Functional surfaces and materials

Functional surfaces provide products and materials from a wide range of technical fields with new properties and thus enable new areas of application.

Among other products, we develop functional coatings with non-stick and antimicrobial properties, barrier coatings, biocompatible and bioactive surfaces, and functional sensor coatings. For this purpose, we can synthesize, chemically modify or suitably formulate coating materials, e.g. with biobased polymers, hydrogels or functional nano- and microparticles.

Our surface treatment processes include sterilization processes, plasma cleaning processes and printing processes in addition to various coating processes from laboratory to pilot scale.

To characterize surfaces and materials, we use a wide range of methods for surface, particle and polymer analysis.

Materials

• Development of inks using biomaterials for the fabrication of biocompatible or bioactive printed structures
• Synthesis and preparation of nanostructured materials with tailored surfaces
• Development of novel formulations by the use of core-shell particles
• Encapsulation of biomolecules for stabilization and targeted release

Coatings

• Development of layers for protective coatings (scratch, corrosion protection), barriers against permeation, coatings as reservoirs for the targeted release of substances (formulations)
• Functionalization of surfaces (chemical and biochemical)

Processes

• Process development for plasma modification of surfaces
• Hygienic surfaces using plasma cleaning processes, plasma sterilization processes and UV-C technology
• Up-scaling of laboratory processes for the production of thin films to large-area formats, also roll-to-roll
• Scaling of the processes for particle production and hydrogel synthesis

Analytics

• Surface and coating characterization
• Particle analytics
• Biopolymer and polymer analytics