This programme is intended to help develop self-organisation processes for the realisation of numerous technological applications. This is to be performed by way of the funding of co-operative industrial projects involving applied research. The relevant guidelines were published in the German Federal Bulletin on the 29th of September.

Throughout just the last few years, self-organisation phenomena have gained growing importance in scientific investigations, with an impressive number of applied research results published on this topic. The principles of self-organisation are increasingly regarded in many scientific disciplines and innovative fields of research (for example, nanotechnology and optical technologies) as important steps in the implementation of future technological innovations and generations. In the medium to long term, it is expected that controllable self-organisation processes will enable product innovations and improvements as well as much improved process technologies.

The German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) is therefore planning to fund industry-coordinated R&D projects that aim at exploiting self-organisation phenomena for innovative technical applications through specific control mechanisms (e.g. temperature, pressure, pH value, electromagnetic fields, laser light, as well as adjustable structural and binding characteristics).

The “Technical application of self-organisation” programme sets forth the following primary focus points, which are intended to act as the initial basis for the application-specific implementation of controllable self-organisation processes.

Hybrid structuring processes
Assembly of mesoscopic components
Self-organisation of quantum points and nanocrystals
Self-organisation of block copolymers
Biofunctional recognition of new construction and production processes

These five parameters were identified as part of an early technology detection process carried out by the VDI on behalf of the BMBF (Eickenbusch, H., Hoffknecht, A., Holtmannspötter, D., Wechsler D.: Kontrollierte Selbstorganisation für zukünftige technische Anwendungen, Zukünftige Technologien, volume 55, ISSN 1436-5928 (2004)).

The guidelines on the BMBF's “Technical application of self-organisation” have been published on the http://www.bmbf.de/foerderungen  website and are readily available herein as a PDF file.

“Technical application of self-organisation” BMBF programme (100 kb)

Project proposals need to be submitted by the 18 th of January 2005 to the “Physical Technologies – VDI Technologiezentrum GmbH” project management organisation.

Contact:
Dr. D. Wechsler
Verein Deutscher Ingenieure e.V.
Graf-Recke-Str. 84
40239 Düsseldorf
Phone: +49 (0)211 6214620
E-mail: wechsler@vdi.de