer IAPFraunhofer magazine 1.18

SPECTRUM - 07

A box on wheels forindustry-oriented­social networking
Printing high-tech
car parts in 3D
At the begining of the year, Gemany’s former Laser Zentrum
Nord became part of the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft as the
Fraunhofer Institute for Additive Manufacturing Technologies
IAPT. One of its showcase projects, developed in partnershipwith Bugatti Engineering GmbH, is a 3D-printed titanium
brake caliper.
Due to the very high strength of titanium, it was previously
difficult or even impossible to mill and machine such acomponent from a single block. Fraunhofer IAPT was able tosolve this problem with its powerful 3D printer.

In addition to working side by side in the future, humans
and machines are set to share information and communicate
with each other via social networks. Now, experts at the
Fraunhofer Institute for Material Flow and Logistics IML havedeveloped the first truly interactive driverless transportation
solution for industry-oriented social networking of this nature.
At first glance, Emili – the ergonomic, mobile and interactive
transporter for intralogistics applications – looks like a smallbox on wheels. This autonomous transportation device,
however, has some unusual features. Thanks to wearable
technology, it can be controlled, summoned and dismissedby human gestures. Logistics personnel wear smart armbands
containing tiny computer systems that wirelessly transmit
the gesture-controlled information to Emili. Alternatively,
smartphones, tablets or smart glasses can be used to giveher instructions. Emili is even able to communicate. A smiley
on her energy-saving display indicates that everything in thewarehouse is how it should be.

The titanium caliper is 41 cm long, 21 cm wide, 13.6 cm
high and weighs only 2.9 kg – over 40 % less than thecurrently used aluminum caliper while at the same timeoffering an even greater load-bearing capacity. In-vehicle
tests to verify the potential of the part for large-scale production are set to begin this year.

If required, this interactive driverless transportation device
can double up as a container. Emili’s outer dimensions areexactly the same as a small load carrier, meaning she canbe easily stacked and integrated into any conventional small
parts warehouse system.

This 3D-printed brake caliper will be tested for use in the Bugatti Chiron.
© Bugatti Automobiles S.A.S.

Smart load carrier Emili follows the instructions given by her inventor,
Jana Jost. © Fraunhofer IML

08 - LEAD ARTICLE

Fraunhofer magazine 1.18

Health Research
in 4D
Testing new drugs in clinics, searching for specific biomarkers,
developing sentient prostheses, brainstorming concepts for secure data­
management – health-related research certainly comes in many guises.
The research efforts of 45 of 72 Fraunhofer Institutes address four
major areas of medical science – drugs, diagnostics, devices and data,or the 4 Ds for short. The authors visited four research teams on the
cutting edge of translational medicine, where fundamental research isushered out of the lab and into the world.

Text: Christine Broll and Frank Grotelüschen (data)Fraunhofer magazine 1.18

LEAD ARTICLE - 09

No less than 45 of the
72 Fraunhofer Institutes
work in fields of interest
to the four key areas of
medical science – drugs,
diagnostics, devices anddata, or the 4 Ds for short.
© iStock, Vier­thaler & BraunD

D

iagnostics

ata

Drugs

Devices

10 - LEAD ARTICLE

Fraunhofer magazine 1.18

Dr. Nadine Schneider(right) and her team in the
Fraunhofer Translational
Medicine branch of IME
are working on an innovative vaccine for rheumatoid
arthritis. All pictures on
this page © Bernd Müller

Bottom: Drugs formulated
in clinical trials are manufactured individually anddescribed with painstaking
precision.

Left: Immune cells fromthe blood of patients withrheumatoid arthritis get
the once-over under amicroscope.

Top: Dr. Jochen Graff regularly
draws blood from subjects
during clinical trials to gauge
how the body responds to thenew drug.

Fraunhofer magazine 1.18

LEAD ARTICLE - 11

rugs
Sabine Schuster* is slightly nervous as she steps
into the clinical study ward run by Fraunhofer
IME’s division of Translational Medicine andPharmacology TPM on the campus of Frankfurt am Main’s
University Hospital. She has never taken part in a drug trial
before. As Dr. Jochen Graff, head of the ward, shows Sabine
to her room, he explains the strict rules applied by the drug
regulatory agencies to ensure trials are standardized.
“You’ll be spending the next two days in our ward withmeals and beverages served at set times. You’re not allowed
to eat anything else. No cigarettes or alcohol either. Thatwould falsify the results,” says Jochen Graff.
This trial intends to test a new drug for hereditary angioedema (HAE), a rare disease that has plagued Sabine Schuster
since childhood. Her skin and internal organs are beset by­recurrent swelling. A swollen larynx can be life-threatening; infact, it is often fatal. Medication is available to manage acuteseizures, but this new prophylactic drug aims to preventthese attacks from occurring in the first place. The Fraunhofer
institute branch works closely with Frankfurt University Hospital’s HAE outpatient unit to conduct clinical trials.

Strict protocol for taking blood samples
The trial starts the next morning. Research assistant Gudrun
Schneckenburger inserts a needle into the vein of Sabine Schuster’s left hand and connects it to the ECG and blood pressure
monitor. Clinical investigator Dr. Graff then administers a pill;
this medication in the form of a tablet containing the new drug.
The research assistant takes blood samples every 15 minutes
during the first hour after the tablet is ingested; then every halfhour and later every hour. “In the blood samples, we measure what the body does with the drug; how it is absorbed,
distributed, broken down and excreted. We call this process
pharmacokinetics,” says Jochen Graff by way of explanation.
These readings give scientists insight into the fate of new drug.
They also serve to determine doses and dosing intervals for
subsequent clinical trials, where the drug has to substantiate
its ability to reduce the frequency of seizures in patients with
HAE. The researchers assess many different parameters andbiomarkers in the blood to identify side effects. Every step of
the study is spelled out in a trial protocol that is subject to theapproval of the regulatory authorities and an ethics committee.

Innovative study designs
All phases of early clinical drug development take place on
the Fraunhofer group’s ward. This includes phase 1, where

the new drug is first administered to humans, and phase
2 with selected patients. All phase 1 studies apart fromanticancer drug trials have to be conducted with healthy
subjects. There is more to these early phases than merely
investigating pharmacokinetics and calculating dosages; theyalso serve to test the active ingredient’s safety.
Dr. Frank Behrens, who heads up the group’s clinical research,points out the limitations of this approach: “What can a
22-year-old healthy student’s tolerance and metabolism tellme about a drug that I later want to administer to a 65-yearold woman who has already had several prior diseases?” This
is why Frank Behrens and his team of scientists from diverse
disciplines are developing innovative study designs to test new
active ingredients on real patients rather than on healthy subjects. He works closely with medical specialists on the Frankfurt University Hospital campus to select drugs and conduct
special tests to prove their effectiveness. The Frankfurt group,
which is a branch of the Fraunhofer Institute for Molecular
Biology and Applied Ecology IME, has been busy helping set
up the LOEWE Research Center for Translational Medicine
and Pharmacology funded by the state of Hessen. Its partners
are the University of Frankfurt and the Max Planck Institutefor Heart and Lung Research in Bad Nauheim. This organization’s mission is to expedite the transition of medical researchfindings from the test bench to the bedside. Physicians who
divide their time between the clinic and the project groupplay an important role in this respect. “Researching physicians
bring problems from the patient’s bedside straight to our lab,”emphasizes Prof. Gerd Geisslinger, head of the Fraunhofer IME
branch and the LOEWE Center.

From the lab to the clinic
The aidCURE project shows how R&D contributes throughout
the value chain in Frankfurt. Determined to develop an active
ingredient to treat rheumatoid arthritis in a joint effort with
Prof. Rikard Holmdahl of Stockholm’s Karolinska Institute,Prof. Harald Burkhardt spent years conducting fundamental
research at the university. The agent being developed is a
type of vaccine that targets and switches off the mechanismthat triggers pathogenic autoimmune reactions.
Fraunhofer IME-TMP is translating this basic research into
applied science under the auspices of Dr. Nadine Schneider.
“We are now looking for a way to economically produce
the complex protein molecule on an industrial scale,” reports
Burkhardt. Clinical testing in humans can commence once
the team reaches this milestone and wraps up the preclinicalsafety studies required by law. Dr. Frank Behrens, head of thestudy, is already drafting the trial protocols.

* Name changedby the editors

12 - LEAD ARTICLE

Fraunhofer IZI’s pipetting
robots isolate RNA fromtissue samples in search of
new biomarkers to diagnose prostate cancer.
© Fraunhofer IZIFraunhofer magazine 1.18

A therapy’s success hinges on the diagnosis – the moreaccurate the disease’s characterization, the more targeted
the treatment. Another research team is investigating new
diagnostic parameters in a project called RIBULUTION.

iagnostics
The pipetting robot’s tips slowly descend over tiny
test tubes containing tissue samples, dripping asolution that dissolves the tissue. The pipettes’ tips rise silently
as the test tubes shuttle down the line to the next station. A
downstream device mixes in reagents, centrifuging and purifying the sample step by step until pure RNA comes to the fore.
RNA is the object of investigation in the RIBULUTION project,which has been underway at Leipzig’s Fraunhofer Institutefor Cell Therapy and Immunology IZI since 2011. It is fundedby the Fraunhofer Future Foundation. RNA’s structure issimilar to that of DNA. While DNA resides in the cell nucleus
and carries genetic information, RNA serves various purposes
within the cell. Scientists know a great deal about messenger
RNAs that hold the code for protein synthesis. Non-coding
RNAs, or ncRNAs, for short, are a more recent discovery.
They regulate diverse processes in the cells, which makes
them prime candidates for research. The idea is that ncRNAs’
profile will indicate if a disease has thrown the regulation ofcellular activities out of balance.

Biomarkers for prostate cancer
With this hypothesis in mind, Prof. Friedemann Horn andhis team at Fraunhofer IZI began their search for biomarkers to diagnose prostate cancer. The current PSA test isflawed – too many false alarms – so a reliable test is urgently

Fraunhofer magazine 1.18

The electrodes on this arm
connect to a control unitthat transmits signals tothe virtual hand prosthesis
visible in the background.
© Bernd Müller

As Dmitry Amelin concentrates on the movementof his hand, electrodes
measure the muscle impulses that could serve tocontrol a prosthetic hand.
© Bernd Müller

needed. “An elevated PSA level usually prompts a biopsy.
Over 200,000 prostate biopsies are performed every yearin Germany, but the suspected carcinoma is only confirmed
in around 67,000 patients,” says Horn. So, many of thesebiopsies are unnecessary.
First the RIBULUTION team isolated all the RNA from tumor
samples, benign growths and healthy tissue. A single tissue
sample may contain several hundred thousand different molecules. The researchers sequenced and compared molecules,
and then tallied the ncRNAs to identify the most frequently
occurring types in the given samples.
Other Fraunhofer Institutes and industrial enterprises helped
automate the workflow from end to end with pipetting robots to process large quantities of samples, thereby creating
the platform technology for RNA analysis.

Automated platform technology“We have identified around ten ncRNA molecules that aresuitable biomarkers. They provide the basis for a test to diagnose prostate cancer in urine,” says Friedemann Horn. He
expects the drug to be launched in 2020, by which time anncRNA test should also be available. It will help predict if theprostate carcinoma is aggressive and requires immediate surgery or if it grows so slowly that surgery may be unnecessary.
This automated method can help find new biomarkers fora wide range of diseases relatively quickly. The platform
technology is sure to interest pharmaceutical companies thatare developing tests to monitor the efficacy of new drugs inclinical trials. Research in diagnostics and therapy is converging. Nowhere do the two mesh as tightly as in theranostic
implants that combine therapy and diagnosis in a single

LEAD ARTICLE - 13

14 - LEAD ARTICLE

Fraunhofer magazine 1.18

system. The Fraunhofer Institute for Biomedical Engineering
IBMT at St. Ingbert is developing this type of implant.

evicesComplex and invasive, theranostatic implants pre­sent one of the greatest medical engineering challenges. They must be tested thoroughly at an earlyturn during the inceptive development phase in the lab. This isa job for Dmitry Amelin, a biomedical engineer at Fraunhofer
IBMT. He attaches eight electrodes to his left forearm inpreparation for the tests. The electrodes connect to a smallbox on his desk. Amelin pinches his thumb and index finger
together like a pair of tweezers and watches the monitor forthe signals that the electrodes are picking up from his muscles.
“We are working on the control system for a hand prosthesis.
The small box containing all the control circuitry will later be
implanted in the patient’s forearm stump,” explains Amelin.
This little box contains a lot more than that – the experience
Fraunhofer IBMT gained over decades devoted to building
intelligent implants. This know-how encompasses wirelesssignal and power transmission, mounting and interconnecting technology, and biocompatible encapsulation. As it turns
out, developing and producing the electrodes for implants tocommunicate with the human nervous system is somethingof an art.

Control through muscle movement
In the lab, the electrodes serving to control the hand prosthesis cleave to the skin’s surface over the muscles. They
will later be implanted subcutaneously, directly under theamputee’s fascia. The software counterpart to the implant’s
electronic hardware detects the movement pattern and sends
the appropriate control signals to the prosthesis, which thenalso pinches the thumb and index finger together.
This is one direction of communication between humanand prosthesis. “What’s groundbreaking about our designis that the prosthesis also gives the wearer sensory feedback,”
explains Prof. Klaus-Peter Hoffmann, head of the Biomedical
Technology Department at Fraunhofer IBMT. To this end,
the scientists installed sensors in the prosthesis that are thenconnected to the human nervous system. “We developed
double-sided filament electrodes that are as fine as hair andattach directly to the nerve,” adds Hoffmann. This should enable the patient to feel the amount of pressure the prosthesis
is exerting; that is, the firmness of its grip. And it should be
able to do this in real time. It will surely be another ten to
fifteen years before this technology makes it out of the lab.
But the first preclinical trials are already underway.

The control unit for thehand prosthesis (pictured
at the top) is implanted in
the forearm. The prosthesis
delivers sensory feedback
to the patient via a gossamer filament electrode that
attaches to a nerve. Bothpictures © Bernd Müller

Theranostic Implants, a lighthouse project
Hoffmann’s team has been looking into the art of controlling
hand prostheses in a host of projects that go all the way
back to 2002. Fraunhofer IBMT and twelve other Fraunhofer
Institutes have joined forces in a lighthouse project called
Theranostic Implants, which has been making remarkableprogress. One research group within this lighthouse projectsucceeded in developing an intelligent hip prosthesis. Its onboard sensors and actuators enable the doctor to monitor
the prosthesis’s fit and readjust it when necessary. A third

Fraunhofer magazine 1.18

LEAD ARTICLE - 15

The Medical Data Space a safe haven for medical data
The medical community collects enormous volumes ofdata in research labs, in clinics and at health insurancecompanies. The Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft is developing theMedical Data Space to tap the potential of this precious
data pool. It is a place where sensitive medical data canbe securely connected.
The Medical Data Space builds on the Industrial Data
Space developed by Fraunhofer in a joint effort withindustry and government. This space enables industrial
enterprises to securely exchange data, while ensuring theyretain control over their data.

The implant electronics
to control a myoelectric
hand prosthesis including
sensory feedback.
© Bernd Müller

Patients’ privacy is the top priority for the Medical Data
Space’s designers. As in the Industrial Data Space, data­remains in the owners’ possession rather than being
stored centrally in a cloud. This provides added security.

www.fit.fraunhofer.de/med-data-space

Two lines surround the parotid gland on the CT scan.
A doctor drew the yellow
line; a learning algorithm
computed the green one.
© Fraunhofer MEVIS

subproject produced a sensor implant to continuously monitor blood pressure.
The electrodes on the implant that Dmitry Amelin is testing
are still connected by way of wires. The next challenge is todevelop micro-implants that merge the electrode and implant
into one device, thereby eliminating cables and connectors.
Of course, synchronized activities require wireless communication between the micro-implants. However, Hoffmann is
unwilling to use the usual radio signals to this end for one
terrifying reason: “Pacemakers have already been hacked in

the USA. Instructions for hacking cochlear implants for the
hearing impaired are also circulating on the Internet.” This
prompted Fraunhofer IBMT to start investigating ultrasoundcommunication for intelligent implants in the newly launched“I-call” project.
Secure transmission and storage of sensitive data is becoming
increasingly important. This is why Fraunhofer has joined
forces with partners in the healthcare sector to develop the
Medical Data Space. An IT platform that dovetails diverse
medical data would be a boon to diagnosis and therapy.

16 - LEAD ARTICLE

Fraunhofer magazine 1.18

small part of a larger project called QuantMed. Fraunhofer
researchers are pursuing this initiative to build the technological foundation for an IT platform that will provide valuable
services to medicine. Commenting on its goal, Institute
Director Prof. Horst Hahn says: “We are working on digital
infrastructure that links diverse medical data. Specifically, weare connecting image data from MR scanners and X-ray machines with other clinical information such as blood counts,
genetic data and digitized tissue samples.”Deep-learning algorithms can then comb through thesecomplex, entwined data sets in search of telltale patterns.
The results of these analyses support doctors in a number ofways, for example, to help identify cerebral hemor­rhages,
devise more patient-friendly radiotherapy strategies fortumors, and answer the question of which drug is the mostpromising option for chemotherapy. A term has been coinedfor using computers to combine images and clinical data
to more accurately predict a therapy’s chances of success:experts call it radiomics.

