News

Vanguard New Nano-Enabled Products Pilot: Open Steering Committee

The New Nano-Enabled Products Pilot Project held an Open Steering Committee on 1st June 2021 in virtual mode. The purpose of the meeting was to have an interactive discussion with the leaders of the six democases and the core members of the pilot and some external peer experts invited to join the event as observers.

A brainstorming session was organised to present the latest updates on the I3 instrument and other funding opportunities as well as to stimulate the discussion and collect inputs to further explore interregional collaboration and prepare for the upcoming calls.

During the meeting, the Nanowires for ICT & Energy applications demo case and the NeMs4Bio demo case presented the projects awarded by the TAF support, which will be applied to develop an interregional business plan, including detailed market research and strategy, and an investment model, strategy and financial plan. The ultimate goal is to apply for I3 in the fall of 2021. The Shapetronics demo case explored the possibility to extend part of its activities to join the forces with the 3DP pilot. A possibility is to expand the list of suppliers of 3D Printing related services to suppliers of masking 3P printing deposition and multi-material inkjet-printing processes for 3DP electronics and to 3D additive electronic functions (active coating).

The presentations of the three new demo cases were oriented towards the general objectives of the respective demo case and the main challenges they are facing. Specific requests for collaboration have been formulated and distributed among various Vanguard regions in order to explore new cross-regional collaborations. The Structural Health Monitoring demo case will integrate flexible micro/nano electronics within composite parts, during the manufacturing process, and seek for collaborators with capacities in:

1. Composite manufacturers;
2. Developers of readers / electronics;
3. End users with interest in structural health monitoring;
4. Strain stress and other sensing methods suitable for health monitoring.

The Flip-Chip assembly for Indium Phosphide PICs aims to develop and demonstrate a new flip-chip technology that enables the integration of electronics and photonics for InP (Indium Phosphide) chips, under conditions of high IO count, fine pitch, and suited for high data rate. The targeted application areas are Lidar, optical - sensing, data-communication, optical computing, bio-sensing, and requested collaboration is situated in the area of companies developing PIC (InP) products that need to be integrated, OEM that develop and sell (semicon) equipment, and OSAT companies.

Nanowires for ICT and Energy Applications demo case awarded TAF support with an eye to expanding the inter-regional business plan for the ProNano Infrastructure

The Nanowire demo case seeks to build up an inter-regional network for the industrialization and exploitation of nanotechnology, and specifically nanowires, for applications in the energy and ICT fields.  Within Region Skåne this is being facilitated by the development of the ProNano Test and Demonstration facility in collaboration with Lund University and the regional government authorities.  The goal of ProNano is to establish a new European Innovation Infrastructure as a pan-European pilot manufacturing facility for nano-enabled products.  Phase 1 of the facility has been put into operation in October 2020 and the first use case (nanowire for power electronics) is being industrialized together with the SME Hexagem AB.

A Vanguard workshop on Nanowire challenges was held on 9 October 2020 together with other Vanguard regions.  The aim of the workshop was to identify partners that can address the challenges associated with III-V (GaN) nanowire-enhanced material for high-power electronics.  Industrial, academic, and regional development agencies participated from Region Skåne, Emilio-Romagna, South Netherlands, Norte, North-Rhine Westphalia. The workshop resulted in several collaboration opportunities being identified.

The Nanowire Demo case received the TAF support for further development of the ProNano test and demo facility (Phase 2). ProNano Phase 2 will link regional infrastructures within the Vanguard network with a focus on the industrialisation of nanotechnology based on the needs of the industry in Europe and the needs of the small and medium-sized businesses. One of the aims for ProNano, which has proximity to ESS and MAX IV Research Infrastructures in Lund, is to be a complementary facility to other European nanotechnology infrastructures.  The TAF project will develop the inter-regional business plan, marketing strategy, and governance models.

NEMS4BIO demo case gains TAF support and advances with a selection of 5 concrete health tech use cases

NEMS4BIO aims at a bringing technology partners together to address the challenge of taking up nanotechnology innovations into microsystems for bioanalysis purposes and offer the development and fabrication of advanced integrated sample handling and sensing modules to a wide range of SMEs active in instrumentation and equipment products.

Based on a series of workshops, we identified use cases and selected 5 promising ones that could all benefit from a fairly similar set of core technologies (microfluidics, photonics, integrated imaging, electronics) requiring efficient module integration. These use cases are on-chip bioavailability assessment (East NL, Flanders), therapeutic antibody production and development (East NL, Flanders), multiplex real-time label free cell analysis (East NL, Flanders), point-of-care photonics-based liquid sample diagnostics (Flanders, East NL), and continuous-flow exosome production and purification (Emilia Romagna, Flanders) focus on health tech and biotech. Use cases are open for additional partners and participation from other regions.

NEMS4BIO participated actively to standardization initiative for organ-on-chip (PSIS workshop jointly organized by JRC and CEN/CENELEC, April 28-29, 2021) discussing needs and approaches for heterogeneous technology integration.

The demo case was granted TAF support recently and will use the expert advice in the coming months to further develop its technology supply chain and value chain approach and its governance structure; the target is to set up a one-stop-shop service offering encompassing design to fabrication for integrated modules based on a set of core technology partners that have aligned their technological capabilities. Interested technology partners, instrumentation/equipment builders and end users are welcome to contact us.

NEMS4BIO targets multiple financing channels including I3 and EIC to support setting up the distributed pilot line concept with the identified use cases as technology and business drivers.