The electronics industry "ElecTech" sector is central to the UK's future economy, environment, and society. With over 1 million employees in sectors enabled by electronics, the contribution of electronic technologies is indispensable. At the heart of electronics are nanoelectronic semiconductor "chips", and it has a leading position in semiconductor intellectual property vendors and emerging areas such as quantum technologies, sustainable electronics manufacturing, and compound semiconductors. The UK's potential lies, and where its future role in the global semiconductor value chain lies, as evidenced in the BEIS committee inquiry. We will establish an Automated Nano AnaLysing, characterisatiOn and additive packaGing sUitE (ANALOGUE) suite. ANALOGUE will be an exemplary facility that provides a fully automated platform for semiconductor processing, from devices to applications, with centralised workflow design, data collection/capture and real-time analytics. ANALOGUE will enable wafer-scale fully automated electrical characterisation of devices including reliability and temperature cycling capabilities. A fully automated back-end processing platform is integrated enabling die- and wire-bonding, 3D printed electronics and additive heterogenous packaging, co-located with high-resolution printed circuit laser patterning. Co-located with the £35M James Watt Nanofabrication Centre (JWNC), and the Centre for Advanced Electronics (CAE), the facility will enable devices-to-systems across the ICT spectrum, towards a user-centric and responsible design approach for electronics manufacturing. With a team representing two application-oriented user groups, medical and industrial nanoelectronics, we will create an ecosystem whereby manufacturing, users, and circular economy experts are brought together as users of ANALOGUE. ANALOGUE will support research on implantables, wearables, and diagnostics, through ultrasonic devices. Embedding sustainable manufacturing and onshoring the research into the backend processes of electronics is crucial to meeting the requirements of future electronics design flows. Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEM) buyers like Apple are already demanding commitments from suppliers to decarbonise their products, with distributors expected to assess each product's environmental impact throughout its lifecycle - from design and manufacture to end-of-life. As such, ANALOGUE allows UK researchers to explore the "black-box" of the semiconductor supply chain using automated characterisation and heterogenous packaging, encompassed by an automation and data collection framework for evaluating the efficacy of our experimental workflows. ANALOGUE will be accessible to the UK's research community across HealthTech, Beyond-Moore Computing, and Circular and Sustainable Electronics. Owing to its automated and streamlined nature, ANALOGUE will allow users from different institutions to utilise the suite remotely, facilitated by expert technical support, enabling rapid innovation across the nanoelectronics spectrum, insulating the UK's electronics research eco-system from global supply chain interruptions, e.g. chip shortages, and underpinning new research into otherwise offshore aspects of the electronics manufacturing. ANALOGUE builds on the UK's internationally acknowledged strengths in low-power IC Design, electronic materials, and applications in sustainable manufacturing. The Glasgow collaboration as an essential link in the supply chain linking materials producers (e.g., IQE), designers (Arm) manufacturers (PragmatIC Semiconductors, Printed Electronics, MTC), with academic users. The ANALOGUE team will regularly engage with these stakeholders through joint projects, meetings, workshops, and targeted events. The alignment of the proposal with the strategic sustainable systems focus of UofG will also help the envisaged research's long-term planning and strategy building.