Automatically    detecting    cerebral    ­hemorrhages

Prof. Klaus-Peter Hoffmann(center) and his team are
testing wireless signal andpower transmission fortheranostic implants in a
specially isolated room.
© Bernd Müller

ata
We are in an office at the Fraunhofer Institutefor Medical Image Computing MEVIS in Bremen.
Dr. Jan Klein bends over the computer and clicks
the mouse to call a picture to the screen – a CT image of ahuman head. “The cerebellum is in the back; the teeth arevisible up front. The colored area is the parotid gland,” says
the computer scientist. These markings help doctors in clinics
map out the radiotherapy for head and neck tumors. Physicians want to spare the glands any unnecessary radiation tominimize side effects such as a dry mouth.
The small organ on Jan Klein’s screen is bordered by twolines. A doctor drew the yellow line. The green line was calculated by a learning algorithm based on a neural network. Initially trained with 450 reference data sets, it is now learning
how to recognize certain structures in images autonomously– and very successfully at that. “As you can see, the two lines
are close together. Our program often outperforms doctors
because the daily workload in clinics usually leaves physicianspressed for time when they draw these lines,” says Klein.

Connecting medical data
This automatic segmentation – that is, the ability to recognize and mark a specific organ in an image – is just a

The new technology builds on individual ‘knowledge nodes’
that can extract valuable information from data sets. “Thistype of node may be located in a clinic, for example. Ourlearning algorithms work completely autonomously so thatno sensitive patient data is leaked,” says Klein.
Nodes can nonetheless exchange information via a computing hub that validates, consolidates and enhances theknowledge sourced from learning algorithms at multiple clinics. “For example, this could help optimize the way cerebral
hemorrhages are automatically detected and classified on CT
images. It would lighten the workload; rather than performing this time-consuming task manually, the doctor merely has
to check the computer’s results,” explains Klein.
QuantMed kicked off in October 2016. Hospitals, hospital
associations, a professional association and businesses areon board. “The first version of the system is ready midway
through the project, and now we’re going to ramp up test
operations. The end result should be a viable infrastructurethat enables hospitals and research institutions to routinely
extract new knowledge from vast quantities of data,” says
Hahn.
We visited four teams. Each works on an entirely different
project. But they do have one thing in common: they collaborate with experts in other disciplines under the umbrella of
the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft. Doctors, scientists, engineers
and computer scientists work together across the boundaries of their chosen fields to make that 4D connection in the
Fraunhofer Network.

Fraunhofer magazine 1.18

LEAD ARTICLE - 17

“We can traverse the interfaces
in medical research”
Prof. Gerd Geisslinger is the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft’s Medical
Research Officer. In an interview with “Fraunhofer magazine”, he­explains why Fraunhofer is in a unique position to tackle challenges­
in medical research and to pull together the four key areas ofbiomedicine – drugs, diagnostics, data and devices.

© Fraunhofer IME

Interview: Christine Broll

Why is the Fraunhofer-Gesell­schaftplacing such emphasis on medical
research?
The continually rising cost of providing healthcare is one of the biggest challenges facing
the national economy in the decades to come.
In 2016, healthcare expenditure in Germany
exceeded one billion euros per day for the firsttime ever. The German Federal Statistical Office
expects these costs to increase by a further five
percent or so in 2017. This means that healthexpenditure is rising much faster than gross domestic product, which will lead to considerable
problems for the healthcare system.

How can German society deal withthese problems?
Innovations at the intersecting frontiers of scientific disciplines, in particular, are the key to developing groundbreaking and, at the same time,cost-effective healthcare practices. The only way
forward is to create new forms of collaboration,
which will enable novel ideas to be translated
cost-efficiently into concrete applications. And
this is the emerging trend that we are currently
witnessing in biomedical research: the gradualconvergence of what we refer to as the 4 Ds,
namely drugs, diagnostics, data and devices.
At present, only application-oriented researchorganizations with a highly interdisciplinary
operating structure, such as the Fraunhofer-­
Gesellschaft, possess the capacity and broad
range of technological expertise needed togenerate innovative, cost-efficient solutions.

How can Fraunhofer bring together
the 4 Ds?
The way I see it, the 4 Ds also effectively correspond to four professional groups: physicians,
natural scientists, computer scientists andengineers. Fraunhofer is unique among researchorganizations in that experts representing each ofthese groups work together under one roof. This
places the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft in an exceptional position to conduct cutting-edge biomedical research at the interface between the 4 Ds.

To what extent is the FraunhoferGesellschaft already ­involved in
medical research?
Fraunhofer’s visibility as a major player in medical research is not as strong as it deserves to be.
We have contributed significant advances in thefield of translational medicine, and our research
has led to many innovative solutions. After all,45 of the 72 Fraunhofer Institutes are involved
in medical research in one way or another,and Fraunhofer spends some 15 percent of its
research and development budget on projects
linked to healthcare. These span the full rangeof topics from prevention and diagnostics totherapy and patient care.

How do you plan to pool theavailable expertise?
The President of the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft,
Prof. Reimund Neugebauer, is keen to raise theprofile of our medical research. We intend to do
this by promoting a new spirit of collaboration

Prof. Gerd Geisslinger
directs the Department of Clinical Pharmacology at the Goethe University Hospitalin Frankfurt. He is also coordinator of the
LOEWE Research Center Translational Medicine and Pharmacology and head of Fraunhofer IME’s Translational Medicine division.
Since 2017, Geisslinger has been Executive
Director of the Fraunhofer Institute for Molecular Biology and Applied Ecology IME. In thesame year, he was appointed as the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft’s Medical Research Officer.
www.fraunhofer.de/en/research/fields-ofresearch/health-environment.html

at multiple levels along the interfaces between
the 4 Ds. Initiatives include setting up foundation-funded projects and the establishment ofhigh-performance centers, in which we work
closely with university medical faculties. One
example is the High-Performance Center Trans­
lational Biomedical Engineering in Hannover.
In January, Fraunhofer founded a cluster of excellence dedicated to immune-mediated diseases –a virtual institute that encompasses all the 4 Ds.
In addition, a call for proposals is currently
underway for a lighthouse project on low-cost
intelligent solutions in medicine. By systematicallyconnecting up the 4 Ds, our application-oriented
research can generate significant added value.

18 - LIFE SCIENCES

Fraunhofer magazine 1.18

Augmented reality in theoperating theater
The rapid imaging of the new AR system
3D-ARILE is a decisive advantage. After the
infrared dye indocyanine green is injected,
the relevant lymph nodes immediately
become visible. ©Trivisio / Lux Prototyping

Fraunhofer magazine 1.18

LIFE SCIENCES - 19

During the operation, theposition of the lymph node
is displayed virtually usinga pair of AR glasses.
© Fraunhofer IGD

Malignant tumors frequently form
metastases, which spread throughout the body via the lymphatic
system. Determining the exact
position of lymph nodes and removing them completely requires
a great deal of skill on thepart of surgeons. Physicians can
now rely on a new tool to aid­navigation.
Text: Britta Widmann

According to Germany’s Federal Statistical
Office, cases of skin cancer requiring hospitaltreatment have substantially increased in recent
years. Malignant melanoma, also known as
black skin cancer, is particularly feared. Cancer
cells shed by the tumor can be transported via
the lymph fluid into the lymph nodes. There,
they grow into secondary tumors – metastases.
The first nodes affected are the sentinel lymph
nodes. These are the first lymph nodes draining the lymph from a malignant tumor. If thecancerous cells have spread to these nodes,
there is a high likelihood that more metastases
have formed. Sentinel lymph nodes, therefore,play a crucial role in diagnosing and treating
certain forms of cancer, such as skin, breast andprostate cancer. Physicians take biopsies of thelymph nodes after excising a tumor to investigate whether the cancer has spread.

Data glasses help to localize
nodes
Even with state-of-the-art medical knowledge,
surgeons can’t always determine the exact location of sentinel lymph nodes during operations,nor tell if the lymph nodes have really been
entirely removed. 3D-ARILE, a novel navigation
aid developed by the Fraunhofer Institute for
Computer Graphics Research IGD in Darmstadt,
aids surgeons in removing nodes.

The augmented reality system, in the formof a pair of data glasses, supports physicians,
aided by markings, to localize lymph nodes.
The unique feature of this system is that theAR glasses function in combination withhigh-performance software for medical navigation, and with a stereo system made up ofnear-infrared (NIR) cameras and indocyanine
green (ICG) fluorescent dye. “To make theaffected lymph nodes visible, a fluorescent dye isinjected into the immediate area of the patient’s
tumor. The dye disperses via the lymph vessels
and concentrates in the sentinel lymph node,”
explains Dr. Stefan Wesarg, department head at
Fraunhofer IGD. Infrared light from LEDs excites
the dye causing it to fluoresce. The NIR cameras
pick up the fluorescence and reconstruct theaffected lymph nodes in 3D. The data glasses
display their exact location to the surgeon in realtime. The necessary software was developedby the Darmstadt research team. “We chose todisplay diseased tissue in green. The surgeon
can determine with the aid of the dye whether
all the cancerous tissue has been removed,” says
Wesarg.

Reducing side effects for patients
Up to now, physicians have employed the radioactive nanocolloid technetium 99m as a medical
tracer. By replacing this radioactive marker

with ICG dye, side effects of the treatment canbe significantly reduced. Time is also a crucial
factor: the radioactive marker only causes thelymph nodes to emit radiation weakly. This has
meant images have had to be made with scintillation cameras, which took approximately 30
minutes to precisely record the position of thelymph nodes. The use of data glasses enables
the position of the affected nodes to be identified immediately – greatly facilitating the jobof the surgeon, who doesn’t need to look at anadditional monitor and compare what it displayswith the camera image. “The surgeon can focus
exclusively on the patient, reducing the stress ofthe operation,” says Wesarg.
Another advantage of the technology is that
the AR glasses are very light and comfortable
to wear, as dermatologists at Essen University
Hospital have confirmed after numerous tests.
All the project partners worked together closely
when developing the system to optimally adapt
the navigation aid to the needs of the surgeon.
The augmented reality system is a combinationof hardware and software. The hardware wasdeveloped by Trivisio Prototyping GmbH. The
researchers from Fraunhofer IGD were responsible for the development of the software.
­ARSPECTRA sarl is introducing the patent-­
pending system onto the market.

20 - LIFE SCIENCES

Fraunhofer magazine 1.18

Take a hearty bite out of an apple, snack on a handfulof peanuts, eat soy schnitzels – things that not everyone can do, at least not without regrets! About five percent of Germans suffer from a food allergy. Their only
option up to now was to avoid eating anything likely
to trigger an allergic reaction. Fraunhofer scientists
participating in the FoodAllergen project are looking to improve life for allergy sufferers. An interview
with project managers Dr. Peter Eisner (Fraunhofer IVV,
Freising) and Dr. Michael Szardenings (Fraunhofer IZI,
Leipzig).

The allergy detectives
Interview: Andrea Schwendemann

Dr. Eisner and Dr. Szardenings, what can
you tell us about your work on food allergies as part of the FoodAllergen project?
Just what is an allergy?
Michael Szardenings: The human body can produce anti­
bodies against all foreign substances, even against a harmlessslice of bread and butter. However, such “normal” antibod­
ies, in particular IgG antibodies, don’t cause allergic reac­
tions. On the other hand, if a parasite bores into your skin, a
special type, known as IgE antibodies, comes into play.
Peter Eisner: Exactly. Parasites are recognized by IgE antibod­
ies on mast cells in the lower layer of the skin known as the
hypodermis. This causes mast cells to release inflammatory
substances like histamine, which trigger the familiar allergic
reactions: itching, swelling, rashes and even reactions thatneed clinical treatment. When a person develops a food aller­
gy, it’s this defensive reaction to parasites that kicks in – quite
clearly an inappropriate reaction.

You’ve been working very intensively on
soybeans. Why soy, and what have you foundout about the allergenicity of soy proteins?
Michael Szardenings: We started with soy because soybean
extracts are found as ingredients in many foods and in otherproducts such as skin care creams. Not only that, allergy to
soy is widespread, with approximately one million sufferersin Germany. Using a specialized statistical big data analysis
method, we have identified over 300 epitopes in soybeans.
Epitopes are regions of proteins that trigger allergies. Other
proteins we’ve already analyzed include hazelnut, celery,peanut, almond and even lupine and pea.

You have identified the parts of the proteins that trigger allergies. And now
you’re attempting to modify foodstuffs tomake them better tolerated by allergy sufferers. How do you do that?
3D model of a soy protein:
The red regions are thosefrequently targeted by
antibodies in patientsdiagnosed with soy allergy,
and most likely to trigger
allergic reactions. White
indicates the regions of theprotein structure model thatare targeted less frequently,
while blue indicates regionsthat are not implicated inallergic reactions.
© Fraunhofer IVV

Project manager Dr. Peter
Eisner (left) from Fraun­
hofer IVV, Freising.
© Eisner Fraunhofer IVV
Subproject manager
Dr. Michael Szardenings(right) from Fraunhofer IZI,
Leipzig. © Fraunhofer IZIFraunhofer magazine 1.18

LIFE SCIENCES - 21

Many foods trigger­allergies. © iStockPeter Eisner: One of our jobs at Fraunhofer IVV is to modify
food proteins using various techniques. A natural soy protein
looks like a ball of wool. We modify this ball of wool, or
more precisely the epitopes – the sections of the ball ofwool that trigger allergies. To achieve this, we employ manydifferent food technology processes: we deform the protein,
cut it, we heat and boil it, treat it with enzymes or microor­ganisms and let it ferment. Our aim is to modify the proteinsin such a way that the body no longer recognizes them asallergens.

Will you ever be able to produce foodthat triggers no allergies? For instance,a hypoallergenic sausage?
Peter Eisner: We’ve already tested a number of techniques
to modify proteins in foodstuffs, for example using en­
zymes or lactic acid bacteria. We demonstrated that, after
modification, the food proteins contained fewer allergenic
regions. So, we’ll be able to reduce the allergenicity of foods
or food ingredients in the future, in other words, decrease
the number of epitopes per gram. But we won’t be able toguarantee that food proteins contain absolutely no allergenic
epitopes. The dream of an allergen-free sausage is still a longway off.

The FoodAllergen project runs until 2020.
What do you hope to achieve by then?
Michael Szardenings: Improved patient diagnosis. Dr. Jörg
Lehmann’s department at Fraunhofer IZI is creating a biobank
with 500 sera from allergy sufferers. With the help of thebiobank, we’re hoping that by the end of the project we cantell sufferers exactly what they react to allergically – with anallergy test requiring a single drop of blood and that can be
simply carried out in the physician’s office. The test should
show precisely which epitopes are responsible for the allergic
reaction. That the patient is allergic to soy but not to birch
pollen, for example. The current prick tests can’t differentiate
cross-reactions.
Peter Eisner: Our goal at Fraunhofer IVV is to modify theallergenic proteins in foods such as soy and lupine, making
them better tolerated by humans. Maybe one day we’ll beable to process shrimps, so I can enjoy eating them again.
Unfortunately, I found out I was allergic to such seafood lastsummer.
Michael Szardenings: There’s still no conclusive methodof precisely determining which allergenic food ingredients a
product contains and in what quantity. Another important
goal of the project is, therefore, to develop a kind of foodallergy safety inspection procedure.

The FoodAllergen project
The project runs until 2020 and is funded by the Fraunhofer Future­Foundation. A business developer is working in tandem with the­researchers, taking care of contacts with industry.

What are the aims of the project?
– Develop novel ways of analyzing food allergies– Reliably identify the allergens present in foods– Reduce the allergenic potential of foods– Develop detection methods that can precisely determine allergenic
potential

Participating Fraunhofer Institutes:– Fraunhofer Institute for Cell Therapy and Immunology IZI– Fraunhofer Institute for Process Engineering and Packaging IVV– Fraunhofer Institute for Molecular Biology and Applied Ecology IME– Fraunhofer Institute for Toxicology and Experimental Medicine ITEM

22 - BIO-ECONOMY

Fraunhofer magazine 1.18

Makingefficient   useof biomass
Wood is rarely used as a feedstock
for the chemical industry due
to the typically long distances
between forestry exploitationsites and industrial processing
centers. A new steam drying process, known as torrefaction, cansignificantly cut transportation
costs. The technique yields, as
a by-product, valuable base materials for the chemical industry.
© photocase

Text: Janine von Ackeren

Main forestry zones inremote regions of Europe.
Urgent need for efficienttrans-European supply
routes for biomass tochemical sites.
Chemical processing sites

The use of wood as an industrial feedstockholds great promise as a replacement for finite
resources such as crude oil and natural gas –both as a fuel source and as a raw material forbasic chemicals. The challenge is coming up
with innovative ways to convert the biomass
into sustainable products and develop suitableprocesses to do so.
At present, much of the low-quality wood harvested during forest maintenance is ground intowood chips, which are nevertheless an important feedstock for the wood processing industry.
They are then processed into pressboard, woodfiber insulation board, paper and cardboard.
They are also used as fuel in thermal power
plants and pellet stoves.
However, the high moisture content of freshwood chips presents two problems: it is a lotof weight to transport and it is difficult to store

the damp cargo. If not protected from rain andmoisture, the material quickly rots.

calorific value and allows us to easily grind thematerial into a highly reactive powder.

