Facts and figures

ACQUANDAS manufactures sputtered and micro-patterned components from Nitinol, magnesium, iron alloys or other metallic materials using Physical Vapour Deposition and other microsystem technology processes. We do rapid prototyping and large scale production. We are located in Kiel, Germany.

Office and the materials lab building.

Aerial view: offices, clean room and the materials lab are located on the premises of the Christian-Albrechts-University in Kiel at the Faculty of Engineering.

Our vision

Technology is part of our lives and we from ACQUANDAS believe that it must be used to do good. Hence, we want to employ our very unique fabrication technology to enable the development of disruptive technologies in the medical device and pharmaceutical industries, and to offer novel approaches for other industrial markets. We put all efforts in our technology in order to fulfill our vision: raise current standards and improve quality of life.

History

ACQUANDAS was founded in 2012. Prior to it, in the 1990s and 2000s, many years of scientific work and research in the field of intelligent thin film materials at Research Center Karlsruhe (KIT), the Research Center CAESAR in Bonn, Germany, and at the Christian-Albrechts-University in Kiel, resulted in a deep knowledge base about processing and properties of thin film materials, especially Nitinol Shape Memory and Superelastic materials.

Based on this work, we are now able to produce sputtered, micro-patterned, freestanding films with high thickness and high purity. Our fabrication process opens up new opportunities for the design of medical devices and industrial components.

Founding members of ACQUANDAS are:

• Dr.-Ing Rodrigo Lima de Miranda, who developed the core technology of ACQUANDAS during his doctoral thesis. He has 10 years of scientific experience in the field of materials science, particularly focusing on smart materials for medical application, and over 7 years of experience in the automotive industry as an engineer and project manager, including testing, product development and material cost reduction management. Since completing his doctorate with distinction, Lima de Miranda has been expediting the foundation of a company based on his developments. In 2009 he was awarded with the first prize in the Ideenwettbewerb Gesundheit Schleswig-Holstein.
• Prof. Dr.-Ing. Eckhard Quandt, director at the Institute of Material Sciences at the Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel and head of the department Inorganic Functional Materials. He received his diploma and doctoral degree in physics at the Technische Universität Berlin, Germany, in 1986 and 1990, respectively. His scientific focus is material research on smart materials and multiferroics and the development of sensors and actuators for micro and nanosystems technology. He has over 20 years of experience in the field of shape memory thin films.
• Andreas Schüssler, PhD, founder of ADMEDES Schuessler GmbH, the leading supplier of self-expanding Nitinol devices, such as stents and heart valve frames to the medical device industry. Dr. Schuessler did his thesis at the Max-Planck-Institute of Materials Research and the University of Stuttgart in 1987 and was Postdoctoral Associate at MIT in 1989. Dr. Schuessler is author and co-author of more than 70 papers on Nitinol materials processing and is considered as one of the leading experts on Nitinol device manufacturing.