InnoCON, the flagship event for the implementation and further development of the Thuringian Innovation Strategy, has just started. Under the motto “Tackling the challenges of our time, such as digital transformation and decarbonization, with the Thuringian Innovation Strategy 2021-2027”, companies and institutions will present their projects and project ideas at InnoPITCH that contribute to shaping the transformation process toward a sustainable, climate-friendly and digital economy and implement the Thuringian Innovation Strategy.
In the category “Transformation towards a Digital Economy/Artificial Intelligence”, Steffen Biermann presents the joint project “IR Sources for Modern Gas Sensors”. Gas sensors are used in the monitoring and control of industrial processes, in medical technology, in environmental monitoring and increasingly also in building automation. Optical gas sensors, which work primarily with infrared (IR) light, are particularly stable over the long term and insensitive to interference. They can be used to detect and quantify a wide range of different gases such as CO2, anesthetic gases or various hydrocarbons.
Together with CMOS IR GmbH, the CiS Research Institute has developed a technology for the production of miniaturized IR emitters over the past years. The chips, which are manufactured in a silicon wafer process, are characterized by small size, high thermal emission, fast switching behavior and long lifetime. Temperatures of over 800°C can be reached in the active areas of the components, which are only a few square millimeters in size, resulting in usable IR radiation in the spectral range from about 2 to 12 µm. Extensive optimization and subsequent investigations under near-use conditions have resulted in a stable manufacturing process with high yields that is now ready for series production.
The developed IR emitters are the key to compact, energy- and cost-efficient gas sensors with outstanding performance. These enable digital condition monitoring and control of processes in industry, the environment and medicine.
The development was supported by accompanying funding projects from the state of Thuringia (as part of the “get started 2gether” program) and the federal government (INNO-KOM, Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy).
Renewable energies will form the backbone of energy supply in the near future. Supply fluctuations of renewable energies can be minimized by using storage technologies. One possible way is to generate hydrogen by electrolysis and store it in the existing infrastructure of gas pipelines and gas storage facilities. The development of innovative sensor solutions is an important prerequisite for the successful application of these technologies in practice.
In the category “Transformation towards sustainable mobility”, Dr. Klaus Ettrich is the contact person for “H2 pressure sensors”. The CiS Research Institute developed a hydrogen-resistant MEMS-based pressure sensor that can be used as a component in an H2 multisensor system that determines not only pressure but also temperature, residual gases and the concentration of hydrogen. However, the pressure sensor can also be used in pure pressure measuring devices. The development was part of a research project that unites industrial and research partners from Thuringia and the entire Central German region. The HYPOS consortium is funded as part of the “Twenty20 – Partnership for Innovation” funding initiative of the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research.
To the event:
https://www.cluster-thueringen.de/innocon/
