Materials and manufacturing
A company’s economic success depends on its ability to produce innovative and reliable products with an effective use of resources. ETH Zurich intends to use this initiative to make a long-term contribution to the competitiveness of Swiss industry.
A company’s ability to be economically successful in the long term depends not least on its ability to develop innovative products and produce them at a low cost. It is in precisely this area that ETH Zurich makes an important contribution to the Swiss economy by developing future-oriented production processes and manufacturing technologies. These include computer-assisted design methods and material flow planning, the integration of complex materials and systems, the efficient organisation of all business operations and recycling.
- With the Manufacturing across Scales initiative, ETH Zurich combines its broad expertise in this area and uses appropriate industry partnerships to promote fundamental research. This serves to develop processes and methods that enable reproducible and scalable resource-efficient process flows and manufacturing techniques.
- With its competence centre for Materials and Processes (MaP), ETH Zurich promotes interdisciplinary research and the development of new materials and processes. The close exchange between ETH and external partners within industry and society allows goal-oriented research and an efficient transfer of knowledge in materials science and process engineering.
- ETH Zurich is building a Robotics & Mobility Hub in the Switzerland Innovation Park Zurich. This platform is involved primarily in the area of self-driving transport and enables collaboration between the university and ETH spin-offs.
- Within the framework of the European Space Agency’s Business Incubation Centre (BIC) and together with more than 50 industry and research partners, ETH Zurich supports Swiss start-ups that transfer innovations related to space technology to other fields of application. ESA BIC Switzerland is located in the Switzerland Innovation Park Zurich.
News on manufacturing technologies
Made from waste instead of trees
The start-up Treeless Pack produces cellulose with microorganisms - entirely without wood. The cellulose can be used to produce paper, packaging material or composites for the construction industry in a resource-saving way.
Valuable raw materials from olive waste
ETH spin-off Gaia Tech transforms waste from olive oil production into high-quality antioxidants for use in cosmetics or food. This turns waste into valuable raw materials.
Collecting clean water from fog
Researchers at ETH Zurich have demonstrated the use of a specially coated metal mesh to harvest water from fog and simultaneously remove pollutants. People living in dry but foggy areas should benefit from this technology.
Further information
- internal page chevron_right Department of Chemistry and Applied Biosciences
- internal page chevron_right Department of Mechanical and Process Engineering
- internal page chevron_right Department of Materials
- internal page chevron_right Binnig and Rohrer Nanotechnology Center
- internal page chevron_right Competence Center for Materials and Processes (MaP)
- external page call_made Switzerland Innovation Park Zürich
- external page call_made ESA Business Incubation Centre (BIC)