Compared to the pace of innovation in electronic consumer products, the pace of innovation for medical devices is lagging behind. It is the overarching objective of Moore4Medical to accelerate innovation in electronic medical devices. Moore4Medical emerging medical applications that offer significant new opportunities for the ECS industry including: active implantable devices (bioelectronic medicines), organ-on-chip, drug adherence monitoring, smart ultrasound, radiation free interventions and continuous monitoring. The new technologies will help fighting the increasing cost of healthcare by: reducing the need for hospitalization, helping the development of personalized therapies, and realizing intelligent point-of-care diagnostic tools. Moore4Medical will bring together 68 specialists from 12 countries who will develop open technology platforms for these emerging fields to help them bridge “the Valley of Death” in shorter time and at lower cost. Open technology platforms used by multiple users for multiple applications with the prospect of medium to high volume markets are an attractive proposition for the European ECS industry. The combination of typical MedTech applications with an ECS style platform approach will enhance the competitiveness for the emerging medical domains addressed in Moore4Medical. With value and IP moving from the technology level towards applications and solutions, defragmentation and open technology platforms will be key in acquiring and maintaining a premier position for Europe in the forefront of affordable healthcare

Interconnects impose major limits on the performance on integrated circuits during the exponential reduction of feature size of microchips. The semiconductor industry faces challenges in the metallization of interconnects below the 10 nm half pitch and is looking to alternative metallization schemes to replace copper, the traditional choice for the last 20 years, which no longer meet the conductivity requirements at decreasing length scales. Binary metals such as nickel-aluminium (NiAl) have been identified as a promising candidate that performs well with respect to resistivity at critical dimensions (sub-10 nm) to replace copper. However, there are several challenges associated with the instability of these materials regarding surface oxidation, leading to performance degradation. The objective of CRIME is the in-situ removal of the surface oxide and in-situ passivation of binary intermetallic compounds to prevent surface oxidation at the sub-10 nm half pitch for interconnect applications. To meet the future size requirements of interconnects, the downscaling of the cleaning and passivation processes from blankets to sub-10 nm half-pitch and the formation of patterned lines, with the aim of sub-7 nm half-pitch, will be performed. This will be achieved through an interdisciplinary approach that combines material science, chemistry, chemical engineering, nanoelectronics, and physics, to test different metal oxide removal and surface cleaning chemistries in combination with organic and inorganic passivation layers in-situ to overcome the formation of an oxide top layer. The passivation layers will be deposited in the liquid and vapour phase and various analytic techniques will be used to elucidate the surface chemistry and surface reaction mechanisms. CRIME goes beyond the state-of-the-art as the cleaning and passivating process and the downscaling of these processes on NiAl at the nanoscale and for advanced microelectronics nodes has not been previously demonstrated

Photonics is one of the first platforms explored for quantum computing (QC), bringing the advantage of low decoherence and natural connectivity for distributed and blind QC. Recent years have witnessed a step-change in the scale, complexity, and scope of QC with photons which recently led to 3 out of the 4 demonstrations of quantum advantage from Canadian and Chinese groups. These impressive achievements were obtained with squeezed light in bulky apparatus that are not fit for scalability. Europe shows strong leadership in development of integrated optical QC platforms, with breakthroughs in the development of high transmission dense photonic chips, record efficiency detectors and deterministic single photon sources. Photonic QC also benefits from a clear roadmap toward fault tolerant architectures proposed by leading EU quantum algorithm teams. EPIQUE gathers world leaders in photonics QC with expertise in both technology and algorithms from academia and SMEs who work together to deliver the technological breakthroughs required to push the platform toward general purpose QC. This will be achieved via new nanofabrication that combines novel switching with mature silicon compatible circuitry, via optimising both single photon sources and detectors, via new interfacing possibilities in silicon nitride and direct write modular chips, via fast low loss switching in lithium niobate, and via quantum architectures that leverage all of these advances. EPIQUE will develop three QC prototypes that will demonstrate essential building blocks of generating and fusing quantum states to entangle >10 qubits, and critical measurement and feedforward capabilities required to scale the platform to >1000 qubits. At the end of this project, we will have proven a route to general purpose quantum computing that will strengthen private investment in EU based optical QC companies.

Lithium ion batteries (LIB) with a solid-state electrolyte component is one of the much desired goals for rechargeable energy sources since they provide with high safety, high reliability and high energy density. Inorganic glass-based electrolytes are very promising materials due to their higher ionic conductivity when compared to crystalline alternatives. Nevertheless, important concerns still have to be resolved and optimized. For instance, ionic conductivity in glass-based electrolytes continues to be poor compared to liquid electrolytes and their stability still lacks of long lifetime capability. In general, necessary innovative scenarios are needed as the next step forward in current thin film battery research. In order to improve performance and solve these issues in LIB's we propose, as the main purpose within HS-GLASS+ion, the addition of a new class of materials, the so called highly stable glasses (HSG). These glasses can achieve remarkable properties when prepared through vacuum deposition processes when tuning several parameters during film growth. This new discovery is well considered as an important development in glasses and supercooled liquids but still unknown in the area of energy storage. HSG’s have higher densities which can help to easily create large homogeneous areas without any performance threatening artefacts. They are more resistant to temperature and vapor uptake which will increase chemical and structural stability of electrolytes. The lack of grain boundaries but the coinciding existence of short-range order will modify Li+ ion mobility achieving properties that have not yet been explored in battery research. The ability of tuning stability on HSG’s will help boost interface engineering through gradient compositions between the electrodes and electrolyte. The outstanding properties of HSG's will help fulfill thin film technology needs and battery research current requirements.