Surfunction intensifies corporate development and establishes advisory board
Saarbrücken, August 24, 2022. Surfunction GmbH, a leading system provider for contactless surface functionalization using new laser processes, is driving corporate development forward and is constituting an efficient advisory board as part of its further professionalization and growth strategy.
The primary task of the Advisory Board is to actively support the business development of Surfunction GmbH. Furthermore, the committee has the task of advising and supporting the management of Surfunction in important decision-making issues. The current focus is on strategic further development, intensifying market development and the associated professionalization of production and organizational structures.
The SurFunction Advisory Board consists of three members, each elected for a period of three years. The institute director of the chair for functional materials at Saarland University and co-founder of Surfunction, Prof. Dr. Frank Mücklich, will take over the chairmanship of the advisory board in the future. The Saarbrücken entrepreneur Dr. Andreas Leffer, Managing Director of Stahl- und Apparatebau Leffer Engineering GmbH, and Hartmut Gottschild, an experienced industry and management expert.
“As management, we benefit from the wide-ranging expertise of our new advisory board, with whom we work together in a spirit of trust and partnership. The trust placed in us motivates us to further advance the industrialization and marketing of the next xDLIP generation (extended Direct Laser Interference Patterning – Gen II). The regular exchange with our advisory board is an important source of inspiration and an indicator of our economic success,” says Ralf Zastrau, Shareholder of Surfunction GmbH.
SurFunction GmbH (www.surfunction.com):
SurFunction is a leading system provider for contactless surface modification. The company, based in Saarbrücken (Saarland), uses various laser-based processes based on award-winning and patented interference technologies (xDLIP). This makes it possible to create cost-effective, cross-scale surface structures in record time, which are modeled from living nature. Surfaces can thus be equipped with new properties (e.g. non-stick, antibacterial, energy-efficient, low-friction, highly electrically conductive or tamper-proof). True to the claim “Nature knows best”, SurFunction opens up new innovation potential and provides companies from numerous industries with significant competitive advantages. SurFunction provides customers with complete systems as well as highly functional surfaces. SurFunction wants to improve the products or processes of its customers and conserve resources. SurFunction cooperates closely with leading research institutions worldwide, has first-class references as well as comprehensive competency – based on years of experience and development. SurFunction is a spin-off from the Steinbeis Research Center Material Engineering Center Saarland (MECS).
Background: xDLIP
Surface structures on almost any component have a significant impact on their performance. The research that has been carried out for decades has proven the almost infinite variety of possibilities. If particularly successful surfaces of nature are analyzed in this context, it can be determined that almost all effective structures (e.g. creation of non-stick properties of the lotus plant or color effects on butterfly wings) depend on complex geometries in tiny orders of magnitude. So far there has been no technology that enables industrial use economically and at relevant process speeds.
The researchers and co-founders of SurFunction, Prof. Dr.-Ing. Frank Mücklich and Prof. Dr.-Ing. Andrés Lasagni, have been working on a solution to this problem for more than twenty years and are the inventors of “Direct Laser Interference Patterning”. Due to its simple functional principle, this technology holds the key to creating artificial surfaces inspired by nature. For example, by splitting and superimposing laser beams, structures of the relevant order of magnitude can be generated through “interference”. The phenomenon is symbolically comparable to the interaction of colliding water waves. If a crest of the first wave meets a crest of the overlapping second wave, the resulting wave reinforces the other. By using this principle professionally and supplementing it with accompanying technologies, successful industrial use can now be achieved. This new cross-sectional technology is summarized under the term xDLIP (Extended Direct Laser Interference Patterning).