Press Releases

Aiming to contribute to the reduction of the digital technologies' footprint via research and development, the Fraunhofer and Leibniz institutes cooperating within the framework of the Research Fab Microelectronics Germany (FMD for its acronym in German) are jointly establishing a cross-location competence center for resource-conscious information and communication technology (Green ICT @ FMD). The project, launched on August 1, 2022, is receiving 34 million euros in funding from the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research under the Green ICT initiative. The latter is in turn part of the German government's Climate Action Programme 2030.

A consortium of Fraunhofer institutes and well-known German industrial companies is developing a split-manufacturing approach for semiconductor production in the project "Distributed Manufacturing for Novel and Trustworthy Electronics T4T". This will enable the secure assembly of subsystems in Germany and safeguard supply chains.

Highly sensitive electronic components are the drivers of our digitalized world. Micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) open up new possibilities for miniaturization in wide-ranging application areas. With its state-of-the-art 200 mm clean room, Fraunhofer IPMS offers the complete value chain for MEMS as well as optical components MOEMS (Micro-Opto-Electro-Mechanical Systems). The range of services extends from consulting on feasibility through initial demonstration at wafer level to pilot fabrication with manufacturing capacities of more than 1100 waferstarts per month.

The many innovations resulting from the applied research of the Fraunhofer Gesellschaft have so far mainly benefited industrial companies. In the future, Fraunhofer IPMS intends to make its research increasingly available to cultural institutions and thus to the public community. Accordingly, a pilot project was launched with the German Oceanographic Museum. In the future, visitors to the OZEANEUM Stralsund will be able to feed virtual penguins contactless thanks to a Fraunhofer IPMS development.

Modern vehicles have a large number of electronic systems that are networked with each other. Since these systems are at risk from cyber attacks, Fraunhofer IPMS developed a CANsec IP core that makes vehicle systems more secure. The IP core is already being evaluated in a demonstration by partner Renesas Electronics Corporation, a leading semiconductor company that delivers embedded processors together with analog and power products. At the Embedded World trade show from June 21-23, both Fraunhofer IPMS and Renesas will present the CAN-SEC IP-Core for the first time.

Anyone who has ever ruined a cake knows that the correct identification of visually similar substances such as sugar and salt has great significance in food preparation. However, complex compositional analyses can also provide information about the quality, ripeness or freshness of products. Therefore, Fraunhofer IPMS is researching and developing the smallest energy-efficient scanner systems, which enable non-contact and mobile freshness testing on site.

The Fraunhofer IPMS-developed EMSA5-FS processor core for functional safety based on the open-source RISC-V instruction set architecture is supported by another important debug tool. With the integration into the toolsets of the leading manufacturer of microprocessor development tools Lauterbach, numerous debug functions are now available for the 32-bit RISC-V core.

A flagship of semiconductor research with international reach is emerging in Dresden. Fraunhofer IPMS and Fraunhofer IZM-ASSID are bundling their competences and establishing the Center for Advanced CMOS & Heterointegration Saxony. The center will offer the complete value chain in 300 mm microelectronics, a prerequisite for high-tech research for future technologies.

At the Fraunhofer Center for Microelectronic and Optical Systems for Biomedicine (MEOS) in Erfurt, the MEOS Innovation Center for Precision Analysis of Cell Therapy Products, or MIC-PreCell for short, is being established until summer 2023. Funded with 750,000 euros from the Free State of Thuringia, this center will then support the development of new analysis methods for quality assurance and process control for the manufacturing of cell-based therapeutic products.

The Fraunhofer Institute for Photonic Microsystems IPMS is one of the leading research institutions for the development and testing of electronic, mechanical and optical components and devices and their integration into intelligent systems. The Fraunhofer IPMS will again be present at the SENSOR+TEST 2022 trade fair in Nuremberg. The institute will showcase some of its latest research and developments, such as a new technology for measuring gas mixtures based on micromechanical ultrasonic elements (MUT) or an innovative electrochemical analytical chip for the smallest analytical quantities.

Fagron, a leading global company active in pharmaceutical compounding, announced on April 14th the acquisition of HiperScan, the German market leader for reliable raw material identification in pharmacies. HiperScan is a spin-off of Fraunhofer IPMS and the German market leader for reliable and secure identification of starting materials in pharmacies.