Threefold advantage

The torrefied biomass is water-repellent and has
significantly improved combustion properties
since it is composed purely of hydrogen andcarbon. This has considerable advantages fortransportation and storage. It can be transported in open bulk containers, since rain beads off
the surface without penetrating the interior.
What is more, the torrefied biomass is considerably lighter than the untreated material, whichsignificantly reduces transportation costs.

Researchers from the Fraunhofer Institute forInterfacial Engineering and Biotechnology IGB
have come up with a new technique to prepare
wood chips for transportation. The technique
was developed as part of the EU-funded SteamBio project together with ten other project partners from four European countries. “Instead oftransporting the biomass simply as wood chips,”
explains Siegfried Egner, department head at
Fraunhofer IGB and coordinator of the SteamBio
project, “we torrefy it: we heat the biomass in a
steam atmosphere free of oxygen. The biomass
has three main components – cellulose, lignin
and hemicellulose – and this process eliminates
the hemicellulose.” This significantly reduces
the weight of the material, improves its specific

Untreated wood chips are tough and strong,but torrefaction renders them so brittle andfragile you can easily crumble them between
two fingers. They can either be compressed into
pellets or ground into powder. This brings withit a further advantage. Since it has a greater surface area, the biomass powder possesses great-Fraunhofer magazine 1.18

BIO-ECONOMY - 23

The pilot plant consists ofa container with a storage
bin and energy center, as
well as a frame that houses
the drying and torrefaction
reactors, the attachment
for extracting solids andthe condensers.
© Fraunhofer IGB

Project partners in
Spain are investigating
torrefaction of various
lignocellulosic substrates,
including vine pruning (leftuntreated, right torrefied).
© Fraunhofer IGB

er reactivity in material uses than larger chunks.
In energy applications, it can also be mixed withcoal dust and fed into the firing system of coalfired power plants. It is even possible to replace
the coal entirely with biomass while keeping thesame combustion system.
The volatile substances liberated in the torrefaction process are particularly valuable. They canbe processed to obtain chemicals that serve as
feedstock for a wide range of industrial products.
Until now, these platform chemicals have beenobtained from crude oil or natural gas; now,
torrefaction offers a sustainable way to produce
them. “In the case of many biomass materials, theplatform chemicals generate so much profit thatthey can finance the entire torrefaction process,”says Egner. In general, the more lignified the biomass is, the more profitable the platform chemicals prove. Partners from Glasgow University havedeveloped a business model for the process.

Steam drying at over 200 degrees
So what is the process? What exactly happens
during the heat treatment process? “Torrefactionin itself is not a new technique,” explains Bruno
Scherer, project engineer at Fraunhofer IGB.
“In the SteamBio project we used steam drying
technology developed at the IGB, adapted forthis specific process. In this case, we’re working
with temperatures of between 200 and 250
degrees Celsius.” The special thing about thetechnique is that the moisture contained in thebiomass and the vaporous products yieldedby torrefaction are specifically retained in theprocess chamber and themselves become theprocess medium. “In other words, we’re working with superheated steam,” says Scherer.
The high temperatures dry out the biomass andresult in organic compounds with low boilingpoints that quickly become volatile. Whilecellulose and lignin remain in a solid state, thevolatile substances pass into the gas phase.
Researchers use special condensers to capture
these gaseous substances and selectively cool
them, thus recovering them as liquids.
A pilot facility has been built and installed andwas previously operated by project partner
Heckmann Metall- und Maschinenbau GmbH,
where it ran 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
Beechwood was used as the biomass.
The facility was then moved to Spain in January
2018 to continue the operation. Here, project
partners torrefy pine, oak and beech wood, as
well as vineyard pruning and waste from olive
oil production. “The pilot project aims to characterize the yields of the solids and the volatile
reaction products,” says Egner. This research
forms the basis for further commercialization ofthe ­technology.

24 - BIO-ECONOMY

Fraunhofer magazine 1.18

Lignin –the new petroleum?
A high lignin content is what distinguishes wood fromother forms of biomass. The pulp industry, however,currently has no use for this waste product – and burns
it. In the future, it could be used as feedstock forthe chemical industry, as a substitute for petroleum.
Text: Janine van Ackeren

From left to right:
Filtered lignin after­precipitation from a­d igestion solution.
Filter press for separationof lignin.
Beech wood-chip wastefrom a sawmill as feedstock for the organosolv
process.
Tank for washing­orga­nosolv cellulose.
© Fraunhofer CBP

Subsystem for evaporatingsugar solutions at the­Fraunhofer CBP lignocellulose biorefinery plant.
© Fraunhofer CBPFraunhofer magazine 1.18

Trees instead of petroleum? Many people think of woodprimarily as heating fuel: evoking cozy images of winter evenings spent in front of a good old-fashioned wood-burning
stove. In the future, however, wood could also be increasingly used as a raw material for basic chemicals in the chemicalindustry: because wood is a source of lignin, at 30 percent by
mass one of the main constituents of woody biomass, andone of the most common organic compounds on Earth. It
represents a correspondingly huge reservoir of raw materials.
Worldwide, the pulp and paper industry annually generates
approximately 50 million metric tons of lignin – as a waste
product that ends up in the furnaces of power plants forinternal energy production or to generate environmentallyfriendly electricity for the grid.

From wood right through to basic chemicals
Researchers at the Fraunhofer Center for Chemical-Biotechnological Processes CBP are now attempting to make use ofthis largely neglected treasure, making the lignin available asa raw material for the chemical industry, rather than burningit. “We’re replicating the entire process chain on a pre-industrial scale: from the wood to the extraction of lignin, and all
the way to the basic chemicals,” says Dr. Daniela Pufky-­Heinrich, group leader at Fraunhofer CBP. Lignin is usually
removed from wood by treating it with sulfur compounds(lignin won this way is known as kraft lignin), leaving behindthe desired cellulose fibers. The problem is that the sulfur
contaminates the lignin, restricting its use as a raw material.
“Our alternative method involves optimizing the organosolv
process for use in the pulp and paper industry,” says Dr.
Moritz Leschinsky, group leader at Fraunhofer CBP. Insteadof sulfur compounds, the researchers use ethanol – common
alcohol – to extract the lignin from wood, at temperaturesof up to 200 degrees Celsius and pressures up to 28 bar.
Whereas, here too, the cellulose is left behind as a solid
fraction, the lignin dissolved in the ethanol can be precipitat-

ed out over a number of different filtration steps. The great
advantage is that the lignin won in this way is free of sulfur
residues. This means the pulp and paper industry could sell it
for use as basic chemicals and thereby generate added value.
The organosolv pilot plant constructed at Fraunhofer CPB isalready capable of processing up to one metric ton of wood
per week.
Up to now, lignin has been directly used to produce
polyurethanes or phenolic resins. The question was what
other basic chemicals could be generated from lignin. The
researchers at Fraunhofer CBP now have an answer to that
as well. Using alkali-catalyzed depolymerization, they cleavecertain molecular bonds within the lignin, breaking down
the large lignin molecule into several smaller base chemicalmolecules. In a nutshell, they add alkaline sodium hydroxide
to the lignin, increase temperature and pressure – and end
up with a mixture of basic chemicals which they can purify
using physical processes such as filtration and distillation.
“Above all, the challenge in development was, once more, toscale up the processes,” explains Pufky-Heinrich. They haveachieved their goal. The pilot plant constructed at Fraunhofer
CBP can convert more than three hundred kilograms of lignin
or more than three metric tons of lignin solution per week
into various basic chemicals.
The lignin depolymerization process has met with great interest in both the pulp and paper and the chemical industries.
Whereas the pulp and paper industry is chiefly interested infinding out which basic chemicals can be derived most easily
from the lignin previously considered as a waste product, thechemical industry is examining the resulting basic chemicals
more closely, subjecting them to various tests. For instance,
project partners have used the basic chemicals to produce
high-quality polyurethane rigid foams, which, among otherthings, can be used as insulation material in the constructionindustry. In short, there are many areas in which lignin could
serve as a renewable alternative to fossil petroleum.

BIO-ECONOMY - 25

26 - INTERNATIONAL

Fraunhofer magazine 1.18

Non-stop
production
Fraunhofer
subsidiaryin Singapore
It is now 20 years since theFraunhofer Institute for Computer
Graphics Research IGD took thebold step of expanding to Singapore – at a time when internationalization was not yet high on theagenda of research institutions.
Born of a small project group cooperating with Nanyang Technological University (NTU), the Fraunhofer
Project Center for Interactive DigitalMedia was founded in 2010. Now
it is the legally independent subsidiary Fraunhofer Singapore – the firstof its kind in Asia.
Around 30 full-time staff conduct
research focusing on Industrie 4.0,
personal health, smart cities andvisual computing. Since 2017, theteam has been working closely
together with scientists from the
Fraunhofer Institutes for Secure
Information Technology SIT and for
Ceramic Technologies and Systems
IKTS. These joint projects add cybersecurity and ceramic-based additive
manufacturing to Fraunhofer Singapore’s portfolio.
“It’s a win-win situation. Partner
institutes benefit from our network
while extending our research inuseful directions,” explains Prof.
Wolfgang Müller-Wittig, who hasheaded up the project center since
2001.

Finding errors before production
judders to a halt: that was thegoal of the EU’s “SelSus” project,
for which the European Commission provided 5.4 million euros
in funding. On board the project
was the Fraunhofer Institute for
Manufacturing Engineering andAutomation IPA.
When machines break down
during production runs, it is not
only costly, but also impacts ontime delivery and thus harms acompany’s competitiveness. To
make wear visible before it is toolate, predict future defects and beable to carry out quick diagnostics
into the cause of an emergency,
Fraunhofer researchers worked
with an international team fromindustry and the research sector todevelop a decision-support system.
This consists of sensor networks,
databases in which the technicalparameters of the machines are
stored, and intelligent algorithms.
The new system is already being
used on a press line by the Italian
project partner Electrolux inPordenone. It helps workers there
to recognize and fix defects ontime. In another use case involving
the partners Harms & Wende from
Hamburg and IEF Werner from
Furtwangen, the SelSus system isable to send control signals to thecomponents; in this way, they cancontinue to work in “safe mode”
until their next maintenance for
instance. The system’s ability tomonitor itself and keep production running inspired the project’s
name, SelSus.

New anti­
biotics
Antibiotic-resistant bacteria claim
hundreds of thousands of lives
worldwide every year. To be able toeffectively treat infectious diseases,
medicine needs new kinds of therapeutic agents. Developing them,
however, takes a lot of time andmoney. The biggest obstacle is thelong path between the discovery ofnew, potentially healing substancesand clinical trials.
Researchers at the Fraunhofer­Institute for Toxicology and Experimental Medicine ITEM are seeking
to close the gap in the drug development chain, together with scientists from the Hannover Medical
School (MHH) and the Institute for
Glycomics (IfG) at Griffith University
in Queensland, Australia. In the
Fraunhofer International Consortium for Anti-Infective Research(iCAIR) project, the partners will
jointly identify and develop new
therapeutics.
Each of them will contribute theirown expert knowledge. Working
together, the specialists want todevise new therapeutic approaches
and, in selected lighthouse projects, identify active substances
to combat the infectious agents
Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Aspergillus fumigatus, Neisseria meningitidis and the influenza virus, anddevelop drugs up to the preclinicalproof of concept.

Major projectin KuwaitSpecialists from the Fraunhofer
Institute for Environmental, Safety
and Energy Technology UMSICHT
have been asked to draw up acomprehensive waste management
plan for Kuwait over the next four
years. The emirate’s Environment
Public Authority is providing
funding of 18 million euros forthis purpose. For the Fraunhofer-­
Gesellschaft, this research projectis its biggest to date in the Arabworld.
A team of experts has alreadybegun with the first step: a comprehensive evaluation to measure
the incidence, composition anddisposal channels of residential andindustrial waste, industrial waste
water and sewage sludge. At thesame time, they will investigate
the composition of landfills andtheir potential danger for people
and the environment. All data andanalyses will flow into a web-based
geoinformation system (Environmental Monitoring and Information
System for Kuwait “eMISK”). On
the basis of the data generated, anational waste management plan
will be drawn up for the next 20
years. Among other things, theplan will include targets for waste
avoidance and recycling and willencompass technology recommendations and a remediation concept
for the landfills. The contact partner at Fraunhofer UMSICHT is
Dr. Peter Degener.

Fraunhofer magazine 1.18

Lightweight
design­solutions
Together into the future: At the
Fraunhofer Project Center for
Composites Research, experts
from the Fraunhofer Institute for
Chemical Technology ICT develop
fiber composite materials for lightweight design applications in theautomobile industry in cooperation
with materials scientists at the wellknown South Korean Ulsan National
Institute of Science and Technology(UNIST). The project center, which islocated only 14 kilometers from thecenter of the industrial metropolisof Ulsan, was founded in 2016; Ulsan Metropolitan City invested 15.5
million euros in its establishment.
New technologies are needed tobring sustainable mobility to South
Korea. The country is at the technological vanguard when it comesto reducing the emissions and theweight of vehicles and electrifying
their powertrains. Ulsan is the mostimportant industrial hub for thisactivity. Among other things, it ishome to one of the world’s largest
automobile assembly plants.
German and South Korean researchers are now working together
on processing methods for fiber
composite materials, new material
solutions and the translation oflightweight design solutions intolarge-scale production.
Through the project center, Fraunhofer gains access to an innovative
growth hub for the automobile
industry in Asia along with insights
into market developments there.
This acquisition of know-how canbe employed for the direct benefitof German and European customers and facilitate their entry to the
Korean market.

Open­Innovation
Platform
The United Nations Agenda 2030
entails a set of ambitious goals;
from eradicating poverty andhunger to strengthening peace all
around the globe and initiating an
era of sustainable development.
The Sustainable Development
Agenda includes 17 goals (SDGs),
among them renewable energy,
improved infrastructure, quality
education and access to clean
drinking water.
The Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft wants
to help achieve the SDGs throughan Open Innovation Platform:“The platform facilitates swift
matchmaking between expertiseand know-how among Fraunhofer
Institutes, the private sector, as
well as start-ups in less developed
regions that do not have access toresearch and development services,” explains Dominik Reinertz, ateam member of the International
Business Development department
at Fraunhofer.
By offering a combination ofresearch findings and expertise on
local realities, the platform aims at
enabling efficient problem solving.
The Open Innovation Platform
not only strives to bring together
suitable collaboration partners but
also to help find the right funding
opportunities.
The platform will go live at the endof November on the occasion of
the General Assembly of WAITRO,
the World Association of Industrial
and Technological Research Organizations.

INTERNATIONAL - 27

Wind poweron the up
China is increasingly turning towind power. More and more
offshore wind farms are being built
in coastal waters. In the provinceof Fujian, the China Three Gorges
Corporation Fujian Branch CTG
is planning the construction of
two wind parks, which will have a
combined output of 2.8 gigawatts.
Now Fraunhofer technology is being deployed to precisely measurewind conditions and thus predict
the electricity yield.
Two LiDAR buoys from the Fraunhofer Institute for Wind Energy
Systems IWES have already beendelivered to China. The floating
LiDAR technology – the abbreviation stands for Light Detection andRanging – makes it possible to measure wind speeds above the ocean
up to a height of 200 meters. A
laser beam sent out from the buoy
and reflected from the particles
in the atmosphere measures the
speed of air particles (aerosols). The
Chinese company Titan Technologies Corporation has been tasked
with installing the buoys and collecting and evaluating the measurement data on behalf of CTG.
“We’ve been working with Fraunhofer for some years and appreciate their proven solutions, which
are highly deployable even undercomplex operational conditions,”
explains John Feng, Chairman of
the Titan Technologies Corporation
and a member of the IWES advisorycommittee. The collaboration with
the Chinese partner is promising
for Fraunhofer in many respects:
Titan Technologies Corporation
can spread word of its experienceswith the new technology in Asia;
moreover, measurement campaigns
increase industrial acceptance ofthe technology.

Security incyberspace
How can we protect data andIT systems against unauthorizedaccess and attacks? This question
is becoming increasingly importantfor businesses and ordinary citizens. Consequently, cybersecurity
solutions are very much in demand.
To improve the chances of start-ups
being successful, the Fraunhofer­Institute for Secure Information
Technology SIT has teamed up with
the Hebrew University of Jerusalem
in Israel to found a new initiative:
the Hessian-Israeli Partnership
Accelerator HIPA enables young researchers from Germany and Israel
to jointly develop solutions for practical security problems that arise inindustry and society generally.
Israel is known for its many successful start-ups; moreover, theHebrew University is one of theleading universities in the field ofcybersecurity. Fraunhofer SIT is amember of the Center for Researchin Security and Privacy (CRISP) in
Darmstadt, the largest institution
for applied cybersecurity researchin Europe.
The young experts who take part in
the three-month program not only
receive methodical training andmentoring in the technical subject
matter, but also learn how the different approaches in Germany andIsrael can be combined. Students
can apply for the second HIPA
round up until November 30, 2018.
Further information:www.cybertech.fraunhofer.de28 - DIGITALIZATION

Fraunhofer magazine 1.18

Simple, fast and efficient   –courtesy of blockchain

T-shirts made in Bangladesh, Colombian coffee, computers made in China – global trade
has certainly snowballed over the last three decades. But business across national borders is still astonishingly complex with piles of paperwork to contend with. Blockchain
technology could simplify and fast-track international trade.

