Press room

Today the ceremony of placing the building’s foundation stone took place, with the presence of the Basque Minister for Industry, Commerce and Tourism, Ana Aguirre; the president of the Mondragón Corporation, José María Aldecoa; the director of the National Microelectronics Centre, Emilio Lora Tamayo; the president of Ikerlan-IK4, Txomin García, and the managing director of Ikerlan-IK4, Javier Mendigutxia.

The facilities, the cost of which comes to 6.3 million euros, will be equipped with the most up-to-date equipment, in order to promote the consolidation of the lines of activity already being carried out and the transfer of these technologies to society. This infrastructure and the activities to be carried out in it have the support of the Ministry of Science and Innovation, the Mondragon Corporation, the Basque Government and the Provincial Council of Gipuzkoa.

The laboratory will be built on a 5,000 m2 plot, of which 1,380 m2 will be occupied by the facilities. The main area will house the three areas in which Ikerlan-IK4’s three lines of research in the micro-nanotechnologies will be carried out: Microfluidics, Organic Polymers and Integration of Micro/nano-systems. A laboratory will also be built for design and support work, as well as a space for the promotion of spin-offs.

The heart of the new facilities will be a 300 m2 clean room which will be fitted with the latest generation scientific equipment, including for example a controlled atmosphere chamber with four different sources of evaporation, which is unique in Spain. The research team, currently consisting of 16 experts, will increase significantly over the period 2008-2011, until there are 45 researchers. The applications will be mainly aimed at the household, health, energy, environmental, pharmacy and agro-food sectors.

Ikerlan-IK4’s activity in the health field will focus on the design of low-cost disposable devices which will enable the rapid diagnosis of illnesses as well as medicine dispensing devices and biocompatible microimplants, amongst other applications. As far as the energy field is concerned, the laboratory will work on different projects like the design of new generation devices to produce cheaper, more flexible and efficient solar panels, intelligent walls that act in accordance with the external climate conditions or photovoltaic transparent windows.

The location of this new laboratory is not by chance, but part of the collaboration maintained by Ikerlan-IK4 with other research bodies. So in addition to the Technology Centre, the Garaia Innovation Park also houses the University of Mondragon and business R&D units. Moreover, this new Micro-nano-technologies laboratory will house the CIC Microgune Co-operative Research Centre which will reinforce the capacity for research in to micro/nanotechnologies.

Ikerlan-IK4’s experience in the micro/nanotechnologies area is extensive and backed by its presence in different specialist European networks and committees. It is collaborating in this field with prestigious research bodies in the European Union, and participating in 5 European projects, leading 2 of them. The research projects carried out by Ikerlan-IK4 are helping to generate new patents to open up significant opportunities for the development of new businesses.

http://www.ikerlan.es