Bosch is expanding its expertise in MEMS (micro-electro-mechanical systems) micro speakers and strengthening its market position as leading provider of sensing solutions for consumer electronics with an acquisition. Arioso Systems, based in Dresden, Germany, is to become part of the Bosch Sensortec GmbH. Agreements to this effect were signed by Bosch and Arioso Systems. It has been agreed that any project details such as the purchase price will not be disclosed. The acquisition is subject to approval by the antitrust authorities.

Spintronic devices are based on using the fundamental spin of electrons to carry and store information. Their use would not require charge currents for their operation and would lead to improved energy efficiency with lower power consumption, higher data processing speed and better integration of memory and logic. However, suitable materials for new spintronic implementations are needed. Their fabrication as well as analysis require state-of-the-art methods from nanotechnology. This is why researchers of the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Physics of Solids and the Fraunhofer Institute for Photonic Microsystems IPMS have launched a joint project to investigate novel materials for spintronics. The project is being funded by Sächsische Aufbaubank.

The industry of the future will become more digital, more efficient and more automated. Autonomous driving systems and robots will make human work easier. To make this vision a reality, the Fraunhofer Institute for Photonic Microsystems IPMS is developing sensors, optical components and actuators based on microelectromechanical systems that detect the environment and make interaction safe. In this context, sensors are becoming key technology of digitization: they form the interface between machine and human. The institute is now presenting some of its latest developments - such as innovative vector scanner modules - at LASER World of PHOTONICS in Munich.

Optical microsystems are forging the Path of Light: The photonic systems of the Fraunhofer Institute for Photonic Microsystems IPMS can modulate light using small deflectable mirrors to create images and structures in a unique way. Hereby the research institute is developing spatial light modulators with up to several million mirrors on a semiconductor chip. The main areas of application for mirror matrices are in the fields of microlithography in the deep ultraviolet range, production of printed circuit boards (PCBs), semiconductor inspection and metrology, as well as in adaptive optics, astronomy, holography and microscopy. With its developments in this field, Fraunhofer IPMS is currently a world leader.

Everyone is talking about quantum computers. With the help of high interconnection of as many qubits (two-state quantum systems) as possible, massive amounts of data are to be processed more easily, quickly and securely in the future. In the PhoQuant project, a consortium led by the quantum start-up Q.ANT is now researching photonic quantum computer chips - made in Germany - which can also be operated at room temperature. One of the 14 consortium partners is the Dresden-based Fraunhofer Institute for Photonic Microsystems IPMS.

The economic consequences of the current chip shortage highlight the importance of microelectronics. In order to prepare for the future, technological sovereignty in microelectronics research and development is required, in addition to new production facilities in Europe. This is precisely the challenge that the High Performance Center "Functional Integration for Micro-/Nanoelectronics" is addressing. It combines the competencies of four microelectronics institutes of the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft as well as of research groups at universities in Dresden and Chemnitz. This way, the center offers a whole spectrum of microelectronics and micromechanics technologies to both major players in the microelectronics industry and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). SMEs in particular can profit from a low-threshold service through the provision of technology platforms, which allows them to benefit from leading edge technology without the burden of excessively high development cost.

Fraunhofer researchers have developed a very fast technology for determining whether a tumor has been fully removed — before the patient even leaves the operating theater. Using a combination of laser scanning microscopy and fluorescent tumor markers, doctors can detect any remaining cancer cells immediately after operations.

The Fraunhofer Institute for Photonic Microsystems IPMS offers ready-made, platform-independent IP core modules. With IP modules, developers can quickly adopt complete functional areas in standard products such as SoCs, microcontrollers, FPGAs and ASICs. This allows a significant reduction of development times and costs. With EMSA5, Fraunhofer IPMS offers a processor core based on the open RISC-V instruction set architecture. In the latest release, the institute has ported Tensorflow lite to the EMSA5 RISC-V. Thus, the EMSA5 RISC-V processor core is now ready for use in Edge AI applications, for example sensor data evaluation, gesture control or vibration analysis.

Together with 24 German research institutions and companies, the Fraunhofer Institute for Photonic Microsystems IPMS is working on a quantum computer with improved error rates in the collaborative project QSolid coordinated by Forschungszentrum Jülich. The goal is to make Germany a global leader in the field of quantum technology and thus to maintain independence and open up numerous new applications in science and industry. The Federal Ministry of Education and Research has allocated € 76.3 million in funding for the next five years.