Shanghai‘s container port
is one of the world‘s mostadvanced. © iStock

Text: Dr. Sonja Endres

When a German company orders tablets in­China, it is usually a letter of credit that securesthe deal. Two banks, one serving as a proxy forthe exporter and the other for the importer,
monitor the transaction as impartial arbiters.
They see to it that the exporter gets paid when
the goods ship out as agreed. The importer, inturn, only has to settle the bill once the shipment leaves on time, in the quantity and quality
specified in the contract. It is up to the exporterto furnish evidence that the transaction satisfies
the terms of the contract. This stack of documents can include a waybill, a bill of lading,an export packing list and so on. Today these
documents are still consigned to snail mail.
Banks and trading partners shun email; it is justtoo vulnerable to manipulation.

“In some cases, the paperwork costs more thanit does to deliver the goods,“ says Prof. Gilbert
Fridgen from the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied
Information Technology FIT. He holds workshops
to familiarize the business and industry community with blockchain technology. Fridgen andhis team at the Fraunhofer Blockchain Lab havejoined forces with experts from Norddeutsche
Landesbank to develop a prototype that enables
paperless trading across the globe. With thebenefit of blockchain, every step of an international deal from ordering to delivery can be
documented securely and transparently.

A distributed database
Blockchain is a distributed database of sorts.
Each blockchain user stores a complete data re-cord as a set of cryptographically linked blocks.
When one user adds data, the blockchain
is updated for all users by way of a consensus mechanism. “This distributed consensus
mechanism, paired with cryptographically linked
blocks, ensures data in a blockchain cannot be
manipulated,“ says Prof. Wolfgang Prinz, deputy
director of Fraunhofer FIT, by way of explanation. All users would be instantly alerted should
anyone attempt to change blockchain contents.
Blockchain can capture every step of a process,securely and irreversibly, with all the attendantdata and documents. It is the perfect medium
for international commerce and many otherapplications, for example, corporate documentation. “Auditing could be so much faster, easierand cheaper if all the relevant documents were

Fraunhofer magazine 1.18

loaded to a blockchain,“ says Fridgen. It provides
an accurate record of who did what, when andhow. “Everyone who took part in our workshops
was all ears when they heard that. The cost ofaudits often runs up into millions, particularly inhighly regulated industries.“
Blockchain is an intriguing prospect for any
company with a business model based on positions of trust. “Blockchain is not yet a substitutefor banks, notaries or auditors. But the technology does offer a lot of potential in these areas,“says Prinz. Blockchain can make workflows
easier, faster, safer and more efficient. It canbe put to beneficial use in the import/export
business and for other step-by-step transactions
where the contracting parties still have to fillout and print forms, and then wait for collateral
securities.
Another powerful feature of blockchain is thatit enables a technology called smart contracts.
These software programs automatically executethe terms of an agreement when the stipulated
conditions are met. For example, the lack of averified payment in a blockchain could prompta smart contract to keep a leased car‘s doors
locked. With this automated relationship be-

tween performance and obligations, it would betechnically impossible to breach a contract andno need for litigation to enforce claims.
Blockchain also poses a challenge for providersof online trading platforms. The new technology could enable the buyer and seller toengage in secure transactions directly, without
added protection from the platform‘s operator.
“Blockchain technology could be used to create
a new generation of the Internet. The Internetof Things that we‘re talking about these days
would be joined by an Internet of Trust andValues,“ says Prinz with conviction.

Reliable proof of origin
For the logistics industry, blockchain is more
promise than threat. It could document adelivery chain from end to end to guarantee
the transported object‘s authenticity. “Thereis already a blockchain solution for diamondshipments,“ says Prinz. Similar blockchain
solutions could serve to authenticate the originof medicines and food products and verify theconditions under which they were shipped, forexample, to prove that the cold chain was notinterrupted.

DIGITALIZATION - 29

Prinz and Fridgen are working on a wide
range of applications with their colleagues
Prof. ­Thomas Rose, Prof. Nils Urbach and theirteams in the Fraunhofer Blockchain Lab. One
is a blockchain-enabled jukebox with playlists
compiled by group consensus. An entertaining
gateway to the world of blockchain, it conveys
the technology’s basic functions to business­
people who are interested in learning more
about it. Another project features the BSCW
groupware platform developed by FIT and­OrbiTeam. The “Blockchain for Education”
solution that has been realized together with
the Fraunhofer Academy and the TÜV Rheinland
Academy enables the registration and verfication of education certificates. This solution iscurrently being extended towards the certification of products.
“We have already identified many potential
applications with the support of the people whohave attended our workshops,“ says Fridgen.
“As yet, we are still working with prototypes,
but this development may go quickly. So, it isimportant to act now, adapting business models
to this new technology and using it to optimize
processes.“

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Fraunhofer magazine 1.18

From computer
to thinker
In the factory, office and everyday life, artificial
intelligence systems are set to assist us in ever more­tasks. They will trade shares for us, drive our cars,
diagnose our medical problems and answer our questions
at call centers. These are all driven by one key technology: machine learning. A new study by the FraunhoferGesellschaft shows how Germany is positioned in thisstrategically important technology of the future.
Text: Franz Miller

The headlines in recent times have been startling:“Hello, this is AI speaking”, “Google predicts
when people will die” and “Who is liable when
AI is responsible for mistakes?” A predictable
media circus breaks out every time a computer
defeats us in board games like chess or GO, ineGames like DOTA2 and most recently in debates. And the same old myths get retold about
the battle of man against machine. People haveradically different views on artificial intelligence(AI). Critics invoke the coming jobs crash andwarn of a future in which machines will ultimately control us, while enthusiasts rhapsodize in big
company adverts about the fantastic future we’ll
be enjoying thanks to artificial intelligence.
“The debate about artificial intelligence is often
typified by half-knowledge, assumptions, fears
and myths, but also by exaggerated expectations,” stresses Prof. Stefan Wrobel, head of the
Fraunhofer Institute for Intelligent Analysis andInformation Systems IAIS. “Education is what isneeded.” He adds: “Public acceptance of machinelearning techniques is crucially important to ad-vancing their widespread use.” This is something
the new Fraunhofer study Machine Learning,commissioned by the German Federal Ministry of
Education and Research, is keen to address. From
the outset, the AI researchers clearly emphasizethat they are not in the business of building
artificial brains or artificial people, any more thanaircraft manufacturers are interested in creating
artificial birds. They are developing machines thatare capable of learning and – similar to humans –solving elementary cognitive tasks.
The new technologies have long since arrived
in our everyday lives. Virtual assistants like Siri,
Alexa or Cortana have already become theindispensable housemates of many families.
Cut them off from the network, however, andthey become dumb in both senses of the word;when asked questions, all they can do is forward them on to gigantic data centers, where
they are processed and the data collected. If you
order a pizza over the Internet, you‘ll find yourself communicating with a chatbot simulationof a human. Soon we will scarcely know if it‘sa computer we‘re talking to on the phone. The
number of situations in which we will encounterlearning systems in the future is huge.
The breakneck advances in artificial intelligence
were set off by the new machine learning (ML)methods known as Deep Learning, which aremodeled on artificial neural networks. By training on vast amounts of data, these systems aredeveloping astonishing capabilities. Ultimately,such techniques are responsible for the enormous strides made in speech, text, image andvideo processing.

The global digital race to getthere first
The starting gun has been fired on a global race
to harness these economically and strategicallycrucial technologies, primarily between the USA
and China. Master these technologies faster andmore effectively than anyone else and you’ll bea winner in the age of Industrie 4.0, the Internetof Things and robotic cars.

Fraunhofer magazine 1.18

“Machine learning –­competencies, applications
and research needs”
The study is based on a research project
funded by the German Federal Ministry of
Education and Research (BMBF) and was
conducted by the Fraunhofer Institute forIntelligent Analysis and Information Systems
IAIS, the Fraunhofer Center for International
Management and Knowledge Economics
IMW, and Fraunhofer headquarters. It
presents a condensed introduction to themost important machine learning concepts
and methods, gives an overview of current
challenges and the issues that need to beresearched and describes Germany’s position in the application of machine learning.

www.bigdata.fraunhofer.de/
ml-studie© fotolia

In September 2016, five companies – Google,
Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft and IBM – joined
forces to form the “Open Artificial Intelligence”
research alliance. China adopted a plan in July
2017 to become the world leader in all areas of
AI by 2030. The strategic importance of AI has
also been recognized by the German government. It is currently formulating its Artificial
Intelligence Master Plan, which should be completed by the fall of this year.
Learning machines are regarded as a criticaltechnology in the digital transformation of theeconomy and society. There is hardly a sector
that the technology will not radically change:
industrial production, medicine, law, finance,
process control, logistics, customer management and transport. Learning machines analyze
images, research documents, advise us how toinvest, optimize processes in industry, detect defects before malfunctions occur, and as robots,work hand-in-hand with humans. “The potentialof ML-based products is particularly promisingfrom the viewpoint of Industrie 4.0, for example

in industrial analytics and forward-looking optimization of production processes,” notes Prof.
Thorsten Posselt from the Fraunhofer Center
for International Management and Knowledge
Economy IMW.
In machine learning, “knowledge” is generated
from “experience”. Take cats as an example.
The learning algorithm forms patterns in theneural net from thousands of images that havebeen labeled as portraying cats. Using thesepatterns, it can recognize cats, even if only
­partially seen in the image. A crucial factor
to the quality of the knowledge learned by
the system is how much sample data it hasaccess to. And that is why machine learning ismost effective when vast quantities of images,
documents and speech recordings are madeavailable to it. This leads to systems that learn
to identify breast cancer, heart disease, osteoporosis and the first signs of skin cancer frommedical images.

Strong in fundamentals, weak inimplementation
In the study, the researchers analyze publicationand patent statistics to provide evidence forhow effectively Germany is taking advantage ofmachine learning. They show that Germany iswell positioned in basic research but has deficits
in converting this into products for the market. The comparatively low number of patentapplications filed in Germany reflects this. The
large technology companies in the USA, whichhave access to enormous volumes of data, boast
unassailable advantages over German midsizedcompanies, which have only a limited databaseat their disposal. Because access to data is crucial for competitiveness, their only recourse is to

DIGITALIZATION - 31

exchange their data with others. But this is only
acceptable when use of the data is controlled
and protected.
The other major challenge for Germany, theexperts warn, is its lack of skilled employees.
Insufficient numbers of data scientists andmachine-learning specialists severely threaten
Germany’s ability to compete. An extremely
important research objective is to explain just
how learning systems take decisions. Experts callthis “explainable AI”. The intention is to identify
how the systems make their decisions. Other
areas that researchers are keen to explore are“machine learning with limited data” and “machine learning with additional knowledge fromexperts”. Additional knowledge can compensate
for missing data and increase traceability.
The numerous legal and ethical issues need
to be clarified in tandem. Who is liable forpotential damage and errors? Who is responsible for the content generated? Who holds the
copyright? Why did the machine decide thisway and not the other? Are particular people
discriminated against? What can the system
decide for itself? How are data and consumer
protection guaranteed?
The central ethical challenge is to design
systems in a way that is consistent with the­principles determining our view of society, law
and our values. “It would never be acceptable
for an AI to behave less ethically, less morally,
less correctly, less socially acceptably than ahuman being,” emphasizes AI expert Stefan
Wrobel. If this challenge is met, learning machines will be accepted as valuable assistants
and not perceived as an assault on our human
ignorance.

Machine learning at Fraunhofer
Fraunhofer is committed to anchoringmachine learning in Germany and supporting companies in strategically implementing
it. Both in Germany and in Europe, many
­Fraunhofer Institutes develop key AI technologies along with their applications.
These include machine learning methods forindustrial applications and the deployment ofcognitive systems in cybersecurity, as well as
further research into artificial neural networks.
In addition, Fraunhofer supports companies

in meeting current challenges, for example
through its new Machine Learning ResearchCenter. Researchers are working on transparent and robust approaches to strategically integrate AI into production, business and sales
processes. The Fraunhofer Big Data Alliance is
responding to the shortage of skilled workers
with an extensive training and certification
program for data scientists, which can becompleted through modular course study
accompanying full-time employment.

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Fraunhofer magazine 1.18

“We’re far from the endof this development”
An interview with Prof. Dr. Stefan Wrobel, directorof the Fraunhofer Institute for Intelligent Analysis
and Information Systems IAIS and professor ofcomputer science at the University of Bonn, about
opportunities, challenges and the acceptance ofartificial intelligence.

Prof. Dr. Stefan
Wrobel. © Intuitive
Fotografie Köln

Interview by Anne-Marie Tumescheit

What exactly is artificial intelligence?
Intelligence is a key attribute of human beings – one wetend to credit humans with possessing exclusively. Now, if
machines are able to do things that we would generally classify as intelligent, we call this artificial intelligence. The term
currently encompasses machines that are able, for instance,
to interpret images or respond appropriately to spoken
statements; it even refers to seemingly simple things like thedigital assistants on our mobile phones.

Where do you think the boundary lies
between AI and machine learning?
­
Right at the dawn of artificial intelligence, AI pioneer Alan
Turing knew that it would hardly be practical to program
intelligent computers down to the very last detail. As early as
1950, he wrote that there must be a faster method – namely
machine learning. With these methods, computers are able
to learn from observations, existing data and examples,
thereby improving their performance. This means reducing
the range of human work. And that we can train intelligent
systems.

Can these intelligent computer systems becompared with human intelligence?
You can always compare two things, even if they are different in nature. Just as an airplane doesn’t fly like a bird, acomputer doesn’t think like a person. We have to observe
the outcomes and then judge whether we would classify
them as equally intelligent, less intelligent or more intelli-gent than what a human would accomplish. In this regard,
computers have already achieved major breakthroughs, suchas winning the game show Jeopardy or cracking the game
GO – to say nothing of chess.

Would it be accurate to say that, forthings like strategy and image recognition, AI is now just as good as people, oreven better, but that humans still havethe upper hand when it comes to creative
endeavors?
I think it’s no longer quite so easy to make this generalization
today. It depends on whether a computer can actually learn
an activity from examples. Can the requisite knowledge bemodeled in advance? Whether the implementation theninvolves a creative element or not – that’s a deeper philosophical question.

In online interactions, we must now ask:
How long does it take me to identify AI inaction? For customer service and supportqueries, the first thing we encounter nowadays is often a chat bot.
We cannot confirm artificial intelligence in a philosophicalsense; all we can do is demonstrate the nondistinguishabilityof human-human interactions from human-machine ones. Of
course this can be very useful for practical purposes. If you
consider companies that would like to use AI for customer
contact, for instance: machines can already provide simple
functionalities and straightforward answers at the first level.

Fraunhofer magazine 1.18

Neural network is another buzzword in the
AI community. What does it mean?
Neural networks are a machine learning method originally inspired by biology. The term refers to a sequence of functions
that calculate outputs over several layers from a certain set of
inputs. Over the past few years, we have acquired the ability
to train such networks even when they have a wide varietyof parameters – into the hundreds of thousands, or evenmillions – across multiple levels.
Similarly to how the human brain works, this kind of network
is able to determine, structure and represent intermediate
results in a completely different way, allowing it to accomplish much higher performances. This is made possible byalgorithmic progress and the massive amount of training data
we have available today. The selection of this data is hugely
important, especially when we decide not to model knowledge in advance, thus waiving the opportunity to incorporate
certain guiding principles into the system. Another importantfactor is the strong growth in computing power.

We often read of “strong” and “weak” AI.
What exactly is the difference?
This discussion has been around for many decades, andthere is no universally recognized rule. The debate around“strong” and “weak” AI is about whether we classify AI
merely as ­“exhibiting intelligent behavior,” which would
describe “weak” AI, or whether AI ultimately functions justlike a human mind, which we would characterize as “strong”
AI. This then gives rise to the related question as to whether
we would even attribute consciousness or accord personal rights to an artificially intelligent system – be that in an­emotional, philosophical or merely legal sense. Behind thislurk the fascinating questions: In a profound sense, what
is intelligence and what is creativity? How do we want toaccept and treat artificially intelligent systems? It’s worth
discussing these questions in depth.

Does this raise the question as to whether an AI system must behave ethically or
morally?
It would never be acceptable if an AI system were to behave
in a less ethical, less moral, less correct, less socially acceptable manner than a human. Of course we have to apply atleast the same standards to AI systems as we do to people. In
fact, we should apply higher standards, as AI systems do not
get tired and are never emotional or lacking concentration.
What that means in specific cases will, of course, be highly
contested. We’re all familiar with the debate about self-driving cars. However, I think the discussion will become lesscontroversial precisely because of the capabilities and reliabilityof machine systems. If AI systems prevent dangerous situations

DIGITALIZATION - 33

from arising in the first place, we have to view that as a plus.
Essentially, I hope that society as whole engages in a thoroughdebate about what artificially intelligent systems should do
and should be able to do and what they should not do.

How are companies already using AI today?
In the field of image processing, for example, intelligent solutions have long been used in industrial environments, andnow they have become even smarter thanks to their ability
to learn – for instance, machine vision systems are alreadyin operation across the whole spectrum of manufacturing,industry and visual inspection. Applications that are more familiar to the general public include systems for autonomousvehicles, chat bots and user interfaces – for example, themuch-improved ability of computers to process speech.

