Black Forest Coating - Our start up team 2025
In 2025, the Sustainability Center Freiburg is once again supporting young founders in the realisation of their project. Dipl.-Ing. Stefan Schnakenberg and M.Sc. Mark Bernauer from the Fraunhofer Institute for Mechanics of Materials (IWM) were awarded the contract with their Black Forest Coating project.
Specifically, the aim is to develop customised diamond-like carbon coatings for tribological applications. With a global market of around 2 billion US dollars, the applications range from automotive engineering and forming tools to sensor technology and medical technology.
The innovation of the technology developed by Bernauer and Schnakenberg lies in the unique PE-CVD system technology developed at the Fraunhofer IWM. It allows layer deposition rates to be increased by a factor of 10, layer hardness to be precisely adjusted and very uniform layer thickness distributions to be achieved - all process properties that are difficult to achieve with conventional commercial system technologies. Another special feature of the system and process technology is the ability to produce very thick DLC coatings (10-20 µm) in an economical way, which is unique on the market.
It is precisely this unique system and process technology that is to be brought to market as part of the Black Forest Coating spin-off's business model. The gap in the market, which requires customised DLC coatings, is to be filled with solutions that are individually adapted to the customer. The technology will also make it possible to considerably extend the service life of various products and significantly reduce the use of energy and materials. There are already a number of partnerships and contacts with companies that are interested in the founding duo's technology. By supporting them and promoting the Sustainability Performance Centre, Black Forest Coating aims to make a significant contribution to improving industrial processes and promoting sustainability.
Contact
Mark Bernauer mark.bernauer@iwm.fraunhofer.de
Stefan Schnakenberg stefan.schnakenberg@iwm.fraunhofer.de
