By Tom Henderson
Small Times Senior Staff Writer
HANNOVER, Germany — The smile of satisfaction on Peter Bley’s face as he entered Hall 7 of the Hannover Trade Fair for the first time Thursday morning was 20 years in the making.
It’s been that long since he and researchers at the Karlsruhe Research Center started making microdevices. To see that his pioneering work in small tech had grown to the point where it finally warranted its own hall at this most prestigious of all German trade fairs or expositions was, he acknowledged, a sweet moment.
“We had been here before in the research and development hall, but people didn’t know we were there and we got lost. But here,” — he looked from one side of the hall to the other — “here we are for the first time as an independent fair, and that is very important. I hope, I do not know, that many other industrial people are here, now, not just scientists visiting other scientists, the way it often has been.”
The most amazing thing to him, he said, was that it was just in 1994 that the first COMS (Commercialization of Microsystems) conference was held with a handful of scientists in Banff, Canada. Seven years later, “I look around now and I think that microsystem technology is not so old really. I remember seeing small electrostatic motors at Berkeley in the early ’90s and now you see a hall full of industry. It is very good, yes?”
Bley is a physicist, and his work in microsystems began two decades ago as part of his work at Karlsruhe, a German national lab founded in the mid-1950s to explore nuclear power technology. Bley’s first devices were metal micronozzles used in uranium separation.
By the mid-1980s, his work in small technology had evolved into chemical sensors, material science, fabrication technologies and laser techniques. But it wasn’t until 1992 that Karlsruhe’s small tech initiatives were broken off as the Program for Microsystem Technologies, and Bley was named to head it.
Today, he oversees a scientific staff of 220 and his program is the fourth largest at the sprawling research center. Bley’s $26 million (U.S.) annual budget is 12 percent of Karlsruhe’s budget.
Bley’s program has established a reputation as a leader in non-silicon materials, representing a strategic decision made in his early days at the research center that if the Germans were to carve out a niche in microsystems, they would have to do it in non-silicon. Bley and others believed that it would be fruitless to try to compete with Americans in a material, silicon, that U.S. researchers knew so well and for which they already had fabrication facilities in place.
It was a gamble, says Bley. To many in the west, it was a mistake. Microsystems in the U.S. by definition in the mid- to late-80s meant silicon, and Bley’s insistence on working in exotic metals or polymers was considered heretical by some.
“I remember many debates with people at Berkeley — microsystems was silicon and only silicon. We were the crazy guys from Germany,” said Bley, with a chuckle. “Silicon is all right for many applications, but it is not all right for many others. Life sciences and many fabrication techniques require polymers.
“The scientists in the U.S. came from a semiconductor background. They knew silicon, and they already had fabrication facilities in place. But we had to make small nozzles from metal and figure out how to do that. We developed other techniques. Now, it is all coming together. I remember a recent conference where a gentleman from the U.K. stood up and announced that 95 percent of all microsystems had a combination of silicon microelectronics and other materials.”
BLEY’S VIEWS
In the 75-minute interview with Small Times, Bley covered a wide range on topics. Some highlights:
* He acknowledged that academics, in general, and Karlsruhe, in particular, had tended to ignore packaging issues and technologies. Researchers are now realizing that their inventions require specialized packaging to move from the lab to a real-life application.
“Packaging is not so interesting to scientists. They don’t like it so much. You get attention from smaller motors, smaller gears. We need to do more in packaging.”
* He said there was still much to improve in migrating laboratory technology — building one or two devices — to an industrial, high-volume environment. “When we transfer technology from the lab, we often have to overcome very many problems that we didn’t see in the lab.”
* The microtechnology fair must evolve into more of an international, rather than German, exposition. “I look around and I see 90 percent German companies. Some from the Netherlands, some from Russia. The other countries are not here at the moment. We need Japan. We need the U.S.”
He acknowledged a push by government leaders toward commercialization, particularly since the founding of a government-subsidized network called KEIM, whose aim is to help sponsor new companies. “It is our goal to have spinoffs but you can’t force them.”
The institute has had several spinoffs in the American sense of faculty members founding companies — but its biggest success in commercialization has involved technology licensed to German and European companies, most notably STEAG microParts GmbH, which uses Karlsruhe fabrication techniques to make a variety of products.
Other licensing agreements involve a Netherlands company, AMR Diagnostics AG, which uses so-called artificial noses for medical purposes, and a German company, Sonosys Ultraschallsysteme, whose ultrasonic systems are used to clean wafers in the semiconductor industry. The technology has also been licensed in Japan, Poland, England and France, but not yet in the U.S.
“We are still focusing on marketing efforts in Germany and Europe,” said Aida El-Kholi, Karlsruhe’s marketing director for microtechnology. “But we welcome any U.S. company that knocks on our door. Marketing efforts aimed at the U.S. will be our next step.”
FAIR NOTES
Twenty-nine of the 7,000 exhibitors at the trade fair have been awarded the title of Best Product Innovations for 2001, and two of them were microtechnology companies or research institutions.
The HSG-IMIT Institute of Germany was awarded for an ultrasensitive motion detector it developed for Vogt Electronic AG. Using silicon technology, the inclination sensor can detect a positional deviation of as little as 0.0007 degrees within 300 milliseconds.
And Micromotion GmbH of Germany was honored for what was described as the world’s smallest backlash-free precision gear for positioning tasks. The gear can be used to increase the torque of a range of micromotors. It has applications in microrobotics, semi-conductor manufacturing and medical equipment . . .
After two days of unseasonably sunny weather and light crowds, Hannover was back to rain, cold winds — and more people Wednesday and Thursday. “We’re seeing a lot of visitors,” said Volker Klocke, a physicist whose Klocke Nanotechnik sells nanomotors and microgrippers for use in assembling glass fibers into cables.
“I’m very hopeful,” said the lone American exhibitor, Michele Migiulo. Traffic had been very light past his booth Monday, a bit better Tuesday and enough Wednesday to put a smile on his face. “Did you see the traffic on the way in? Did you see all the people getting off the train? It’s looking like a good day.”
The Hannover Trade Fair is such a mighty event that freeways into downtown are commandeered for its use. The fairgrounds are several miles outside of town. In the morning, both sides of the freeway are used to funnel private autos, buses and an army of light yellow taxis to the fair. At night, the flow is reversed and traffic flows into town on both sides.
This is counter, of course, to the needs of local citizens who are heading into the central business district in the morning or home in the evening, but such is the power and economic impact of the fair . . .
From the signs in and around the exhibit halls, you’d almost think you were at an American show. “Bus Stop,” “Restaurant Self-Service,” “Factory Automation,” “Mini-Shop,” “Coffee Bar” read some of the signs on the way to the Microtechnology fair in Hall 7, most of them without an equivalent sign in German.
Inside Hall 7, English signs greet visitors at most exhibits, and the stage area where panel discussions and presentations are made each day in the central hall, the central theme of the fair is proclaimed all about in English: “Microtechnology Goes Industry.”
But unlike most international trade shows where presentations are in English, the discussions and presentations each day — on such topics as “How Can Europe Survive in the Global Competition,” “Microsystems for Small to Medium Sized Businesses,” and “Microtechnology for the Automobile of the Future” — are all in German, without an English translation or a transcription available later in English . . .
Related story from Hannover Trade Fair: German small tech developers look to U.S. for venture capital.