What is the current state of research in AI?
Over the past few years, we’ve seen impressive progress inthe possibilities of very parameter-rich, deep neural networks
that we can actually train. And we’re far from the end of thisdevelopment. In the next few years, it will become importantto also reincorporate other, knowledge-based AI techniques.
This is a research area that we have singled out as a priority
at Fraunhofer, too.
Take medicine for example, where it’s still very costly to procure the requisite data for large-scale analyses. Or take industry,where medium-sized enterprises simply do not have millions of
posts of a video or picture agency at their disposal, rather just
500 or 1000 individual classifications that were compiled inhouse. This will be a major and highly important development.

What do you think companies should do now
as regards AI?
Companies should apprise themselves of the current possibilities of AI and look at examples – and then think about
how they can use these opportunities. This must happen
at the highest level, because it affects the fundamental
design of the company’s business model and the company’s
positioning. You can’t become a business that uses artificial
intelligence if you aren’t also a data-oriented, data-driven,
digitalized company. If data is the key resource you want towork with, then this data must be secure. If it is, in fact, anasset, a trump card that you want to use to operate in themarket, then you have to consider the following: Who can
you share this data with, with whom do you want to build
up these business models? What data are you allowed tocollect? What is the cyber security situation? Accordingly,
my simple message is: Start now. Invest now, build up skills
and know-how, look for the right partners. This is why
Fraunhofer integrates AI support into our consulting for
digitalization and for big data, as these questions are closelyinterrelated.

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Fraunhofer magazine 1.18

Fully equipped
for spaceSpace travel should be safe, cost-effective andenvironmentally friendly. A new radar system forthe detection of space debris, special software
for the vulnerability analysis of satellites, theversatile small satellite ERNST and a high-performance eco-propellant all combine to make thispossible.
Text: Dr. Sonja Endres

ERNST is about half thesize of a beer crate, making it one of the larger
small satellites.
© Fraunhofer EMI

Fraunhofer magazine 1.18

In the blockbuster movie Gravity, the characters Dr. Ryan
Stone and Matt Kowalski – played by Sandra Bullock andGeorge Clooney – learned to their distress how devastating
pieces of debris in orbit can be. And in real life, too, debris
hurtling around in space damages satellites and space stations.

The rack-while-scan mode
allows GESTRA to track
detected objects while
simultaneously scanningspace for further objects.
© Fraunhofer FHR

Back in 1978, American astronomer Donald Kessler warned
about the common practice of leaving large objects suchas burned-out rocket stages, payload fairings and disused
satellites to orbit the Earth uncontrolled. He pointed out thatevery collision generated a large number of pieces of debris,which – in a chain reaction – would lead to countless more
collisions in turn. Ultimately, this would render near-Earthorbits unusable, argued Kessler. Even launch vehicles would
be unable to traverse this zone collision-free on their way tohigher orbits – space travel would be at an end.
Although the amount of debris in space has increased
considerably since the 1970s, happily this scenario has yet totranspire. Nevertheless, orbiting debris poses a serious threat
to everything that moves in space. To avoid this debris, it isimportant to know where it is.

Safe travels thanks to GESTRA and TIRA
“Using the GESTRA surveillance radar, which was developed
at Fraunhofer FHR, objects and pieces of debris can bereliably detected in low Earth orbit up to an orbital altitudeof 3000 kilometers,” says Helmut Wilden, Team Leader for
Multifunctional RF Sensor Technology at the Fraunhofer­Institute for High Frequency Physics and Radar Techniques
FHR in Wachtberg near Bonn.
While GESTRA is able to scan large regions of space aroundthe clock, the TIRA radar system – also from Fraunhofer FHR– observes individual objects more closely (see page 38).
“GESTRA can detect unknown objects, determine their number and calculate their orbits. More precise information about
their size, shape or possible damage is supplied by TIRA.” In
this way, the two complementary radar systems supplement
U.S. orbit catalogs, which have been the main sources of
information to date. “NASA does not disclose all its data.
Therefore, it is important to be able to access our own measurement data. We’re proud that DLR Space Administration
entrusted us with this official task on behalf of the German
government,” says Dr. Nadya Ben Bekhti, co-project manager
for GESTRA at FHR.
GESTRA consists of a transmission system and a receiversystem, each of which are enclosed by protective casing
known as a shelter. “The antenna technology is based on
the phased array principle, which involves the pooling ofradiation energy from numerous individual antennas. Using

the beams – or “lobes” as we call them – you can not only
scan large areas very quickly and flexibly for objects but also
set aside one lobe for object tracking, while the remainder
continue searching independently of the tracking lobe. This
track-while-scan mode is optimized for use in space surveillance,” explains Ben Bekhti.
GESTRA is unique in being extremely powerful and yet mobile. It can be transported anywhere using a heavy goods vehicle. “In this way, we can respond to changed environmental
conditions,” says Ben Bekhti. As soon as integration of theindividual components into the shelters has been completed
and everything has been successfully tested, GESTRA will be
brought to its installation site in the summer of 2019. “It is
expected that GESTRA will be installed on the Schmidtenhöhesite in the German city of Koblenz. The radar system will beconnected to the German Armed Forces’ Space Situational
Awareness Center in Uedem in the far west of Germany, from
where it can be operated by remote control,” says Wilden.

Vulnerability analyses and intelligent
designWhen collisions with pieces of debris are unavoidable, robustmaterials and clever designs help protect satellites against
serious damage. The new PIRAT software developed by the
Fraunhofer Institute for High-Speed Dynamics, Ernst-Mach-Institut, EMI in Freiburg calculates whether the satellite design
or individual components are able to withstand impacts fromspace junk. To do this, PIRAT takes into account the flight

SPACE - 35

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Fraunhofer magazine 1.18

Small satellites – sometimes called cube sats on account of
their shape – have a standard size of one unit (roughly 10 x
10 x 10 cubic centimeters). Consequently, they fit perfectly
into special containers which are stacked on top of eachother in the launch vehicles. The disadvantage of cube sats istheir limited performance. For example, they cannot be fittedwith a large solar panel surface for generating power. In
addition, the payload weight is also limited. As a result, there
has been a trend toward building larger cube sats.

Conventional rocket
propellant causes acidrain. © ESA – David
Ducros“ERNST consists of twelve units, making it about half of thesize of a beer crate. The format is ideal, because it facilitates
the carrying of more complex payloads and offers higher
performance, while also ensuring compatibility with commercially available cube sat components,” says Schimmerohn.
Despite its larger size, ERNST still fits in the standard transport
containers used in launch vehicles, filling their space to the
maximum.

path of the planned mission and the particle collisions to be
expected on that course. Combining this with the experimental simulation of collisions, the researchers at EMI create
vulnerability analyses and protection concepts. Dr. Martin
Schimmerohn, group manager for spacecraft technology atEMI, explains: “PIRAT allows us to determine the failure probability of individual components – also those inside the satellite – if a piece of space debris pierces the external wall upon
collision and spreads out as a cloud of fragments. Throughthe clever placement of components and the adding of thinprotective layers, you can find a safe design with minimum
impact on the overall system.”

ERNST: the quick and cost-effective wayof traveling to space
So that yet more space debris is not created in the future,
today’s engineers ensure that new satellites are able to re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere under their own power to burnup there when their mission is over. The small satellite ERNST
will also be equipped with technology to allow re-entry. In
developing ERNST, EMI scientists have created a small satellitethat is lightweight, reliable and versatile – reducing the development time and costs. “Generally, several small satellites
ride piggyback with large launch vehicles – this allows evensmall groups of researchers with limited financial resources tocarry out tests in space. In research, this is an important step
forward for us,” says Thomas Loosen, Head of the Fraunhofer
Space Alliance Administrative.

Fraunhofer Space Alliancewww.space.fraunhofer.de/en.html“The small satellite is designed as a modular platform, whichis reproducible and can be individually adapted to meet theneeds of particular missions,” adds Schimmerohn. “We’ve
procured flight-proven technology, such as the on-board
computer, and combined it with our own technologicaldevelopments, such as a filter wheel and a data processing
unit.”

Expanding possibilities in space
For its mission, which begins at the start of 2021, ERNST will
be equipped with an infrared camera for Earth observation.
Interestingly, the camera is mounted on a special bracket
known as an optical bench, which was manufactured using
metallic 3D printing technology. 3D printing methods afford
new, almost unlimited design freedom as well as shorter production times. They have previously been used only to a very
limited extent in the space sector on account of the stringent
safety and quality standards.
“It’s not the 3D components that are problematic, butconventional verification techniques. Many tests are based on
optical methods, which do not work with the comparatively
rough surfaces of additively manufactured parts,” explains
Schimmerohn. “The loads on the components are greatest
during the launch of the rocket. In comprehensive tests, weestablished that the optical bench withstands these loads.”
Schimmerohn and his team used the advantages that additive manufacturing techniques offer. Using intelligent algorithms, they developed a light, organically appealing structurethat adapts optimally to the environmental conditions. “On
the outside of the optical bench, we created a three-dimensional surface made up of many small pyramids. This gave
us a larger radiating surface, via which the heat generated

Fraunhofer magazine 1.18

during operation of the satellite can escape into space. In
this way, we could combine various functions in a uniquecomponent.”
Schimmerohn is convinced that additive manufacturingmethods will be used increasingly in space technology in the
future – not instead of, but as a useful complement to conventional techniques. “Equally, small satellites will not replacelarge ones, but will substantially expand our possibilities inspace.” Schimmerohn sees great potential especially in thecollecting and connecting of heterogenous data. In addition,
many small satellites can be connected to each other to form
larger constellations, enabling them to provide services suchas full coverage Earth observation in high quality.

Environmentally friendly launches
So that Earth does not suffer from the increasing activity inspace, researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Chemical
Technology ICT in Pfinztal near Karlsruhe have now developed a rocket propellant that does not use ammonium
perchlorate (AP), which is harmful to the environment andto human health. AP is used in conventional propellants as
an oxidizer, which ensures that enough oxygen is available
for combustion. The problem is that it produces tons ofhydrochloric acid as a waste product – during the launch of
the European Ariane or Vega rockets, around 70 tons; during
the launch of the American Space Shuttle rocket, more than
80 tons. This acid gets into the environment and causes acidrain in the area around the rocket launch pads.
AP itself is also dangerous: it disrupts the human hormonalbalance and leads to various serious effects in organisms.

For transport, GESTRA’s
radar dome can be removed
and the antenna retracted.
© Fraunhofer FHR

For this reason, the European Commission is considering
whether to ban the production and use of AP. “With ourpropellant, which was developed in the joint European
project GRAIL, we offer an AP-free alternative that is just as
powerful,” says project manager Dr. Volker Gettwert. He andhis team replaced AP with ammonium dinitramide (ADN) –an oxidizer that was developed in Soviet laboratories in the
1970s. “ADN is commercially available in large quantities.
That is a big advantage compared to products we develop
ourselves, because there are often problems in upscaling thevolumes, in other words the step up from small quantities in
the laboratory to large quantities in the factory. That costs
time and money.”
However, it is not simply a matter of replacing AP either,because the new oxidizer also changes the characteristics ofconventional propellant. “ADN burns off much faster thanAP. We have to adjust the propellant mixture accordingly.
After all, the rate of combustion determines the amount ofgas that is produced – and more gas generates more thrust
for the rocket. The new propellant must also withstand thecompressive load generated during ignition. If it crumbles orcracks form, a huge surface is suddenly created. Then, much
more is burned than intended, the pressure in the combustion chamber rises and the whole thing can explode.”
The ICT team has managed to optimize the new propellant
so that its characteristics match those of conventional propellant. “That’s a big advantage, as it means that the rocket
propulsion systems do not have to be technically adapted
to be able to use the new propellant. The chances are goodthat the propellant will be used in space travel in the near
future.”SPACE - 37

38 - SPACE

Fraunhofer magazine 1.18

A lethal threat:
Space debris in orbit
Defective satellites, metal wreckage, wayward tools – countless objects are orbiting the Earth, putting commercial satellites and space
missions in harm’s way. Fraunhofer researchers are working on a way
to detect space-borne junk and pinpoint its exact position.
Text: Mehmet Toprak

No worries – it’s just garbage. Collect it, disposeof it and be done with it. However, this flotsam
is drifting in Earth orbit at altitudes of 1000 kilometers and higher. Metal scrap such as separated
rocket stages, defective satellites and other debris– even screwdrivers lost by astronauts working inspace – are circling the planet. There are at least
20,000 known objects, plus countless tiny bitsof detritus floating in orbit. Then again, “float”
may be a poor choice of word considering that
this junk is hurtling through space at a speed
approaching 30,000 kilometers an hour. At thatvelocity, a piece of metal measuring just one
centimeter across poses a lethal threat. It would
hit anything crossing its path with the force of a
midsized car doing 50 kilometers an hour.
Small wonder, then, that removing this flying
junk presents such a towering challenge. And
before these pieces can be rendered harmless,they have to be found first.

High-performance radar at­Wachtberg
That sounds like a job for TIRA (Tracking &Imaging Radar). There is nothing in Europe quite
like this space observation radar at Wachtberg
operated by the Fraunhofer Institute for HighFrequency Physics and Radar Techniques FHR.
Its centerpiece is an antenna with a diameter of
34 meters, shielded by a white dome-like shellcalled a radome.
The antenna rotates 360 degrees horizontallyand 90 degrees vertically. Weighing a hefty
240 metric tons, it completes a full turn in 15

seconds. TIRA was not built to keep an eye on
garbage, of course. It serves mainly to analyze
objects in space and detect asteroids and meteorites. TIRA also supports missions conducted by
space agencies from around the world.

50-kilometer range of the object to achieve thesame resolution,“ says Leushacke.

However, the task of detecting scrap in orbit ismoving up the priority list. This debris jeopardizes many satellites serving to broadcast TV
signals, communicate, navigate and watch theweather. Modern society has come to dependon all these high-tech satellites; we would be
lost without them.

The system works with imaging and tracking radar. Imaging radar produces detailed images of
the captured object; tracking radar determines
the orbit. Heads up, experts: The narrow-bandtracking radar operates at a transmission frequency in the L band (1.333 GHz); the imaging
radar in the Ku band (16.7 GHz). Data received
by the antenna are then evaluated. Leushackeand his team work with a company called
Hyperschall-Technologie Göttingen (HTG) to thisend. Its developers have programmed softwarethat simulates the motion of objects in orbit.
The program also simulates very complex tumbling patterns based on the FHR‘s radar data.
“These forecasts are so reliable and accuratethat we can predict how an object will behave
in one or two years,“ says Leushacke by way
of explanation. Every space mission requires
some lead time and therefore has to be carefullyplanned, so this predictive capability is vital.

Dr. Ludger Leushacke, head of the Radar forSpace Observation department at Wachtberg,
is proud of the antenna‘s remarkable performance: “The system detects objects just two
centimeters in diameter at a distance of 1000
kilometers.“ Thousands of these tiny pieces ofjunk are orbiting the planet. And every impact
creates new, even smaller fragments, for example, when out-of-service satellites collide.

The unique advantages of radar
Radar‘s physical properties are an asset whenit comes to determining the precise location ofeven very small objects. It detects objects in any
weather, day or night. Radar beams pierce thecloud cover, which optical telescopes cannot do
because they need light to work.
Also, distance is not a factor in radar images‘
resolution. Radar can reach out across 1000
kilometers to capture rich detail. “A typical
optical telescope would have to move within a

Simulation software to predict
position and rotation

Space-borne fiber lasers
The FHR has its colossal radar system, but colleagues at the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied
Optics and Precision Engineering IOF in Jenahave opted for something completely different.
They developed a remarkably powerful fiber
laser that detects oncoming objects in spacerather than from Earth. The IOF‘s laser is able tofire ultra-short bursts of light lasting just a few

Fraunhofer magazine 1.18

SPACE - 39

A collision with debris canwipe out a satellite.
© Fraunhofer FHR

The experts use existing wireframe models of objects
such as a satellite for comparison with radar images.
© Fraunhofer FHR

The enormous space observation radar at
Wachtberg finds objects measuring justtwo centimeters across.
© Fraunhofer FHR

40 - SPACE

Fraunhofer magazine 1.18

This is how Jena-Optronik‘s
RVS 3000 sensor “sees”
the International Space
Station ISS (simulated­image). This sensor data
helps the ATV transportmodule to dock. © ESA

What is a fiber laser?
Fiber lasers are solid-state lasers. A solid – inthis case, glass fibers – is “doped” with rareearths such as erbium or neodymium to create the active medium needed to generatea laser beam. These elements amplify light.
The medium is repeatedly bombarded withlight, which is reflected back from a mirror at
the end of the glass fiber to excite these elements. The light emitted by the first erbium
atom triggers a cascade, prompting all otheratoms to emit light. This creates an extremely bright and focused beam. Fiber lasers‘
peak power ranges up to several megawatts
and the quality of their beams far outstrips
that of CO2 lasers.
The ATV-5 control center in Toulouse. The
ATV transport module can be seen in thehuge display in the background. © ESA

billionths of a second at a rate of 10,000 times
per second. And it needs less than 10 watts of
input power to do this.
Jena-Optronik GmbH integrated this fiber laser
into its RVS 3000 sensor system. No larger thana shoe box, this system is built to travel in space
shuttles and transport modules. When these vehicles approach an object, the laser determines
its exact distance and rotation.
How does that work? Movable mirrors aim thetransmitted light signal towards the object, forexample, a defective satellite. Its surface reflects
the light, which a sensor then detects. The lightsignal is a range-finder – the system calculates
the distance based on the travel time to theobject and back. But the RVS 3000 can do a

lot more than that. Again, the laser emits morethan 10,000 bursts of light per second. At thesame time, the mirrors constantly change theirangles. The light beams sample the object’s surface much like a scanner, providing a set of data
points called a point cloud. Imaging processes
convert this cloud into a highly accurate 3D
image of the object. Dietmar Ratzsch, managing
director of the Jena-based high-tech manufacturer, says: “The system‘s sensors are extremely
sensitive; they even register a billionth of theemitted light intensity.”
The RVS 3000 serves not only to analyze spacedebris. The European Space Agency ESA, forexample, uses the Jena-based company‘s technology to automatically dock the ATV transportmodule to the International Space Station ISS.

