Press releases

Scientists from four continents will meet on February 12, 2020, on the campus of Saarland University for a three-day conference on a new approach to materials synthesis. They are focusing on so-called “living materials”, which open up completely new possibilities in medicine, but also in many other areas.

In January 2020, a new junior research group around Dr. Shrikrishnan Sankaran has started at INM. Under the title “Bioprogrammable Materials” it will exploit synthetic biology approaches to engineer novel functional materials with a focus on biomedical applications.

Immune cells are constantly on the move to intercept pathogens. In the skin, these are especially so-called dendritic cells, which move through the cell layers much faster than other body cells. How the cells do this exactly has not been investigated so far. Biophysicists led by Professor Franziska Lautenschläger have now discovered how the movement […]

Visit us at this year’s Medica from 18 to 21 November in Düsseldorf. Discover the new, bio-inspired adhesive structures and concepts of the INM. Get in touch with us – at the joint stand “Research for the future” in hall three at stand D94.

The Physical Analytics Group at the INM succeeded in explaining why drinking water in the community of Dossenheim (Rhein-Neckar Kreis) just outside Heidelberg had a slightly blue color some time ago: the reason was a distribution of nanoscopic, completely harmless lime particles.

Scientists at the INM present a Cobot for the first time which is equipped with microstructured surfaces for the handling of objects. Because these structures are very soft and have no sharp corners or edges, the risk of injury to humans is further reduced.

Due to the special arrangement of its molecules, a new coating made of corn starch is able to repair small scratches by itself through heat: The cross-linking via ring-shaped molecules makes the material mobile, so that it compensates for the scratches and these disappear again.

At this year’s Hannover Messe, INM will be presenting hybrid inks that are suitable for printing conductive structures on thin polymer films or paper, for example.

Researchers from INM and the University of California, San Diego found that the length of the humerus bone varies in a characteristic way with the body weight of the bird to optimize lift. By contrast, the elements of the feather attachments (barbules) are spaced equally for all bird species to optimally control airflow.

Scientists at INM developed a highly improved microscopy method to study proteins in hydrated state: The usage of a graphene liquid cell for transmission electron microscopy of proteins resulted in an order of magnitude higher radiation tolerance of a protein sample compared to samples in amorphous ice.