2012|13 Annual Report Fraunhofer IGB

22 PROFILE 1953 The roots of the IGB lie in the village of Marienthal near Kirch- heimbolanden in the Rhineland-Palatinate. Here, Prof. Karl Lothar Wolf, a physicist, founded the institute as a private ini- tiative. In 1962, the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft took over the in- stitute, initially under its previous name. In the same year the “Fraunhofer Institute for Interfacial Physics and Chemistry IGf” moved to Stuttgart, where Prof. Karl Hamann, head of the Stuttgart Research Institute for Pigments and Coatings, took over as acting director. Even in those days, the focus was on interfaces – which continue to be important for industrial appli- cations today. Now as then, the basis of all developments was the measurement of interfacial energy – surface tension, wet- ting tension, the work of adhesion. Thus the annual report of 1972 is almost topical 40 years on – including the development of measuring techniques to determine the wetting behavior of surfaces, glass ﬁbers and pigment powders, the gravimetric in- vestigation of the wetting kinetics of liquids penetrating into pore spaces, and the pretreatment of surfaces to be coated in order to improve the adhesive strengths of coatings. 1976 In 1975, Dr.-Ing. Horst Chmiel, then engaged in medical tech- nology research at the Helmholtz Institute in Aachen, was appointed successor to Prof. Hamann, who retired on age grounds. A process engineer by specialization, Prof. Chmiel took up post as institute director on January 1, 1976. His con- cern was to introduce bioengineering to the institute and to steer the existing “interfacial” orientation of its work more strongly toward process engineering and its applications. Thus research was thematically expanded, and the institute received its current name, “Institute for Interfacial Engineer- ing and Biotechnology”, abbreviated in German to IGB. The “old” institute was retained as the Department for Interfacial Engineering, headed by Dr. Herbert Bauser. A new research focus was added: the “interfacial problems of medicine”, the interface between the “interfaces” and the new ﬁeld of medi- cal engineering. Soon a third ﬁeld of work was planned, an- nounced in the 1978 annual report as “Speciﬁc problems of biotechnology” – meaning biological treatment of exhaust air and wastewater, a topic dear to the heart of Dr. Walter Trösch, who joined the IGB in 1976. This work area spelled the arrival of the “microbiological interfaces”, i.e. the interac- tions of microorganisms. The move into the “new” building at today’s Institute Center site in Stuttgart-Vaihingen followed in 1981, with ﬁve departments covering the subject areas Tech- nical Biochemistry, Technical Microbiology, Chemical Micro- biology, Process Engineering and Interfacial Engineering. Dr. 60 YEARS FRAUNHOFER IGB – 60 YEARS INTERFACIAL RESEARCH This year the Fraunhofer IGB celebrates its 60th anniversary. Since its foundation as “Institut für Physik und Chemie der Grenzflächen” (Institute for Interfacial Physics and Chemistry) in 1953, the institute has borne the term “interfaces” in its name. An interface is a surface that forms a common boundary between two non-miscible phases or two different substances. At these boundaries the phases “touch” – are effectively in contact with each other, yet the transition between their material characteristics is abrupt. An interface is thus above all a place where differences coincide and give rise to new phenomena, and for 60 years now, interfaces have been the focus of research at the IGB.

2012|13 Annual Report Fraunhofer IGB

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