This proposal describes the third core project of the Graphene Flagship. It forms the fourth phase of the FET flagship and is characterized by a continued transition towards higher technology readiness levels, without jeopardizing our strong commitment to fundamental research. Compared to the second core project, this phase includes a substantial increase in the market-motivated technological spearhead projects, which account for about 30% of the overall budget. The broader fundamental and applied research themes are pursued by 15 work packages and supported by four work packages on innovation, industrialization, dissemination and management. The consortium that is involved in this project includes over 150 academic and industrial partners in over 20 European countries.

Power electronics is the key technology to control the flow of electrical energy between source and load for a wide variety of applications from the GWs in energy transmission lines, the MWs in datacenters that power the internet to the mWs in mobile phones. Wide band gap semiconductors such as GaN use their capability to operate at higher voltages, temperatures, and switching frequencies with greater efficiencies. The GaNonCMOS project aims to bring GaN power electronic materials, devices and systems to the next level of maturity by providing the most densely integrated materials to date. This development will drive a new generation of densely integrated power electronics and pave the way toward low cost, highly reliable systems for energy intensive applications. This will be realized by integrating GaN power switches with CMOS drivers densely together using different integration schemes from the package level up to the chip level including wafer bonding between GaN on Si(111) and CMOS on Si (100) wafers. This requires the optimization of the GaN materials stack and device layout to enable fabrication of normally-off devices for such low temperature integration processes (max 400oC). In addition, new soft magnetic core materials reaching switching frequencies up to 200 Mhz with ultralow power losses will be developed. This will be assembled with new materials and methods for miniaturised packages to allow GaN devices, modules and systems to operate under maximum speed and energy efficiency. A special focus is on the long term reliability improvements over the full value chain of materials, devices, modules and systems. This is enabled by the choice of consortium partners that cover the entire value chain from universities, research centers, SME’s, large industries and vendors that incorporate the developed technology into practical systems such as datacenters, automotive, aviation and e-mobility bikes

Building on TalTech’s expertise in the field of computer engineering and its high-level capacity in the domain of diagnostics and testing of nanoelectronic systems, this project aims at establishing in TalTech, with the strong support of the Advanced Partners, the capacity to R&D&I a complete customised AI-chip design flow. The research ambition of the TAICHIP (TalTech AI-chip) action is a leading-edge forward-thinking R&D framework for reliable and resource-efficient custom AI-chips based on open HW architectures (e.g., RISC-V, NVDLA), open EDA (Electronic Design Automation) tools, methodologies and implementation technologies satisfying the requirements of AI applications of tomorrow. TAICHIP project also allows building at TalTech the necessary scientific knowledge, research skills, administrative and management skills, as well as strengthening its advanced training and education capacity. Evenly related to the central goal are the additional measures that focus on building the supporting capacities, as well as dissemination, exploitation and communication, and public policy focused activities.

NANOPOLY proposes a ground-breaking yet cost effective method to extend our control over impedance and parasitic phenomena in monolithic circuit components by independently tuning electric permittivity and magnetic permeability of the integrated layers to values far beyond what nature can provide. This approach will re-define all components used in existing analogue circuit design regardless of technology. NANOPOLY will implement this concept on existing technology such as SiGe and will also employ novel two dimensional materials characterized by high mobility in order to complement minimal thickness and transferability with impedance engineering obtaining unprecedented performance of electronic components. This scheme, i.e. the meta-layers complemented with 2D materials aims at providing an entirely novel concept that of meta-electronics that promise a nano sized circuit platform with a new performance envelope, useful in all future analogue applications such as miniaturized consumer electronics, health monitoring, high-end THz applications e.t.c. As a proof of concept, NANOPOLY will develop a new technological platform, the associated software tool-kit and re-define the existing paradigm of analogue electronic integrated circuits regardless of material family. NANOPOLY will also create i) a set of components and their models exhibiting minimal cross talk and reduced footprint for use in high density analogue design of miniaturized RF circuits, ii) a proof of concept mmWave, 2D material based Rx/Tx (emitting / receiving) module including the antenna with a total footprint of λ/20 and state of the art performance and iii) A THz range SiGe based Rx/Tx module with improved performance to showcase the broad applicability of the proposed technology.

6G-SENSES proposes the integration of novel 6G RAN technologies such as Cell-Free (CF) Massive Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) and Joint Communication and Sensing (JCAS) to support the 6G vision that is sustained by the current (and future) architectural framework based on 3GPP and O-RAN. The project considers a multi-technology RAN ecosystem with technologies that are able to offer sensing functionalities. These technologies are Sub-6, Wi-Fi, millimeter wave and 5G NR, which will coexist in a JCAS framework whose goal is to retrieve as much information as possible from the surrounding environment to improve energy efficiency, reduce power consumption and favour communication at high data rates. Additionally, some of these technologies will be amenable to be integrated in the first implementation of a fully distributed CF-mMIMO scheme using mmWave and Sub-6 technologies. WIth the aim to enhance availability and coverage and to improve sensing performance, will leverage Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces (RISs) making use of the distributed nature of the access points and availability of multiple antennas. An optimization of distributed signal processing and resource allocation schemes tailored for RIS-assisted CF network architecture is proposed. This framework will make use of new PHY technologies to increase the cooperation among access points and their inherent capabilities to improve the precision/accuracy of the sensing capabilities. Sensing information stemming from these technologies will be pushed to the O-RAN framweork for optimization purposes using the Radio Intelligent Controllers (RICs). A total of three Proof-of-Concept demonstrations will be showcased, which encompass the proposed objectives of the project in a single infrastructure.