12.04.2023

Hannover Messe: TU Ilmenau presents "Green Electronics

Christoph Gorke
The TU Ilmenau presents "Green Electronics" at the Hanover Messe

As part of its Scientific Year 2023 "Sustainability", the TU Ilmenau is presenting "Green Electronics", i.e. electronics for sustainable information technology (IT), at this year's Hannover Messe. In view of the exploding demand for energy and raw materials due to the digital revolution, TU Ilmenau is developing microelectronics that, inspired by biology, are extremely energy-efficient. The Hannover Messe, the world's leading trade fair for industry, will take place from April 17 to 21. TU Ilmenau will present itself daily from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. in Hall 2 at the joint stand "Research for the Future" of Thuringian universities.

The digital revolution is changing our society in unprecedented ways. In the process, the ever more far-reaching use of digital technologies is opening up completely new possibilities in all areas of the economy and society. But the price of increasing convenience is an enormous demand for energy and raw materials, which in turn contributes significantly to climate-damaging carbon dioxide emissions. Current projections predict that by 2030, one-fifth of the entire global production of electrical energy will be required for information technology.

Profilfoto Prof. Martin ZieglerAnLi Fotografie
Prof. Martin Ziegler, Head of the Group of Micro- and Nanoelectronic Systems at TU Ilmenau

"'Green electronics' is the order of the day", says Prof. Martin Ziegler, head of the Group of Micro- and Nanoelectronic Systems at TU Ilmenau and deputy spokesman of the Collaborative Research Center "Neuroelectronics: Biologically Inspired Information Processing" funded by the German Research Foundation. "To avoid long-term negative ecological, economic and social consequences of the growing demand for energy and raw materials, we need environmentally friendly IT that is sustainable and climate-neutral along the entire value chain and in the entire material cycle."

The TU Ilmenau is presenting a "green", extremely energy-efficient microelectronics at the Hanover Messe at the joint stand of the Free State of Thuringia. It is being developed at the Center for Micro and Nanotechnologies, a research and development platform that stands for top international research. Here, scientists from more than 40 groups of the TU Ilmenau work together on an interdisciplinary basis with excellent equipment on 2,000 square meters of laboratory space in two high-tech buildings and one of the largest clean rooms at European universities.

This is also where the so-called neuromorphic electronics are created, which will be presented at the Hannover Messe. It electronically reproduces biological memory and learning processes and thus achieves unprecedented energy efficiency. At the Center for Micro- and Nanotechnologies, the threads for this come together in several research groups and major projects:

 
Research Laboratory Microelectronics Ilmenau for Neuromorphic Electronics

The Research Laboratory Microelectronics Ilmenau for Neuromorphic Electronics (ForLab NSME), a new laboratory for biologically inspired electronics funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research, provides an infrastructure for research on "green electronics" that is unique in Germany.

 
DFG Collaborative Research Center "Neuroelectronics: Biologically Inspired Information Processing"

The German Research Foundation's Collaborative Research Center "Neuroelectronics", in which the TU Ilmenau is involved with three projects, is advancing information processing in biology - for a resource-saving and highly efficient IT of the future. Together with eight other scientific institutions, biological ways of processing information are being investigated on simple creatures such as the freshwater jellyfish under the leadership of the Christian-Albrechts-Universität Kiel and transferred to electronics.

 
TU Ilmenau/ari
The bio-inspired sensor developed at the TU Ilmenau, which perceives sound waves in a similar way to the human ear
Research Group "Memristive Materials for Neuromorphic Electronics" (MemWerk)

In the research group "Memristive Materials for Neuromorphic Electronics", funded by the Carl Zeiss Foundation, seven groups of the TU Ilmenau are working on the development of new materials for biologically inspired electronics.

 
Junior Research Group Bioinspired Sensor Technology

The Junior Research Group Bio Sensorics is developing smart acoustic sensors that process sound like the human ear and can thus significantly improve the energy efficiency and computing power of audio technologies in the future. The TU Ilmenau microphone presented at Hannover Messe can be used in speech recognition, voice assistance systems and hearing aids as well as in technologies in production for monitoring machines.

 

Contact

Prof. Martin Ziegler
Head of Micro- and nanoelectronic Systems
+49 3677 69-3711
martin.ziegler@tu-ilmenau.de