Collaborative Projects

In the multidisciplinary joint research project Functional Paper Research (FiPRe), it is the goal to generate the lacking understanding of process-structure-property relationships, in order to enable the use of paper for new fields of application. The joint research is funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) under PAK 962/1 (2018 – 2021) and PAK 962/2 (2021 – 2023) and associated DFG projects.

The main focus of the LOEWE program of the State of Hessen aims to contribute to the systematic development of the advantages of the material paper for the building industry and to establish the prerequisites for a new economic field with an internationally visible focus in Hessen and to anchor it at the participating universities in the long term.

The Collaborative Research Centre (CRC) 1194 involves researchers from the TU Darmstadt, the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research Mainz and the Leibniz Institute of Polymer Research Dresden. Their common goal is the fundamental analysis of the interaction between transport and wetting processes – particularly when, parallel to momentum transport, also heat and mass transport, complex fluids or complex surfaces are involved.

The Mercklab focuses on the development of paper based, microfluidic systems for immunodiagnostics and analytics. It furthermore involves state-of-the-art printing technologies and biotechnological engineering. Consequently, the cooperation is built on an interdisciplinary team of chemists, biochemists, biologists and engineers.

MAP and the Koehler Paper Group launched the “Green Coating Collaboration” (GCC) on January 01. 2019, which aims to develop functional paper coatings from sustainable raw materials. The long-term goal is to develop functional surfaces that are recyclable and/or biodegradable, so that the papers coated with them can be recycled, a recycling cycle that, unlike many others, has already been solved.

The basis of this collaborative project between the MAP group and the Department of group of Prof. Andrieu-Brunsen Smart Membranes is a process for the spatially resolved hydrophobization of papers by means of a thin layer of silica. This coating can be used to produce papers with water repellent properties on both sides or on one side. The aim is to further develop this process and the materials obtained towards application.