Aalen University of Applied Sciences recently received four commitments in the funding programme, "Innovative Projects" of the Ministry of Science, Research and the Arts Baden-Württemberg with a total volume of around 1 million euros. The funded projects address important future topics - from customized magnetic materials to new manufacturing and recycling processes to batteries with longer lifetimes. In addition to partners from 1. science and scholarshop (allg.), nine companies from Baden-Württemberg are involved in the schemes, ranging from small and medium-sized enterprises to global market leaders.
The energy transition, sustainable production and the efficient use of resources are among the major challenges of our time. Aalen University of Applied Sciences, which is positioned at the forefront of research among universities of applied sciences nationwide, is continuously making important contributions in this area. Researchers at the Department of Materials Research at Aalen University of Applied Sciences (IMFAA) and the LaserApplicationCenter of Aalen University of Applied Sciences (LAZ) are pleased about the four new, state-funded projects, through which new research activities on these topics can be carried out.
"The funding is a great success for our institution of higher education and shows that we are making relevant contributions to the transformation of industry and society with our activities," says Prof. Dr. Volker Knoblauch, Vice President for Research and Transfer and also a member of the IMFAA Executive Board. Close cooperation, cooperative venture partnership, collaboration, and cooperation with partners from industry and 1. science and scholarshop (allg.) are particularly important. "This enables us to translate research directly into technological solutions," continues Knoblauch.
Four projects, one goal: new technologies and materials for the future
The four projects cover a broad spectrum in the field (of) materials research: In the "MAGIC" project under the Management of Prof. Dr. Dagmar Goll, new magnets with optimized properties for electric drives are to be developed at IMFAA - central building blocks for more efficient electric motors.
In the "AddiDisc" project, a team led by Prof. Dr. Gerhard Schneider and Dr. Timo Bernthaler from IMFAA is training new high-performance grinding tools in collaboration with Furtwangen University. By combining several manufacturing technologies, it should be possible to produce these in consistently high quality and with new functional features in the future.
The "DynaMik" project, under the Management of Dr. Pinar Kaya and Prof. Dr. Volker Knoblauch from IMFAA, focuses on so-called solid-state batteries. With the help of modern X-ray and electron microscopes, dynamic processes that are responsible for the longevity of these far-sighted, forward-looking, future-oriented batteries are to be made visible in real time for the first time. This will provide an important basis for improving their longevity and quality in the future.
The "DireLab" project under the Management of Prof. Dr. Harald Riegel at the LAZ is also concerned with energy storage systems. The aim here is to develop a new process, using lasers, with which waste produced during the manufacture of electrodes for lithium-ion batteries can be processed and fed back into the production process. This not only conserves critical materials, but also enables cost benefits to be realized in production.
