Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology
The Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology (Empa; German: Eidgenössische Materialprüfungs- und Forschungsanstalt,[2] French: Laboratoire fédéral d’essai des matériaux et de recherche, Italian: Laboratorio federale di prova dei materiali e di ricerca, Romansh: Institut federal da controlla da material e da perscrutaziun,) is a Swiss research institution for application-oriented materials science and technology.
As part of the ETH Domain, it is assigned to the Federal Department of Economic Affairs, Education and Research (EAER).
[3] Under the vision “Materials and Technologies for a Sustainable Future”, Empa has set itself the goal of developing solutions to priority problems facing industry and society, for example in the areas of energy, the environment, mobility, health and safety.
Its research focus areas are nano-structured materials and technologies, the built environment, energy, resources and emissions, and health and performance.
The focus there is on structural and civil engineering, safety engineering, surface technology, metallic materials, material composites, non-destructive testing, chemical analyses, exhaust gas and outdoor air testing, building services, building physics, acoustics and noise abatement.
In 2001, Empa focused even more strongly on research and innovative developments; however, knowledge transfer and services remained an important part of the portfolio.
This cooperation with the new EU member states has intensified within the framework of the so-called “cohesion billion”, Switzerland's contribution to the EU's eastward expansion, for example through numerous joint research projects and joint events such as the Swiss-Polish Science & Technology Days, which were held in Warsaw for the first time in 2010.
In 2010, Empa agreed new partnerships with various industrial partners in the areas of fuel cells, medtech applications and sustainable mobility concepts.
In 2014, the groundbreaking ceremony was held for NEST, a building concept designed to accelerate the transfer of new materials and technologies and bring products in the construction and energy sectors to market more quickly.
NEST consists of a central backbone and three open platforms on which individual research and innovation modules — so-called “units” — are installed according to a plug and play principle.
On the research side, ETH Zurich, EPF Lausanne, Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts, and Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), for example, have used the NEST platform to date.
The energy source is electricity from photovoltaic systems or hydroelectric power plants that fluctuates greatly over time and is not needed in the grid.
In 2016, Empa opened its Coating Competence Center, where tailor-made surface technologies and advanced manufacturing (AM) processes are to find their way from the research laboratories to marketable industrial applications.
With very similar objectives, the ETH Domain launched the strategic research area “advanced manufacturing (AM)” in 2017 under the leadership of Empa, which is intended to support Swiss industry in specifically exploiting the potential of digitalization and developing AM technologies.
This gave rise in 2019 to the AM-TTC Alliance, the umbrella organization of Swiss technology transfer centers in the field of AM.
In Dübendorf, Empa has laid the foundation stone for its new research campus co-operate,[13] which is consistently geared to minimizing greenhouse gas emissions.
