The Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft is one of the leading organization for applied research in Europe. Its research activities are conducted by 72 institutes and research units at locations throughout Germany. The Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft employs a staff of more than 26,600, who work with an annual research budget of 2.6 billion euros. Of this sum, 2.2 billion euros is generated through contract research. The Fraunhofer-Institute for Laser Technology (ILT) is world-wide one of the most important development and contract research institutes for industrial laser applications. The activities cover a wide range of areas such as the development of new laser beam sources and components, the use of modern laser measurement and testing technologies and laser-supported manufacturing. Fraunhofer ILT is developing laser measurement technologies to measure physical and chemical properties of materials in industrial production processes. The focus of ILT is on those laser measurement methods which offer the capability for inline application, i.e. the measurement takes place during a production process. While monitoring chemical processes, both particulate and molecular chemical properties of a sample can be analyzed with a laser.
The main contribution of the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft to the PAT4Nano project will be the development and set-up of an analysis system for inline dynamic light scattering measurements that is capable of monitoring particle sizes in chemical reaction vessels. A novel probe head for the separation of a sample volume from the surrounding liquid will be combined with a cross correlation technique for measurements in undiluted samples with high particle concentrations. The analysis system will be provided for different application scenarios inside the project.
