Germany’s industrial sector is facing growing pressure from high energy prices and new supply risks. With no realistic path back in energy policy, hydrogen is moving to the forefront as the leading alternative. In today’s top story, we look at the progress Fraunhofer FEP has made on bipolar plates for fuel cells and electrolyzers—and at what continues to hold back the hydrogen ramp-up in Germany and Europe.

Conventional manufacturing methods currently allow highly precise nanostructures to be produced on photonic components only up to a size of 30 cm. Researchers in Thuringia are now developing a new machine capable of creating nanostructures on surfaces of up to 1 m², with positioning accuracy finer…

For diamond coatings, uniform coating quality is essential. Researchers have now developed a new measurement and analysis method that simplifies the determination of the optical constants of large-area diamond coatings.

The Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Systems and Device Technology (IISB) in Erlangen and PVA Tepla AG in Wettenberg are establishing a joint lab for the production of aluminum nitride (AlN) crystals. The partnership marks the first time in Europe that an industrially supported pilot-scale…

The Empa spin-off Swiss Cluster has received the Swiss Economic Award 2026 in the “Production/Manufacturing” category. The young company develops equipment for vacuum-based coating processes, combining PVD and ALD technologies.

When planning vacuum handling systems, far-reaching decisions often need to be made in the early stages of a project. To address this challenge, one manufacturer is using virtual reality to help users more quickly identify what matters most.

How Does Light Create Motion in a Metal? A team of researchers from European XFEL, the University of Potsdam, and other institutions has shown that ultrashort optical laser pulses can trigger extremely fast lattice vibrations in periodically layered metals—not primarily through heating of the atomic…