This year, 25 research and development teams from Germany and abroad competed for the AMA Innovation Award, which is endowed with prize money of 10,000 euros that can be split by the jury. Among the 25 submissions, seven companies applied for the special 'Young Company' award. They have all been on the market for less than five years, have fewer than 50 employees and generate an annual turnover of less than 10 million euros. Three of these teams convinced the jury members from science and industry and were nominated: the company AIM Systems; the team from Quantum Technologies and the company Sykno. The three teams will receive a free trade fair appearance at Sensor+Test 2023 in Nuremberg and are also still in the running for the main prize, the AMA Innovation Award 2023.

In total, the following have been nominated for the AMA Innovation Award 2023 (in alphabetical order)

• AIM Systems for a measuring device for non-contact inline measurement of the layer thickness of Li-ion battery electrodes. The innovation enables high-precision measurement of electrode coatings and is tolerant to vibration and waviness of the samples.
• Infineon Technologies for a development in the use of vortex magnetization in the signaling TMR layer. In the development of magnetic sensors, it offers the advantage of flexibly adapting the magnetic measuring range to the application with minimal magnetic hysteresis. The layer thickness and structure size are coordinated in such a way that the vortex magnetization always adjusts spontaneously and reliably, even without external initial magnetization.
• Quantum Technologies for a fiber-coupled magnetic field sensor that measures the magnetic field strength with purely optical precision. The quantum sensor uses the magnetic field dependence of the spin states of nitrogen vacancy centers in diamond and their fluorescence. The sensor head is no thicker than a human hair, chemically inert, non-magnetic, non-conductive and therefore galvanically isolated.
• STMicroelectronics for an uncooled, factory-calibrated IR sensor with an operating wavelength between 5 μm and 20 μm. It is designed to measure the amount of IR radiation emitted by an object within its field of view for presence detection. It offers high sensitivity and does not require an optical lens to detect the presence of people and the movement of objects at a distance of up to 4 m.
• Sykno presents a measuring system for contactless detection of vital parameters. It can be installed under the patient's bed, for example, and penetrates the patient's mattress and clothing. Using radar-based distance measurement, heartbeat, respiratory rate and heart sounds can be recorded in medical quality without the need for adhesive electrodes as with conventional ECGs.

The winners of the AMA Innovation Award will be announced on May 8, 2023 at the opening event of SMSI 2023 - Sensor and Measurement Science International, which will take place parallel to Sensor+Test in Nuremberg.