On August 11, 2011, the ceremonial signing of a contract for the recognition of the CiS Research Institute as an affiliated institute of the TU Ilmenau took place during the kick-off event for the Solar Research Initiative at the TU Ilmenau. “This marks the preliminary culmination of many years of intensive cooperation between the two partners in the fields of micro/nano technology and photovoltaics,” emphasized the head of the CiS institute, Dr. Hans-Joachim Freitag, at the signing ceremony.
At the same time, Prof. Thomas Hannappel was appointed to a new endowed professorship “Photovoltaics” in Ilmenau. Under his leadership, basic scientific research at the TU Ilmenau and industry-related research at the CiS SolarCenter as an affiliated institute of the TU Ilmenau will be bundled. In addition, there will be close cooperation with the photovoltaics group at the Helmholtz Center.
The connection between research and knowledge transfer to industry will be further strengthened by CiS. With the acceptance of the endowed professorship, Prof. Hannappel also takes over the scientific leadership of the solar research area at CiS. Prof. Hannappel studied physics at the Technical Universities in Aachen and Berlin and was most recently acting head of the Institute “Materials for Photovoltaics” at the Hahn-Meitner-Institut in Berlin.
As fossil resources become scarcer, the increasing global demand for energy and raw materials requires a variety of new ideas and approaches to solve the tasks at hand. In the Thuringian research strategy and with the envisaged energy turnaround, green manufacturing, new materials and material combinations, greater efficiency, lower manufacturing costs and reliability of photovoltaic systems will form an important building block. With the establishment of the endowed professorship and the research in the field of silicon-based photovoltaics, an important milestone in the Thuringian GreenTech Initiative will be realized.
The TU Ilmenau and the CiS Research Institute thus also perfect their recognized position as partners of the solar industry in the top cluster Solarvalley Mitteldeutschland.
The cooperation of the CiS Research Institute with the TU Ilmenau combines basic and applied research in an outstanding way, since on the one hand the latest research results are promptly integrated into the range of services offered to the industry, and on the other hand topics from the industry are taken up. The conceptual approach of the CiS Research Institute is primarily oriented towards technological feasibility, as it corresponds to the requirements of industry.
