Institute for Micro Process Engineering

**Institute for Micro Process Engineering IMVT**, view from the south-west

The Institute for Micro Process Engineering IMVT (from the German name Institut für Mikroverfahrenstechnik) is an institute within the Karlsruhe Research Center (Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe) in Eggenstein-Leopoldshafen, Germany. Its main field of activity is micro process engineering, the science of conducting chemical and/or physical processes in confines with typical dimensions below 1 mm.

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A couple years ago, my lab created a technology that turns a variety of materials superhydrophilic. Superhydrophilic means it actually attracts water. We actually turned the surface hydrophilic to such a strong degree that water runs uphill against gravity. That technology can have many applications on its own. After that, we started to work on the counterpart technology, making surface to repel water or as we call it, hydrophobic. We have been working on creating superhydrophobic material using a laser processing technique. What we see here is pretty interesting. The water falls to wards the surface and is repelled and bounces off the surface. This is achieved by creating a unique pattern of surface structures at micro and nano scales with our laser processing technology and those structures are intrinsically part of the material’s surface. Most of the hydrophobic surfaces available today rely on chemical coatings. Our surface has many advantages over the coatings out there. First our surface has a much stronger hydrophobic effect than the coatings and secondly, we don’t have to worry about coatings peeling off and the surface degrading over time. Many people think of Teflon as a strong hydrophobic material. However, if you want to get rid of water on a Teflon surface you have to tilt the surface to about 70 degrees before the water starts to slide off slowly. Our surface requires an extremely small angle, if at all, for water to slide off. I think there are many possible applications for this new superhydrophobic surface. For instance, if a surface repels water, you will also prevent icing on the surface, you will be anti-corrosive and there’s sanitation applications as well. We wanted to create this superhydrophobic surface that will not only repel water but also repels water containing a waste materials. We know in many developing countries in the world, clean water is a scarce resource so if you create a toilet instead of using a lot of water to flush the toilet, would require little or no water but still stay clean and dry.

History and organization

The IMVT was formally established in July 2001 and continued previous activities in micro process engineering carried out by the Central Experimentation Department (Hauptabteilung Versuchstechnik, HVT) at the Karlsruhe Research Center. Its first director was Klaus Schubert. Between 1997 and 2001 the first activities, which were focused on developing and testing micro heat exchangers, were expanded by a new group (Head: Maximilian Fichtner) to chemical process engineering in microchannels, with a focus on fuel processing (methanol steam reforming, partial oxidation of methane), synthesis of chemicals and fundamental studies on new types of micro heat exchangers and heterogeneous catalysis under dynamic reaction conditions and in the Knudsen regime. In 2001, the entire activity was turned into a new institute, the IMVT.

Professor Roland Dittmeyer assumed control of the institute in July 2009. The IMVT operates within the programs "Nano- and Microsystems" and "Sustainability and Technology" of the Helmholtz Association. Its staff initially consisted of about 40 employees (on 31 December 2001^[1]) and numbered approximately 50 in 2005.^[2] The institute carries out both basic development of apparatus (e.g. "microreactors") and processes, funded via the Helmholtz Association and the Research Center, as well as development projects in cooperation with and funded by industry.