What Is IMPI 60 — and Why Does It Matter?

The International Microwave Power Institute (IMPI) was founded in 1966 with a clear mandate: to serve the information needs of everyone involved in non-communication applications of microwave and RF energy. For six decades, IMPI’s Annual Microwave Power Symposium has been the premier global event connecting researchers, engineers, and industry professionals working across food technology, industrial heating, plasma chemistry, solid-state electronics, materials processing, and emerging applications.

IMPI 60 is a milestone edition. Taking place June 16–18, 2026, at the Westin New Orleans, it brings together exhibitors including pinkRF, Ampleon, SAIREM, MKS, MUEGGE Group, WAVEPIA, Microwave Techniques, Richardson Electronics, and Crescend Technologies, among others. Keynotes include Mike Wolf (Founder of The Spoon, on the AI shift in food technology) and Dr. Naoki Shinohara of Kyoto University (on microwave power transfer for a sustainable future).

The symposium also features two short courses on June 16 — Microwave & RF Safety and Microwave Processing for the Future of Food — alongside a dedicated Solid State RF Energy Section networking luncheon. For the solid-state RF community, that luncheon is a direct legacy of the work pinkRF helped initiate back in 2019.

pinkRF and the Founding of IMPI’s Solid State RF Energy Section

To understand pinkRF’s standing at IMPI today, it is necessary to look back to 2019 — a pivotal year for the solid-state RF energy industry in Europe and globally.

When the RF Energy Alliance (RFEA), the industry’s non-profit association dedicated to promoting solid-state microwave technology for energy applications, disbanded at the end of 2018, it left a vacuum. Klaus Werner, former Executive Director of the RFEA and Director at pinkRF, saw an opportunity rather than an ending.

“We’re very happy and thankful that the IMPI organization has welcomed us with open arms. Although the RFEA had to close down, the vision and mission of the former organization are still completely valid and relevant to the state of the solid state RF energy industry.”
— Klaus Werner, pinkRF, on the founding of IMPI’s Solid State RF Energy Section (May 2019).

In late April 2019, Werner petitioned the IMPI Board of Governors to form a dedicated Solid State RF Energy Section within IMPI. The vote passed with overwhelming support. The Section held its inaugural meeting on June 21, 2019, at the conclusion of IMPI’s 53rd Annual Symposium in Las Vegas.
pinkRF (represented by Stephan Holtrup and Klaus Werner) was among the eight charter founding members of the Section, alongside Rogers Corp., MACOM, Ampleon, Huber + Suhner, PrecisePower, Cellencor, and NXP. The Section’s founding vision — fostering solid-state RF technology adoption through broad collaboration across the entire value chain — remains the guiding principle of the SSRFE Section at IMPI 60.

This history is not merely institutional. It explains why, at IMPI 60, pinkRF is not just attending — it is helping to lead.

Paper 1 — Solid State RF Energy Generators and Systems: ‘Efficiency’ Demystified

In the world of microwave and RF energy systems, “efficiency” is one of the most commonly cited — and most inconsistently defined — metrics in technical literature and commercial specifications. Engineers, procurement managers, and system integrators regularly compare systems using efficiency figures that are measured at different points in the energy chain, making valid comparisons nearly impossible.

Klaus Werner’s presentation at IMPI 60 takes on this fundamental challenge head-on. The paper proposes a common efficiency framework for solid-state RF energy generators and systems, tracing the energy conversion path from the point where a cable enters the wall socket all the way to the energy that actually reaches the product or process being treated.

Every stage in between — AC/DC conversion, DC/RF conversion, transmission line losses, coupling efficiency at the load — represents a loss that must be accounted for. Without a shared language and measurement methodology, the industry cannot make meaningful progress in comparing, benchmarking, or improving system-level efficiency.

This is not an academic exercise. Efficiency claims directly affect capital expenditure decisions, energy cost projections, and sustainability reporting for industrial customers deploying solid-state RF systems in applications ranging from food processing and plasma generation to diamond CVD and chemical synthesis. A unified framework enables fairer competition, better engineering, and more credible environmental impact assessments.

The paper reflects pinkRF’s broader mission: not only to build better solid-state RF generators, but to elevate the technical standards of the entire industry. Klaus Werner, as a founding figure of IMPI’s Solid State RF Energy Section and former Executive Director of the RF Energy Alliance, brings both the historical perspective and the technical authority to make this case at the highest level.

Paper 2 — Monitoring of Chemical Synthesis via S11 Measurement in a Microchemical Reactor

This collaborative research paper — co-authored by scientists from the Polytechnic University of Valencia, the University of Valencia, and pinkRF — presents a novel approach to monitoring chemical synthesis processes in real time, using S11 (reflection coefficient) measurements inside a microchemical reactor.

S11 — the parameter that describes how much microwave power is reflected back from a load — has traditionally been used primarily for impedance matching and system tuning. This research demonstrates that S11 signatures can also serve as a precise, real-time diagnostic tool for tracking the progress of chemical reactions within a microwave-driven microreactor, enabling non-invasive, in-situ process monitoring without requiring additional analytical instruments.

Microchemical reactors represent one of the most exciting frontiers in process chemistry: they offer dramatically improved heat and mass transfer, lower reagent consumption, and easier scalability compared to conventional batch reactors. When driven by microwave energy, they add the further advantages of selective and rapid heating. The ability to monitor the synthesis process via S11 — in real time, using the RF system’s own signal — is a significant step toward closed-loop, self-optimizing microwave chemical reactors.

For pinkRF, whose solid-state generators already offer full digital control of frequency, phase, and amplitude, this research opens a direct path toward smart RF systems capable of adapting their output parameters in response to real-time process feedback — a fundamental capability for Industry 4.0 manufacturing in chemistry, pharma, and materials science.

The collaboration between pinkRF and two leading Spanish universities also demonstrates the company’s commitment to advancing the scientific foundations of the field through open research partnerships.