It is not enough for this laser to be powerfuland precise; it also has to be rugged enoughto take a lot of punishment. “One challenge
for us was to prepare the laser for the extreme
stress of deployment in space. The G forcesat launch, radiation in space and extreme
temperature fluctuations put a lot of strain
on the optoelectronic instrument,“ notes
Dr. Thomas Schreiber from the Fiber LaserGroup at ­Fraunhofer IOF.
Could this fiber laser blow away space flotsamwith a heat ray? The laser cannons of sci-fi flicks
are a very long way off yet. The best way todispose of space debris today is to nudge theindividual objects out of their orbits so that theyslowly but safely sink into the atmosphere andincinerate on reentry.

Fraunhofer magazine 1.18

The French Myriade satellite
bus transports, controls andsupplies MERLIN with energy.
© CNES / illustration DavidDUCROS, 2016

SPACE - 41

25 times more harmful to the climate than carbon dioxide,
but it is – as yet – much rarer in Earth‘s atmosphere. Over the
past ten years, its concentration has risen sharply – and unexpectedly. Researchers are puzzled as to why. To find answers,
they have to measure where and in what quantity methane isreleased into Earth‘s atmosphere.
Previous satellite-based systems were unable to provide sufficiently reliable, high-resolution global measurements. They
relied on sunlight to detect methane. Light absorption gives
scientists an indication of the molecules present in the air,
but these measurements can only be taken in cloudless skieson the sun-facing side of the Earth.

Measuring methane anytime, anywhere

A climatewatchdog in space
Hailstorms, droughts, late frost – German winegrowers andfarmers are not alone in feeling the fallout from climatechange. Extreme weather is on the rise everywhere. A robust
new laser system that takes readings with unprecedented
accuracy is to be launched aboard the MERLIN climate satellite. The purpose of this Franco-German mission is togather data on the greenhouse gas methane.
Text: Dr. Sonja Endres

Methane, primarily a byproduct of decomposition, is emitted
from sewage, the stomachs of cows and landfills. Odorlessand colorless, this gas is also trapped in coal deposits. Whenreleased, it combines with air to form an explosive mixture
that has caused many accidents in mines. Vast quantities ofthis gas are imprisoned in the seabed at depths of more than
500 meters in an ice-like solid called methane hydrate. If thewater warms, these hydrates break down, liberating methanewith devastating consequences for the climate. Methane is“Our laser-based measuring system is independent of sunlight, so it can be used to measure anytime and anywhere,“says Hans-Dieter Hoffmann who is co-developing the newlaser technology at the Fraunhofer Institute for Laser Technology ILT in Aachen. “This mission aims to provide climate
scientists with accurate global data on methane distributions
so that they can better predict climate change for the prime
contractor Airbus Defence and Space.”
To this end, scientists at Fraunhofer ILT are developing a laserthat can transmit very precise single-frequency light pulses
to Earth. The measurements obtained this way enable thepresence and concentration of methane to be determined far
more accurately than in systems that rely on sunlight, but inboth cases they are based on light absorption. The laser pulse
can be set precisely to the absorption line of methane at apredetermined wavelength. “Every gas has its spectral fingerprint. It absorbs light particularly well or poorly at specificwavelengths. The important thing is to select wavelengths
at which other gases have no absorption line to be sure ofobtaining undistorted measurements,“ explains Hoffmann.
The laser has to shrug off temperature changes from minus 30
to plus 50 degrees Celsius and hold up to strong vibrations
if it is to operate reliably and maintenance-free throughout
a three-year space mission. “We developed optomechanicalcomponents for the laser such as mirror and lens mounts thatmeet these demands and retain their very precise settings.“
The air inside the laser must also be kept clean. “Adhesives
contaminate the air. Tiny particles detach, deposit on the mirrors and destroy the optics,“ explains Hoffmann. “That’s why
we used nothing but solder and screws to assemble the laser– an unprecedented technique that makes this system evenmore robust and therefore also an interesting prospect for
many industrial applications.“ The German part of the MERLIN
project is funded by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy under DLR contract 50 EP 1601.

42 - SPACE

Fraunhofer magazine 1.18

Microwave amplifiers improve
weather forecasts
In the years ahead, the European Space Agency (ESA) will send a number of new weather satellites into
space that will be able to measure key meteorological variables, such as precipitation, water vapor andtemperature, better than ever before. At the heart of these measurement devices are extremely sensitive
microwave amplifiers that were developed at the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Solid State Physics IAF.
These amplifiers can also detect very weak atmospheric signals that are important in improving the precision of weather forecasts.
Text: Tim Schröder

The amplifiers are made of indium
gallium arsenide, a semiconductormaterial. They are so sensitive thatthey detect even very weak microwave signals. © Fraunhofer IAF

Unlike a few decades ago, weather reports
today are remarkably reliable. Meteorologists
can now predict the weather for the next twoto three days quite accurately, thanks in no smallpart to the satellites that continuously survey
the Earth’s surface and atmosphere with their
sensitive instruments and transmit thousandsof current observation datasets back to Earth.
Meteorologists feed this data into computer
programs and use simulation calculations todetermine how the weather is most likely todevelop. But sensing the Earth from such highaltitudes is a challenge. The instruments must be
extremely sensitive in order to measure values
correctly from a distance of several hundred
kilometers. The better the sensors, the moreaccurate the measurements – and thus also theweather forecasts. This is why, in a few years,
the European Space Agency (ESA) will launch
the second generation of its MetOp (Meteorological Operational) satellites into space. There
will be six of these satellites, all equipped withmodern, improved measurement technology.

And onboard these satellites will be small butvery special technological components developed by the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied
Solid State Physics IAF in Freiburg: ultrasensitive
microwave amplifiers. Every object and every
surface emits microwaves, similar to the way
our bodies radiate heat that can be seen on an
infrared image. Water vapor, rain, fog and ice
crystals, all of which are of particular interestfor weather forecasts, also emit characteristic
microwave radiation. This radiation can be used
to determine the distribution of temperatureand moisture in our atmosphere, from the
Earth’s surface up to the highest atmosphericlayers. Cirrus clouds, which are composed of ice
crystals and are found high up in the atmosphere, also have a major impact on climate andweather.
And only the ultrasensitive amplifiers from
Freiburg are capable of measuring the microwaves they emit with a high degree of accuracy,
as this type of radiation is in a class of its own.

For one thing, microwaves oscillate at frequencies in the upper gigahertz range. To amplify
them, the components of the amplifier must be
particularly small. For another, the microwave
signals that radiate into space from the Earthand the atmosphere are very weak, measuring
just a few nanowatts, and thus require particularly sensitive amplifiers. “Our amplifiers overcome both of these challenges,” says Markus
Rösch, a research fellow at Fraunhofer IAF.
“At the core of these amplifiers are transistors
made of indium gallium arsenide, a semiconductor material with unique properties and highsensitivity, and one that we can manufacture
into ultrafast components.” One property ofindium gallium arsenide is that it barely restricts
the flow of electrons through the material, thus
reducing noise and enabling the amplifiers todetect even microwave signals with a strengthof just a few nanowatts.
These transistors – or more precisely their gateelectrodes – are the key component of theFraunhofer magazine 1.18

SPACE - 43

According to the current
launch schedule, theMetOp-SG satellites will
be placed in orbit from2021 onward – with the
Fraunhofer IAF microwave
amplifiers onboard.
© ESA–G. Porter,
CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

amplifiers. A gate electrode is a kind of current
valve that controls the flow of electrons throughthe transistor. The gate electrode in the IAF transistor is just 50 nanometers long. This is so smallthat the transistor can easily follow the ups anddowns of the high-frequency microwaves andthus also amplify them.
The researchers at Fraunhofer IAF have beenworking with indium gallium arsenide for many
years now and know how to deal with thischallenging material. For, unlike classical semiconductors like silicon, it is much more difficult
to work with. “Silicon readily lends itself to
producing components in large quantities withabsolutely identical characteristics,” says Rösch.
“Indium gallium arsenide is more obstinate, so
special care must be taken during production toensure that the components actually have thedesired properties. And the smaller the components are, the more challenging this becomes.”
The IAF researchers have developed a precisely
controlled manufacturing process in which theamplifier circuits are fabricated in 150 production
steps, with an electron beam being used to form
the smallest structures, the electrodes. There are
only a few companies or institutes in the worldthat can do this with this level of precision.
On the MetOp satellites, the amplifiers are usedin three different microwave receivers that measure various elements of the atmosphere, suchas water vapor, ice crystals and oxygen. Each ofthese elements emits microwave radiation in a
specific, characteristic frequency range. Oxygen,for instance, sends clear signals at around 54
gigahertz, while water vapor does so at around
183 gigahertz. IAF had to build amplifiers fora total of six frequency bands between 54 and229 gigahertz. This entailed designing and producing a completely new amplifier for each frequency range, with circuit components precisely
tailored to each frequency. “That was a major
challenge. Merely designing an amplifier takes
a good 14 days,” says Rösch. “And we actuallydesigned several amplifiers for each frequency

band so we could compare them and choose
the best one.” The subsequent characterization– analyzing and testing the amplifiers – was justas laborious.

Microwave amplifiers robust enoughto withstand a rocket launch
The amplifiers are currently in the qualification
phase, in which the components are rigorously
tested for utilization in space. As well as verifying conformance with strict quality specifications, the manufacturers of the MetOp instruments also test the transistors’ resistance to thevibrations produced during a rocket launch.
Markus Rösch is optimistic that the amplifiers
will successfully pass the qualification tests: “Thecomponents are remarkably robust. And with
our method, we can reliably produce structures
measuring 50 nanometers.” Still, it will be sometime yet before all tests are completed and the
MetOp satellites are ready to go into orbit. The
first launch is scheduled for 2021.

44 - ENERGY

Fraunhofer magazine 1.18

A triple-bladed colossus

Fraunhofer magazine 1.18

The world’s largest wind turbine recently
went up in Bremerhaven. This prototype,
operated by the Fraunhofer Institute forWind Energy and Energy System Technology
IWES, will provide key performance dataneeded to build tomorrow’s more economical
and reliable offshore wind farms.
Text: Frank Grotelüschen

Three rotor blades make their steady rounds in the wind. At
the top of a rotation, when a blade points vertically overhead, the wind turbine rises to its full height of 205 meters,
eclipsing Cologne Cathedral by nearly 50 meters. “It is thelargest rotating machine to ever be built by humankind. The
gondola is the size of an apartment building, and you canwalk 50 meters into the rotor blades without having to duck
your head,“ says Prof. Andreas Reuter, director of Fraunhofer
IWES.
This giant, which goes by the name of Adwen AD 8-180,
is Fraunhofer IWES‘s most recent major project. Erected
on a defunct Bremerhaven airfield, it has been generating
electricity since July. Given good wind conditions, its outputof eight megawatts of electricity can power around 15,000
households. Adwen is the name of the company that built
the prototype; the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs andEnergy pitched in with 18.5 million euros to fund the field
test. With a rotor diameter of 180 meters – roughly twice
the wingspan of an Airbus 380 – this prototype is currently
the world‘s tallest wind turbine, topping the previous record-holder‘s mark by 16 meters. Equipped with an array of
sensors, this system will provide vital data to help answer the
Fraunhofer researchers‘ questions: How do we maximize theoperating efficiency of such gigantic machines and how dothey interact with the power grid?

ENERGY - 45

In the early 2000s, the first offshore turbines delivered two
megawatts; today‘s models achieve five to six. Manufacturers
are now boldly going where none has gone before – to thenext generation of eight-megawatt systems.
The AD 8-180 is a key prototype for this new generation.
The industry usually builds wind farms far out at sea; thissystem went up on shore to enable easy access. It stands on
terra firma, just a few hundred meters from another Bremer­
haven IWES facility, the DyNaLab gondola test station. This iswhere engineers put the AD 8-180‘s powertrain through its
paces. Enormous electric motors and hydraulic rams batteredand turned the 777-ton structure for a full year, simulating
extreme situations such as the fierce impact of gale-force
squalls.
Firmly anchored in a 1700 m³ concrete foundation in thefishing harbor, the system may now be tested under real-life
conditions, from gentle sea breezes to hurricane-force winds.
“We want to compare the results of this field test in detailwith the results obtained in the laboratory. That way, we cancheck and improve the quality of DyNaLab tests,“ explains
Reuter. The more realistic the results from the laboratory test
bed, the better they can supplement or even supplant longand costly field tests. The benefit for manufacturers is thatthey can plan and conduct the tests required for certificationthat much faster. And the ability to fast-track new turbines‘
time to market is a big competitive advantage in the wind
power industry, a global hot-cooker where the pressure to
innovate runs high.

How does this goliath stand up to strong
winds?

Wind turbines such as the AD 8-180 are designed for deployment in the high seas. “Offshore is where these giants aremost economical. Big turbines hardly cost more to transport,
assemble and connect to the grid than small ones, and theygenerate more income for operators because their energy
yield is higher,“ says Reuter. Power output is also on the rise:

Bristling with sensors from top to bottom, the AD 8-180 prototype is well-equipped to capture all kinds of data. An IWES
team of experts for internationally accredited field measurements draws on this wellspring of data to gage mechanicalstresses and strains in the tower, generator and rotor blades,
as well as temperatures, vibrations, electrical voltages andcurrents. A monitoring mast equipped with laser-based andvarious other wind measuring instruments is being installedin front of the plant. These devices can accurately record theturbine‘s wind exposure at any given moment. The prototype‘s sensors simultaneously measure how it responds toanything from sudden gusts of wind to constantly high windspeeds.

Rising to over 200 meters to the tip of the highest blade,this prototype wind turbine figures prominently on
Bremerhaven‘s skyline. © Adwen

Another research focus of this project is that of investigating
the system‘s grid compatibility. “Large wind turbines canhave a huge impact on the power grid. And the more wind
power they feed into it, the better we need to understandhow this affects the grid,” says Andreas Reuter. A power line
runs from this outsized windmill to the DyNaLab to afford

46 - ENERGY

Fraunhofer magazine 1.18

An outsized component, ready to betransported to the installation site.
© AdwenTo simplify access, the research facility fortesting offshore wind turbines is locatedinshore. © Adwen

Tests conducted in the Fraunhofer Dynamic Nacelle Testing Laboratory simulate rotor stress and grid fluctuations. © Adwen

deeper insight into its grid compatibility. This line connects
these facilities in a common virtual grid. In recent years,
Fraunhofer experts have developed new and faster methods
to investigate grid compatibility on a test bench. Experts now
want to compare the results of these lab tests to the datafrom the AD 8-180 to underpin the findings gleaned fromseveral months of field trials.

projects. They hope to find even more economical ways ofoperating offshore wind farms and to further improve theirdesign.

A research platform for new concepts
Wind turbines are also affected by fluctuations and malfunctions in the power grid. In the worst case, sudden spikes ordrops in grid voltages may even damage the plant‘s components. To sound out these risks, the testers deliberately provoke such situations and observe the prototype‘s response.
“Tests like this don‘t go over well in a public grid. But we cansimulate faults in our virtual grid without the neighborhood‘scomputers crashing,“ explains Reuter.
Further down the road, the AD 8-180 will also serve as a
research platform for testing innovative operating concepts. Power companies are keen to engage in collaborative

Bremerhaven‘s mammoth mast is still the world‘s largest
wind turbine. “I don’t expect this record to last long,“ says
Andreas Reuter. Even larger and more powerful turbines arevery much en vogue these days. Makers of offshore windturbines are already working on ten-to-twelve megawatt
models with rotors spanning a diameter of more than 200
meters. The first prototypes are likely to be up and running ina year or two.
That may be as big as these behemoths get. Materials‘
load-bearing capabilities are finite, and the industry is alreadypushing at the limits of technology and physics with thenext generation of giants. Reuter believes the doable is all
but done: “Plants with 15 megawatts capacity should be on
their way, but I find it hard to imagine that rotor blades much
longer than 100 meters will be built in the near future.“
Anything that long would be likely to collapse under its own
weight.

Fraunhofer magazine 1.18

ENERGY - 47

Making sustainable use of
scarce water resources
Yurt community with no water infrastructure.
All photos © Fraunhofer IOSB-AST

Clean water is a rare commodity in Mongolia. Since 2006, Fraunhofer researchers have been working hard to
establish a sustainable water management system in the Mongolian city of Darkhan and the surrounding area.
The installation of new pipelines, pump systems and wastewater treatment plants in the second-largest industrial region in the country – covered by thousands of acres of steppe and desert – is now paying off.
Text: Britta WidmannWith a smile on his face, eleven-year-old
Kenan inserts his prepaid top-up card into themachine at the water kiosk and presses thegreen button. Now he can fill his canister withfresh drinking water. Locals now have accessto the water kiosk 24 hours a day, 7 days aweek – even after the sun goes down. Until
just recently, it closed at 4.00 pm. If the inhabitants of the yurt community wished to fetch
clean water from one of the 35 kiosks on theoutskirts of Darkhan, an operator had to bepresent to turn on the faucet and sell the water.

