After a profitable profession in analysis at Empa, Matthias Koebel has now ventured into the personal sector and based the start-up Siloxene. The younger entrepreneur has a building package full of a miracle materials, a variety of know-how and – regardless of the overall temper of disaster – a refreshing optimism.
What Matthias Koebel is providing in his portfolio sounds nearly just like the Crispr/Cas genetic scissors, which had been awarded the Nobel Prize for Medication and can be utilized to particularly remedy genetic ailments. Just for the chemical business: a multifunctional materials element that improves the properties of adhesives, coatings or fillers, relying on the product and buyer necessities.
Strictly talking, this element is a silicon-based, molecular hybrid constructing materials that’s solely about one nanometer in measurement. If used appropriately, this “tentacle molecule” can particularly enhance the properties of sure substances. For instance, coatings can grow to be extra scratch-resistant, adhesives can have higher adhesion or shorter curing instances, or fillers can work together extra particularly with a resin matrix. With this “multifunctional Lego constructing block” in his pocket, as Koebel calls it, the researcher lately based the start-up Siloxene AG. Koebel found and investigated the element throughout his time as a scientist and head of Empa’s “Constructing Vitality Supplies and Parts” lab.
Knowhow, expertise and a variety of verve
Moreover the uncooked materials, i.e. the macromolecule, he additionally obtained the second vital element that types the Siloxene portfolio from Empa: the know-how that’s important within the improvement of advanced chemical merchandise. Siloxene focuses on corporations within the plastics processing, adhesives or sealants manufacturing, and constructing supplies industries. “Right here, the regulatory hurdles are usually not as excessive and we are able to work with corporations to optimize their merchandise and processes comparatively simply,” Koebel explains. Behind the formulation of an adhesive, for instance, there are exactly coordinated mixtures of various chemical substances whose interplay should be understood to be able to then make a focused change.
In the meanwhile, he and his four-person staff are already working with varied corporations on new developments. In such a course of, the company clients primarily work on their very own product formulation, whereas Siloxene supplies technological recommendation, i.e. how the macromolecule can greatest be utilized in a selected case, and makes it obtainable as a uncooked materials. Relying on the necessity and software, that is additionally tailored. “For industrial corporations, particularly within the present disaster, there is a chance to spend money on analysis and improvement, to develop and enhance merchandise. We’re enormously benefiting from this,” says Koebel.
Personal manufacturing in thoughts
Basically, there’s little sense of disaster while you speak to Koebel. The financing for a superb begin has been secured, he says. Koebel can now consider increase his personal analysis and improvement division and buying extra company clients. As well as, the energetic neo-entrepreneur already has a imaginative and prescient for the subsequent 5 years: “Initially, we are going to most likely have our macromolecule produced by a contract producer. In the long run, nevertheless, I wish to arrange our personal manufacturing. I am an optimist by nature and all the time look forward and hold going, it doesn’t matter what.”
