The future of microtechnology is green in Japan, too - more than 300 industry representatives attend IVAM forum in Tokyo

The third German-Japanese Micro/Nano Business Forum at the Exhibition Micromachine last Thursday in Tokyo attracted more than 300 Japanese industry representatives. With their keynote presentations, Prof. Esashi of Tohoku University and Prof. Gessner of the Fraunhofer Research Institution for Electronic Nano Systems ENAS provided an excellent overview of current research activities in micro- and nanosystems technology. Other speakers from Waseda University, Panasonic, LIMO Lissotschenko Mikrooptik, MEAS Deutschland and the Fraunhofer Institute for Photonic Microsystems IPMS also attracted a large number of visitors.

Ryutaro Maeda from the National Institute of Science and Technology (AIST) in Tsukuba introduced the Green MEMS Project. The Japanese government's efforts to save CO2 increased significantly, and there are numerous research activities in the area of “Energy management by ubiquitious sensing”. In the research buildings in Tsukuba, such energy management systems with wireless sensors are already being tested. In the Tsukuba Innovation Arena (TIA-Nano) 500 million Euros have been invested in research in 2009 and 2010 alone.

On the German side, the Fraunhofer IPMS, MEAS, LIMO and IVAM reported on current trends in Germany.

The forum and a delegation were organized by IVAM, together with the German Asia-Pacific Business Association (OAV), with support of the Federal Ministry of Economic Affairs, the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Energy of North Rhine-Wesphalia and the Micromachine Center in Tokyo. In the Micromachine Center, company like Sony and Panasonic are working together on research projects.