Most “customers” are children who comealong with canisters to fill with water.
“This setup was highly impractical, which is why
we automated the kiosks. Now, the locals cancome and fill up at any time at the simple pushof a button. They pay for the water with prepaid
top-up cards,” explains Dr. Buren Scharaw,
researcher at the Advanced System Technology
Branch (AST) of the Fraunhofer Institute for Optronics, System Technologies and Image Exploitation IOSB. Mongolian by birth, Scharaw manages

the project known as MoMo, which stands for
Integrated Water Resources Management forCentral Asia: Model Region Mongolia. A team ofnatural and social scientists, engineers and partner companies have been working on the projectsince 2006 to put sustainable measures in place
for the protection of scant water resources.

Dilapidated pipes, polluted rivers
Ensuring a supply of clean drinking water andthe effective treatment of wastewater poses

48 - ENERGY

Fraunhofer magazine 1.18

Project manager Dr. Buren Scharaw explains to local
experts how a small wastewater treatment system works.

Automatic payment at a water kiosk.

a major challenge in Mongolia. On top of theoutdated technical infrastructure, dilapidated
pipelines and pump systems have caused living
conditions in many regions of the country to
deteriorate in recent years. Increasing industrialization and intensive mining and agricultural activities are polluting groundwater and rivers, andthe extreme seasonal variations in temperatureand the impact of the growing population makematters even worse. The Advanced System
Technology Branch (AST) of Fraunhofer IOSB iscoordinating the municipal water management
component of the project – now in phase III.
Germany’s Federal Ministry of Education andResearch (BMBF) is backing Fraunhofer’s partici­
pation with funding to the tune of 2.9 million
euros.
The model region selected for the researchers
to study covers the catchment area of the river
Kharaa and the city of Darkhan, where the team

The catchment area of the river Kharaa.

is monitoring environmental factors and installing innovative water management technologies.
Darkhan is a typical Mongolian industrial city. It
is home to some 100,000 inhabitants, approximately half of whom live in permanent housing
while the other half live in yurts on the city’s
outskirts. The yurt settlements do not have theirown supply of potable water. Instead, the inhabitants generally get their drinking water fromwater kiosks. The communities also lack proper
sewage systems.

New drinking water systems andwater treatment plants
Dr. Buren Scharaw has been traveling to Mongolia on a regular basis since 2006, where hehas been helping to establish a sustainable supply of drinking water. In phase I of the project,
Scharaw used monitoring systems to demonstrate that over 50 percent of drinking water inthe Darkhan distribution network was being lost
due to leaks. “Large volumes of drinking water
were simply draining away into the ground.
Given that temperatures drop significantly below
freezing in the winter, the pipes are installed 4.5
to 5 meters deep underground. This makes it
difficult to locate the leaks,” says Scharaw.
Using Fraunhofer’s HydroDyn water management software, the project team created acomputer model of the distribution network andused it to simulate hydraulic flow behavior, flow
velocities and water pressure. By visualizing the
network in this way, they were able to gain anunderstanding of the process in areas for which
they had no previous records. They employeda range of different methods, including data
monitoring, volume and mass balancing as wellas the comparison of physical and simulated
values, to identify where the water was escaping. Using this information in conjunction with

Fraunhofer magazine 1.18
A central water treatment plant in
Darkhan shows its age.

MoMo project – German partners– Bergmann Abwassertechnik AG– The German Development Institute– The Leibniz-Institute of Freshwater Ecology andInland Fisheries– p2m berlin GmbH– terrestris GmbH & Co. KG– Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research – UFZ

Construction of a water treatment plant in Teshig Soum, Bulgan Province.

the sensors installed in the distribution network, the team
was able to track down the locations of the leaks, reducethe volume of lost drinking water from 50 to 25 percent
and minimize operating costs as a result. “In phase III, we’rerehabilitating the pipework and now that we can monitor
their energy consumption, we’re working on optimizing
the energy-intensive, decrepit pumps,” says Scharaw. Given
that groundwater is the only sustainable water supply in
Mongolia, the researchers also analyzed and mapped theground­water resources, including their volume and quality.
“We have to monitor the groundwater continuously because
contamination levels change all the time.”
In another project milestone, the urgently needed reconstruction of Darkhan’s dilapidated central water treatment
plant has now begun, with partners from Germany among
those involved in the task. Plans are also in place to build 25
decentralized water treatment plants in Mongolia.
The project sponsors have also had the opportunity to see
the success of the project for themselves: “Three delega-

tions from the BMBF already traveled to Mongolia to see theresults of the work firsthand. I’m happy to say that they were
extremely impressed,” says Scharaw.

Research results set to be transferred
to neighboring regions
The biggest challenge of all for Scharaw is yet to come:Phase III of the MoMo project is scheduled to end on
December 31, 2018. This is when the project partners’
involvement also comes to an end. After this date, allplants and equipment must be operated by local staff.
“As things stand, they’re not qualified to do so. The staff
still need to be trained to make sure the region can ­continue
to supply drinking water and wastewater services in the
future, too. It’s a mammoth task and responsibility lies
with Fraunhofer to see it through,” says Scharaw. Afterwards, he plans to transfer the research results to similar
neighboring regions and consequently establish a footholdin the environmental and water sectors in the Central Asianmarket.

ENERGY - 49

50 - ENERGY

Fraunhofer magazine 1.18

Transition to a new energy
economy – Phase two
Only by implementing a clear change in policy will Germany succeed in reaching binding
climate objectives. This is the conclusion of a joint position paper addressing the future of Germany’s energy system published by the scientific academies acatech, Leopoldina
and the Union of the German Academies of Sciences and Humanities. The conclusion is basedon model calculations developed by Fraunhofer ISE. In the paper, the researchers call for
greater integration of the energy, heat and mobility sectors in conjunction with a significant expansion of wind power and photovoltaics. In the long term, renewables are set
to become the leading source of energy – including in the mobility and heating sectors.
Text: Franz Miller

1990		

2010		

2030		

2050

01 CO202 CO203 CO204 CO2

The four phases of thetransition to a sustainable energy system- 25 %

Basic technologies

Future Energy Systems“A cross-sectoral approach –Options for the next phase of
the transition to a sustainableenergy economy” is the titleof a position paper publishedas part of the Future Energy
Systems ESYS academy project.
The working group was chaired
by Fraunhofer ISE director Prof.
Hans-Martin Henning and acatech Executive Board member
Prof. Eberhard Umbach. In the
joint initiative by achtech (theGerman National Academy of
Science and Engineering),
Leopoldina (the German
National Academy of Sciences)and the Union of the German
Academies of Sciences andHumanities, around 100 energy
experts from science and research are drawing up options
for implementing a secure,affordable and sustainableenergy supply.

- 25 % to - 55 %System integration- 55 % to - 85 %Synthetic fuels- 85 % to -100 %Final defossilization

Continuous development of technologies and increasing energy efficiency
Increasing integration of the energy, heat and mobility sectors

Integrated
energy system

Fraunhofer magazine 1.18

The energy transition is well underway in Germany, but the climate targets defined under theParis Agreement are becoming increasingly unattainable. After all, Germany has not succeededin reducing its CO2 emissions since 2009. To
help turn this situation around, more than 100
experts from the scientific academies involved in
the Future Energy Systems ESYS initiative havejoined forces to identify solutions. In November,they presented their results in a report entitled“A cross-sectoral approach – Options for the
next phase of the transition to a sustainable energy economy.” In line with the climate targets,the aim is to have a flexible and future-proof
energy system in place by 2050 that is compatible with new technologies.
“Germany is entering a new phase of the energy
transition. In the last 25 to 30 years, wind power, photovoltaics and also biomass technologies
have been developed, expanded and their costs
reduced significantly. Now, the basic technologies are available for comprehensive system
integration. From now on, the aim is to supportand implement cross-sectoral technologies,”
explained Prof. Hans-Martin Henning from the
Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems
ISE at the presentation of the study. Alongsideacatech Executive Board member Prof. Eberhard
Umbach, Prof. Henning chaired the working
group that determined key aspects of the futureenergy supply on the basis of expert discussions,a comparison of relevant energy scenarios andhis own model calculations. They then used thisinformation to establish the options available
to Germany to optimize its energy system. The
calculations were made using Fraunhofer ISE’s
REMoD-D simulation and optimization model.
This model determines – on the basis of binding
CO2 reduction targets – the cost-optimized path
Germany must follow between now and 2050
to transform its energy system, taking all sectors
and energy sources into account.

The energy transition is not justabout electricity
According to Hans-Martin Henning, the extensive model calculations and analyses show that
only a holistic, cross-sectoral approach will open
up the avenues necessary to gradually convert

the whole energy system to predominantly
renewable energy, and thus achieve a drastic
reduction in the use of fossil fuels. The transition
must not focus solely on electricity generation
but rather incorporate all three sectors, he says.
Eberhard Umbach adds: “Although wind power
and photovoltaics have grown considerably inrecent years, 80 percent of Germany’s energy is
still generated from fossil energy sources. In thebuilding and mobility sectors in particular, fossil
fuels still dominate.”
In the long term, the researchers expect electricity from renewable sources to become theleading source of energy. The new applicationsin the mobility and heating sectors, however,may cause electricity consumption to almost
double by 2050. Wind power and photovoltaic
systems would have to increase their capacity
five- to sevenfold as a result – a highly ambitious task. Efficiency technologies and thetargeted use of bioenergy, solar thermal powerand geothermal energy could limit the need for
additional wind parks and photovoltaic power
and thus ensure society’s acceptance of theenergy transition.
Electricity generated from renewable sources isalso the key to reducing CO2 emissions in themobility and building sectors. “Technologies thatuse electricity directly and efficiently, such as
electric vehicles and heat pumps, are set to play
an increasingly important role in the future. It’s
important that we start giving these technologies a stronger market presence today. We needto counterbalance the fluctuations in wind andsolar energy generation with short- and longterm storage solutions and flexible energy usage
models,” says Hans-Martin Henning.
Batteries and pump storage units alone are notenough. For this reason, flexible electrolysis systems will be required to generate hydropower
for use in industry, in mobility or as large-scalestorage solutions.
“To ensure the supply remains sustainable,
additional energy sources such as hydrogen andsynfuels should also be available for sea and airtransport, for instance, or to cover seasonal,
weather-related bottlenecks,” says Hans-Martin

ENERGY - 51

Henning, describing the tasks that researchers
must address in the future. A great deal ofresearch is still required to find solutions.

Synfuels set to become­indispensable
Synthetic fuels are set to become a cornerstoneof the energy system thanks to their suitability
for storage and use in applications for which
purely electric solutions can be used only withdifficulty or not at all, i.e. air, sea and heavy-dutytransport. According to the study, hydrogen willplay a decisive role in third phase of the energy
transition due its versatility. It can be used, forexample, for heating buildings and as fuel fortransport, or stored for energy generation at alater time. Converting hydrogen into methaneor liquid fuel allows it to be easily stored andtransported. The natural gas grid provides anideal long-term storage solution. Whether in theform of natural gas, biogas or synthetic gas, gas
will play an increasingly important role in general thanks to its low emissions and versatility.
Reserve capacities, however, will be required
to secure the supply in all weather conditions
and at all times of the year. Suitable candidates
for the purpose include cogeneration plants,
low-emission gas-fired power stations or fuelcells powered by hydrogen, natural gas or synthetic methane.
Restructuring the energy system will be an
extremely expensive process. ESYS experts
estimate that the supplemental annual costs
involved will amount to one to two percent ofGermany’s gross domestic profit. As a fundamental control mechanism, the experts advocate
a standard, effective CO2 price. Only this way
will renewable energies be able to compete withfossil fuels in the market. Another importantconsideration the experts highlight is certainty
in planning, which is a key factor for investment
in environmentally friendly technologies. For thisreason, policy makers must commit to meeting
binding climate protection targets. According to
the experts, an integrated energy system will bein place by 2050. This system will have zero CO2emissions, yet will remain affordable and ensurea stable and reliable power supply.

52 - MATERIAL SCIENCES

Fraunhofer magazine 1.18

Programmablematerials
Researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Mechanics of Materials
IWM have come up with a process to fabricate polymers with a specific structural design, which they later intend to apply to metals andceramics as well. This structural patterning enhances the functionality of conventional materials, in effect creating what scientists
call programmable materials. They open the door to a whole new range
of applications.
Text: Tim Schröder

It’s smart: This auxetic
cube is structured for a
dynamic response to different loads. It gives underslight pressure, but remains
rigid when the load rises
above a defined threshold.
The lotus effect in action:
The surface’s special structure makes this material remarkably water-repellent.
© Fraunhofer IWM

Fraunhofer magazine 1.18

Glass is unyielding and brittle. Ceramics aresmooth and hold up well to corrosion. Synthetics
can be as flexible as the sole of a sneaker or as
rigid as a CD. With so many materials to choose
from, one can almost always be found to suitany product‘s intended purpose. But each has
its limitations. Countless materials that perform
well under normal circumstances fail to meetthe requirements of more demanding operating
environments. Many synthetic plastics cannot
withstand high temperatures and not all steels
are suitable for use in aggressive environments.
Of course, there are ways to enhance a material’s
properties and fine-tune its performance or composition to fit specifications – you could comeup with a smarter design, modify the production
process or even swap out the atoms in alloys. But
this only works to a limited extent, because every
material possesses inherent properties that restrict
its use in certain applications.
Scientists at the Fraunhofer Institute for Mechanics of Materials IWM in Freiburg aim to pushthese limits a little further than nature wants
them go by lending old materials new capabilities – not by altering the material itself but
by modifying its structure. “We do use legacy
materials, but we fabricate them in a different
way. Plastics, for example, are usually cast in one
piece, but we take a different approach in which
we start by designing precisely ordered lattice
structures that prompt the material to behave
in different ways,“ says Christoph Eberl, micromechanics expert and deputy head of IWM. He
and his colleagues Matthew Berwind, Hamideh
Jafarpoorchekab and Felix Schiebel used thismethod to create microscale polymer lattice
structures. One such polymer is designed to enable the thin walls of its lattice structure to give
under pressure, stretching in a certain direction
when a certain amount of force is applied. Thisaction carries over from one cell in the latticeto the next, enabling the polymer’s response topressure to be defined precisely.

A synthetic material that acts
like a system
Elastic polymers have been on the market for
decades, but Eberl is taking this to the next level.

“With our process, we can structure and modify
a small area and specific points of a component
made from synthetic material.” One of the applications he has in mind is a new type of vehicle
dashboard that is mostly rigid but contains
areas that have been micro-structured to beflexible. These areas could serve as pushbuttons.
Piezoelectric ceramic switches and other controlsthat generate electrical pulses require an entire
switching system consisting of a receiver, conductor and actuator to trigger an action. Eberl
says: “But we want the material itself to be theswitch.“ In that way, the material itself becomespart of the operating system.
Another application that researchers are currently looking into is a lining for the inner surface of
prosthetic limbs. For this purpose, the team isdesigning a material that remains pliable undernormal conditions but stiffens when subjected
to a higher load. “This is another promising
application of microstructured polymers,” says
Eberl. “Prostheses need to be padded with asoft material to prevent pain at the point ofcontact between the prosthesis and the stumpof the amputated limb. On the other hand, if
the wearer lifts a heavy load, it’s better if thematerial is sufficiently rigid to resist the pressureof being pressed against the soft tissue of thestump.” This kind of material could also be used
as a shock buffer in exoskeletons. These robotic
suits help people with mobility issues to walkor could be worn by workers to help them lift
heavy objects.

Fabricating materials witha 3D nanoprinterChristoph Eberl uses the term “programmablematerials” a lot when talking about how heintends to integrate new functions in legacy materials. His tool of choice for this kind of projectis a 3D nanoprinter, with which it is possible
to design and program tools to an accuracyof a few hundred nanometers. The Karlsruhe
Institute of Technology developed this printer.
“This device is the perfect complement to our
micro-structuring skills. We can use it to grow 3D
structures or burn structures into polymer layers,“
says Eberl.

MATERIAL SCIENCES - 53

These researchers work with jaw-dropping
precision. They recently developed a 40-micrometer wide polymer damper that expands
under pressure, stretching to different degrees
in different directions. When the pressure
decreases, the elastic component snaps backinto its original shape. With the benefit of thisproperty, it could relay pressure-related information in any given direction. “I can imagine
many potential applications for this technology,“ says Christoph Eberl. One of these is
micro-joints.

An erector kit chock-fullof structures
Right now, he is less concerned about whereexactly this or that component will end up being used. As Eberl explains it: “We’re upending
the development process with our method.
Usually, you define a goal and then consider what materials you‘ll need to achieve it.
Instead, in the years ahead, we will be offering
a lot of programmable materials and developing a whole erector kit of structures that takeover system functions and let you come up
with entirely new ideas for products“ – like thedashboard with the integrated button.

