With the BMBF-funded project "Investments to accelerate the transition of technology ideas from the laboratory to industrial demonstration - GRAVOstruct - Understanding Technology", work has begun since June of this year on setting up an infrastructure with which GRAVOmer network partners and interested companies can demonstrate surface functions and the technologies used to produce them above the laboratory scale in an industrially oriented environment. The object of "GRAVOstruct" is to build and provide a modular laser processing platform at the IOM for the production of master tools (roll masters) up to a width of 200 mm in highest precision and optical surface quality and for their continuous roll-to-roll replication on foils.

The Leibniz Institute of Surface Engineering (IOM) and GRAVOmer are thus jointly expanding their technology transfer offerings within the network. The IOM is co-initiator and founding member of the innovation network "GRAVOmer - Competence Region Functional Surfaces", which is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) as part of the program "WIR! - Change through Innovation in the Region". In the GRAVOmer alliance, the IOM works on the development, application-related design and industrialization of functional surfaces for innovative applications and supports the networking of regional players in Central Germany to initiate sustainable innovation and value chains.