The Institute of Nanotechnology (INT) was founded in 1998 on the initiative of Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe and the Universities of Karlsruhe and Strasbourg. The institute aims at performing research in selected fields of nanotechnology on a worldwide accepted level.
Selection of the respective research projects in close consultation with external reviewers from industry and science ensures that research at INT is characterized by both scientific originality and a high practical relevance.
Research focuses on the following projects:
■ Theory of Nanoelectronic Systems
■ Synthesis and Characterization of Molecular Building Blocks
■ Electronic Transport Properties of Nanostructures
■ Controllable Materials
■ Biofunctional Materials
■ Constitution, Synthesis, and Processing of Nanomaterials
■ Materials for Energy Systems (especially for energy storage)
■ Materials for Electrochemical Technologies
■ Magnetic Properties of Nanomaterials
■ Mechanical Properties of Nanomaterials
■ Printable Electronics
■ Metamaterials and Photonic Crystals
These topics are handled by teams of theoretical and experimental biologists, chemists, physicists, and materials scientists. While the scientific fundamentals are developed in close national and international cooperation with leading universities and non-university research institutions. Economically promising basic innovations are approached by cooperating with the industry, e.g. with partners of „NanoMat“ (http://www.nanomat.de/) as soon as "nanoValley.eu" (http://www.nanovalley.eu/).
The projects listed above can be assigned to the following main research areas of the Programm Nano- and Microsysteme (http://www.nmp.kit.edu):
■ Condensed Matter and Molecular Building Blocks (Spokesperson: Prof. Dr. H. Löhneysen)
■ Customized and Tunable Properties of Materials (Spokesperson: Prof. Dr. O. Kraft)
■ Photonics (Spokesperson: Prof. Dr. M. Wegener)
■ Energy Storage (Spokesperson: Prof. Dr.-Ing. H. Hahn)