A vast playground
The Freiburg team is not just thinking of
micro-structured components. Smart materials
can also be structured on a larger scale. “Inmany applications, it is sufficient if the cells ofa lattice structure measure one or more centimeters in diameter. We want to see to how
far we can upscale structures; that is, we wantto learn at what dimensions certain effects
occur and use these to integrate functions,“
says Eberl. At present, the IWM experts areworking mainly with polymers, but intend tomove on to ceramics and metals later down
the line.”We have several variables that we
can tweak: the material, the structure and thescale,“ notes Eberl, adding that this is a vast
playground for creating new functions withlegacy materials. “I can‘t wait to see what
promising applications the future holds instore.“

54 - MATERIAL SCIENCES

Fraunhofer magazine 1.18

Magnets without
rare earths
For electric cars and wind turbines, we will need large amounts ofpermanent magnets in the future. However, they contain rare earth
elements, which come almost exclusively from China. To reduce our­dependence on these imported materials, experts from Fraunhofer and
Max Planck have now jointly developed an alternative.
Text: Tim Schröder

Our future will be electric. That is something
experts are certain about. Worldwide, more andmore wind turbines will generate electricity. And
cars will not be powered by gasoline and diesel
engines but by electric motors. This will boost
the demand for high-performance magnets inparticular – because almost anywhere you convert electrical energy into motion or vice-versa,
you need magnets: in the generator of the windturbine, which converts the rotary motion of
the rotor into electricity; or in the electric motor,
which is started using electrical energy. Strong
permanent magnets are needed particularly,
because they retain their magnetic alignment
over the long term – unlike, for example, amagnetized iron needle, the polarity of which
can be easily reversed through contact with astrong magnet.

Monopoly over rare earths
The problem with permanent magnets today
is that they contain rare earth elements, over
90% of which are mined in China. Accordingly,
China has a monopoly over these minerals. For
this reason, industrial countries are searchingintensively for alternative materials to use in
the production of permanent magnets. In aco­operation project, experts at the FraunhoferGesellschaft and the Max Planck Society havetaken an important step in this direction: usingsophisticated computer simulations and experiments, they have found suitable combinationsof chemical elements that have the desiredmagnetic characteristics and do not contain any
rare earth elements.
Specifically, these materials are Heusler compounds, a class of intermetallics which was
discovered more than 100 years ago by German
chemist Fritz Heusler. Heusler materials have afascinating property: they consist of chemicalelements which themselves do not necessarily
have to be magnetic. If you bond these elements
into a crystalline Heusler structure, however, thecompound can take on magnetic properties.
In the HEUSLER joint project between­Fraunhofer and the Max Planck Society, theresearchers began by using simulations to investigate a range of promising Heusler materials
to determine whether they could be used forhigh-performance permanent magnets. Max
Planck scientists systematically combined thevarious chemical elements on the computer.
Using simulations, they were able to calculate the interactions of the different elements
and predict their magnetic properties. These
investigations supplied important indicationsof suitable candidates for subsequent chemical
synthesis experiments.

Targeted modification of defects
Like many other substances, magnetic materials
are made up of crystal structures in which theatoms are arranged in lattices. These lattices
almost always have irregularities, so-called
structural defects. It is known that such defects
play an important role in the magnetic properties of materials. “If you can successfully alter
the defects in a targeted way, in other words
fix the microstructure of the material in acontrolled manner during manufacture, this represents a key to optimizing permanent magnets
and to improving magnetic properties,” explains
Dr. Georg Krugel, who handled the projectin the Material Design business unit headedby Prof. Christian Elsässer at the Fraunhofer
Institute for Mechanics of Materials IWM in
Freiburg.
In a perfectly structured crystal lattice without
defects, interferences from outside can havea domino effect. If the material is demagnet­
ized in one place, then the magnetization of
the entire crystal shifts from atom to atom toanother direction. “This can cause the polarityof a material to suddenly reverse due to external
influences,” says Krugel, “but that is precisely
what we want to avoid happening with permanent magnets, because magnets installed in
motors or generators must of course retain theirpolarity.” By building certain defects into thematerial, however, you can block this switchingof magnetization – and so prevent an unwanted reversal of the polarity of the permanent
magnet.

Step by step to a new magnet
The route to the permanently magnetic Heusler
material consisted of several stages. In the firststep, researchers at the Max Planck Institute ofMicrostructure Physics in Halle employed computer modeling to determine which elements
could be combined to make a Heusler material
with permanent magnetic properties. This
information was then used by their colleagues
at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Physics
of Solids in Dresden to synthesize initial samples

Fraunhofer magazine 1.18

MATERIAL SCIENCES - 55

The cooperation partners inthe HEUSLER project, whichconcluded last year, comprised the
Fraunhofer Institutes for Mechanicsof Materials IWM in Freiburg andfor Microstructure of Materials andSystems IMWS in Halle and the
Max Planck Institutes for Chemical
Physics of Solids in Dresden and of
Microstructure Physics in Halle.

The crystal structure of the magnetic
Heusler phase Fe2CoGa (red: iron atoms;
green: cobalt atoms; blue: gallium atoms),
which the project scientists researched
intensively. © Fraunhofer IWM

of permanently magnetic Heusler materials.
Next, the Fraunhofer Institute for Microstructureof Materials and Systems IMWS analyzed thematerial samples under an electron microscope
to decipher the precise arrangement of atoms.
“At Fraunhofer IWM, we used this information
about the atomic arrangement in the material
and particularly at the defects, and transferred it
to computer simulation models,” says Krugel. Bymeans of these models, he and his colleagues
were then able to explore various arrangementsof the atoms. “We analyzed the atomic scaleusing quantum mechanical computer simulations,” he adds.

And finally, the results of these simulations weresent back to the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Physics of Solids, where the researchers usedthem to optimize the Heusler crystal structuresin the laboratory. By virtue of this experimental
synthesis, it was possible to manufacture a newmaterial with very promising magnetic properties.
Although a marketable product is still a longway off, the results show that there are alternative materials for permanent magnets which do
not need rare earth elements – and that Heusler
compounds are a very promising material classfor making these alternatives.

56 - MATERIAL SCIENCES

Fraunhofer magazine 1.18

The silicon sphere, here awaiting coating,must be handled with great care. One of
the three-point mountings can be seen on
the right in this image. © Fraunhofer IST,
Falko Oldenburg

Alternatives forthe original kilogram
The international prototype kilogram used to calibrate
all existing scales is losing weight, and researchers
around the world are searching for alternatives. Plans
to redefine the kilogram are currently in progress.
Text: Britta Widmann

A kilo no longer weighs 1000 grams. The
standard for mass, the international prototype
kilogram, is becoming lighter and lighter. It has
lost 50 micrograms over the past hundred years
and no-one knows why. International efforts areunderway to redefine the basic unit of mass, todecouple it from the platinum-iridium cylinder
stored in a vault in Paris and base it on natural
constants instead.

Fraunhofer magazine 1.18

To achieve this, one promising approach uses the
Avogadro constant, which indicates how many
particles there are in an amount of substance.
One material that is suitable for this purpose isultrapure silicon shaped into a sphere. Researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Surface
Engineering and Thin Films IST in Braunschweig
succeeded in giving the surface of the sphere ahomogeneous coating, making it possible, forinstance, to limit the measurement uncertainty
to a range of less than ten micrograms.

Counting atoms
A team at the National Metrology Institute ofGermany (PTB) is conducting experiments withspheres made of isotope-enriched silicon that
could serve as a new calibration standard. “We
calculate the number of atoms in a sphere,
then use mathematical equations to obtain thenumber of atoms per mole. In simple terms, we
determine what a silicon atom weighs and fromthis we can then calculate how many silicon
atoms are needed to make a kilogram,” explains
Dr. Ingo Busch, a physicist at PTB in Braun­schweig.
When producing the spheres, a natural oxide
layer forms from silicon dioxide, SiO2, which also
influences the mass and volume of the siliconspheres. The problem with this is that the native
layer grows slowly and, in some cases, unevenly,
making it very difficult to measure the actual
weight of both the oxide layer and the sphere.
So they needed an alternative, homogeneous
coating that would reduce measurement uncertainties and enable the volume and mass of thesphere to be determined precisely.

Defect-free coatings for siliconspheres
Researchers at Fraunhofer IST, next door to
the National Metrology Institute of Germany,succeeded in coating a silicon sphere with justsuch an alternative SiO2 surface whose quality
meets even the highest standards. “Our method
enables us to apply an SiO2 layer to the sphereswith a defined roughness and customizable
layer thickness. And the layer is stoichiometric,
meaning that the ratio of the individual atoms
to one another, or the ratio of silicon to oxygen,is constant,” says Tobias Graumann, a scientist
at Fraunhofer IST.

MATERIAL SCIENCES - 57

A fingerprint weighs more
The researchers at IST opted to use atomic
layer deposition (ALD) to apply the coating. The
advantage of this method is that it enables a
reproducible, extremely thin oxide layer with ahomogeneous thickness to be applied to thesphere. Potential impurities, such as carbon or
nitrogen, are below the limit of detection. The
roughness of the layers does not exceed one
nanometer. “The coating does not increase theroughness of the sphere by any appreciable
amount. This is a factor in keeping the measurement uncertainty below 10 micrograms. Even afingerprint weighs more than that,” says Graumann. The time factor plays an important role,
as well. The process for producing the spheres
can be accelerated by applying the alternative
SiO2 surface, whereas the native oxide layer
would take several months to grow.
The coating of the silicon sphere has now been
completed and measurements are currently being performed at PTB. The results are expected
to be presented at the General Conference on
Weights and Measures in fall 2018 and then,at the latest, the original kilogram will likely beretired as the standard. The new definition of
the kilogram will be decided at this metrologicalmeeting.
The researchers at Fraunhofer IST and their colleagues at PTB hope the silicon spheres will prevail as the new calibration standard. If all goesto plan, metrological institutes and calibrationlaboratories will soon be able to obtain copiesof the spheres.
Inside the ALD coating plant at Fraunhofer
IST: the coating chamber for three-dimensional objects. © Fraunhofer IST, Jan Benz

Atomic layer deposition (ALD)
When layers of single-atom thickness need
to be applied to a substrate with extreme
precision, atomic layer deposition (ALD) isthe means of choice. The coating is applied
step by step – the layers are essentiallystacked on the surface. It’s a tedious process, requiring numerous coating cycles.
The layers are formed by the chemical reaction of two precursors that are let into thereaction chamber in succession. The coatingprocess at Fraunhofer IST also follows thisprinciple: to produce the SiO2 layer, in thesimplest case, Tobias Graumann and his
team use two chemicals that are fed inseparate steps into the coating chamber ingaseous form. This results in two sequential,
self-limiting surface reactions. In the firststep, the surface in the chamber is exposed
to reactive molecules in the gas phase.
When these react with the surface, initially,
only an intermediate product forms – a firstmonolayer. The researchers use nitrogen to
flush the excess molecules and the resulting
by-products out of the chamber to avoid an
overdose and keep the reactions separate.
The second chemical is let into the chamberand reacts with the intermediate product,leaving the desired coating product on thesurface. When this reaction has taken placeover the entire surface, additional chemicals can no longer adhere to the chemicallysaturated surface. Experts call this self-controlled and easily controllable growth, and
it is a distinguishing feature of ALD. This
reaction cycle can be repeated as often
as necessary to achieve the desired layer
thickness.

58 - PANORAMA

Fraunhofer magazine 1.18

Science Campus – A springboard
for women in researchFraunhofer launched its Science
Campus event ten years ago as away to pique young women’s interest in starting a career in researchwith Fraunhofer. This year’s event,
held in mid-March, was hosted bythree Darmstadt-based institutes.
For the first time, the national andinternational parts of the Science
Campus took place simultaneously
in a single venue. Students from

Science Campus participants at Fraunhofer LBF.
© Fraunhofer LBF

Israel were invited to attend andnetwork with their German peers
at the event, which ran over several
days. The participants gained an
insight into the diverse range of
research projects underway at the
Fraunhofer Institutes in Darmstadt.
They also had the opportunity totalk to female researchers about
their work and the challenges andopportunities a career at Fraunhofer
offers.

Video coding standard wins
Technology Emmy
The resolution of television, cell phone andlaptop screens is advancing all the time. In linewith this trend, films and online video data mustbe transmitted in the highest quality and with avery high degree of efficiency. For their contribution to the development of the high efficiency
video coding (HEVC) standard that makes thispossible, researchers from the Fraunhofer Institute for Telecommunications, Heinrich-Hertz-Institute, HHI, received the 2017 Emmy Award forTechnology & Engineering in Hollywood.

velopment process. Compared with the previous
standard, H.264/MPEG-AVC, HEVC reduces thedata rate by 50 percent while retaining the samehigh level of image quality.

The new HEVC standard, also known as H.265,
is based on new coding techniques that increase
the video compression efficiency. Researchers at
Fraunhofer HHI were heavily involved in the de-Awarded by the National Academy of Television
Arts & Sciences, the Technology Emmy is one of
the most prestigious recognitions of excellencein the television industry in the U.S.

Prof. Thomas Wiegand, who is head of media
technology in the Institute of Telecommunications Systems at TU Berlin and executive directorof the Fraunhofer Heinrich Hertz Institute HHI,
accepted the prize together with HHI researchers Benjamin Bross and Dr. Detlev Marpe.

Prof. Thomas Wiegand, Benjamin Bross and Dr. Detlev
Marpe at the Technology Emmy ceremony.
© Fraunhofer HHI

Industrie 4.0 Application Center in China
Researchers from the Fraunhofer
Institute for Production Systems
and Design Technology IPK willoffer engineering services toChinese companies at a Sino-German Intelligent Manufacturing
Research Institute SGIMRI in the
future, which is set to be basedin the ­Jiangsu province, a hub forindustrial manufacturing.

The Memorandum of Understanding for the establishment of the
new institute was signed back inJune 2015. It states the intention of
the participating parties – Fraunhofer
IPK and the Jiangsu Economic andInformation Technology Commission JSEIC – to develop joint strategies for standardizing Industrie 4.0.
They have also agreed to work together on intelligent manufacturing

and ICT technologies. An Industrie
4.0 application center is currently
being set up to showcase the latest
technologies and use case scenarios. This will provide a platform for
Fraunhofer experts to consult with
their Chinese partners on mattersconcerning the strategic orientationof the business and to develop intelligent production demonstrators
for the new institute.

Fraunhofer magazine 1.18

PARTICULARS - 59

New appointments
The senate of the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft unanimously
elected Andreas Meuer as the new executive vice president
in charge of controlling and digital business processes. The
financial expert succeeds Prof. (Univ. Stellenbosch) Alfred
Gossner. A business administration graduate, Meuer joined
the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft in 1992, where he has since held
various management posts. Most recently, he was in chargeof finance, accounting and business planning. His responsibilities included managing the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft’s budget, which totals over two billion euros. In this role he also
optimized annual financial reporting practices and establisheda new asset management system.
On January 1, 2018, Prof. Claus Emmelmann took thehelm of the new Fraunhofer Research Institution for Additive
Manufacturing Technologies IAPT in Hamburg. Establishedfollowing the integration of LZN Laser Zentrum Nord GmbH
into the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft, IAPT is the first Fraunhofer
research institute based in the Free and Hanseatic City of
Hamburg. The center plays a key role in the development of
future-shaping additive manufacturing and nanotechnology
skills. Prior to assuming this position, Prof. Emmelmann was
CEO of LZN Laser Zentrum Nord GmbH.

Editorial notes
Fraunhofer magazine
Research, technology and innovation.
ISSN 1615-7028 (Print edition)
ISSN 1617-1438 (Online edition)
Publisher
Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft
Hansastrasse 27c, 80686 Munich, Germany
Editorial address as above
Phone +49 89 1205 1301
magazin@zv.fraunhofer.de
http://s.fhg.de/magazines
Subscribe free of charge
Phone +49 89 1205 1301
publikationen@fraunhofer.de

Prof. Ulrike Köhl is the new managing director at the
Fraunhofer Institute for Cell Therapy and Immunology IZI.
As the newly appointed professor of immuno-oncology at
Leipzig University, Prof. Köhl has also managed the Instituteof Clinical Immunology at Leipzig University Hospital since
mid-December 2017. In her capacity as a researcher specializing in cellular immunotherapy, she previously worked as aprofessor at the Hannover Medical School. Köhl succeeds
Prof. Frank Emmrich who founded IZI in 2005.
The Fraunhofer Center for Assistive Information and Communication Solutions AICOS in Portugal has a new managing
director. Prof. Liliana da Silva Ferreira (PhD) took over at
the helm of the center in September last year. She succeeds
Prof. Dirk Elias who moved to a technology company. Ferreira, who is 37, is one of the youngest people to hold the top
management position at a Fraunhofer Center.

Editorial teamJanis Eitner (division director of communi­
cation), Marion Horn (editor in chief), ­Roman Möhlmann, Ina Promper
Editorial assistants
Janine van Ackeren, Christine Broll, Dr. Sonja­Endres, Sibylle Gassner, Frank Grote­lüschen,
Inés Gutiérrez, Markus Jürgens, Franz Miller,
Tim Schröder, Andrea Schwende­mann,
Anne-Marie Tumescheit, Mehmet Toprak,Monika Weiner, Britta Widmann
Graphic design: BUTTER. Düsseldorf
Layout & lithography:
Vierthaler & Braun, Munich
Cover photo: Bernd Müller
Printing: H. HEENEMANN GmbH, Berlin
Translation: Burton, Van Iersel & Whitney,
Munich© Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft, Munich 2018

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