The "tsunami of electronic waste", which reached more than 53.6 million tonnes in 2019, requires a step-change in the design and fabrication of electronics for disposal, reuse or recycling. The problem is exasperated as during the manufacture of electronics, a significant amount of chemical waste is generated as by-products, and the combined impact of by- and end-products are leading to long term environmental and social damage that will outlast many generations. The issue is growing due to the increasing use of ICT devices which will become more embedded within society. Electronics underpins a lot of these technologies (internet of things (IoT), displays (including VR/XR), smart packaging, etc.) and offers an opportunity to the e-Waste issue by realising electronic systems that inherently have end-of-life (cradle to cradle) solutions built in and thus do not require the same complexity of waste management. As a sector, electronics underpins the growth of vertical sectors (e.g., health, aerospace, manufacturing and retail) and thus drives productivity and growth across virtually all sectors of the UK economy. According to Innovate UK's 'Electech sector' roadmap report, the electronics sector employs >1 million people in the UK in >45k businesses, generating revenue of around £100 billion. The enormous economic potential for end products is backed by authoritative forecasts, e.g., IDTechEx predicts a market for large area electronics of >73 billion USD by 2027. Sustainable electronics is, therefore, central to the UK's future economy, environment, security and society. To this end, a disruptive printed electronics manufacturing platform is imperative that is designed for sustainability but maintains the enabling power and stability of traditional electronics, thus can eventually supplant those traditional electronic formats. The ambition of GEOPIC (Green Energy-Optimised Printed Transient ICs) is to develop one of the world's first high-performance (at par with today's silicon-based electronics) ICs and assemblies, which, at the end of life, will physically disappear/degrade at prescribed times into eco-friendly or reusable end-products. Thus, GEOPIC will achieve the step-change needed towards zero waste. The demonstrator devices and circuits will attain performances that are at par with today's silicon-based electronics but can demonstrate biodegradability, enabling the safe disposal of materials, potentially for reuse. The project will address the urgent need for sustainability in advanced manufacturing as well as help alleviate the problem of electronic waste (e-waste). Thus, GEOPIC will achieve the step-change needed towards zero waste.

Future intelligent, autonomous platforms (autonomous vehicles, robots, satellites, ships, air planes) and portable terminals are expected to have multiple functions such as wireless communication (with satellites and/or terrestrial base stations and/or ground terminals), ultra-fast data transfer, navigation, sensing, radars, imaging and wireless power transfer. These wireless systems operate at various frequencies. As a single radio frequency (RF) system usually has a narrow bandwidth, multiple RF systems at different frequency bands are often employed, leading to a huge increase in the volume, power consumption and cost. To address this need, it requires a single-aperture ultra-wideband (UWB) phased array capable of operating over an extremely wide range of frequencies, and having a low profile, wide-angle-scanning steerable beams, high gain, high efficiency and multiple polarizations (e.g. right-hand circular polarization for navigation, dual linear polarizations for mobile communication). Such an advanced antenna system does not exist yet. This project aims to tackle the ambitious challenges of addressing this need. This multi-disciplinary research consortium, having RF/microwave/mm-wave phased array researchers working together with researchers in optical beamforming and 3D printing, are ideally placed to development a new generation of low-profile UWB phased arrays, which is expected to find wide uses for both civilian and military applications.

Photonics has moved from a niche industry to being embedded in the majority of deployed systems, spanning sensing, biomedical devices and advanced manufacturing, through communications, ranging from chip-to-chip and wireless access to transcontinental scale, to display technologies, bringing higher resolution, lower energy operation and new ways of human-machine interaction. Its combination with electronics enables the Digital Future. The Government's UK Semiconductor Strategy and UK Wireless Infrastructure Strategy both recognise the need for highly trained people to lead developments in these technology areas, the Semiconductor Strategy referring explicitly to the role of CDTs in filling the current shortage of highly trained researchers. Our proposed CDT has been designed to meet this need. Currently manufactured systems are realised by combining separately developed photonics, electronic and wireless components. This approach is labour intensive and requires many electrical interconnects as well as optical alignment on the micron scale. Devices are optimised separately and then brought together to meet systems specifications. Such an approach, although it has delivered remarkable results, not least the communications systems upon which the internet and our Digital Future depends, limits the benefits that could come from systems-led co-design and the development of technologies for seamless integration of photonics, electronics and wireless. Our proposed CDT aims to provide multi-disciplinary training enabling researchers to create the optimally integrated, energy efficient, systems of the future. To realise such integrated systems requires researchers who have not only deep understanding of their specialist area, but also an excellent understanding across this interdisciplinary area ranging across the fields of photonics, electronics and wireless, hardware and software. We aim to meet this important need by building upon the uniqueness and extent of the Cambridge and UCL research programmes, where activities range across materials for future systems; higher levels of electronic, photonic and wireless integration; the convergence of wireless and optical communication systems; combined quantum and classical communication systems; the application of THz and optical low-latency connections in data centres; techniques for high capacity access networks; the substitution of many conventional illumination products with photonic light sources and extensive application of photonics in medical diagnostics and personalised medicine. Future systems will increasingly rely on more advanced systems integration, and so the CDT supervisor team includes experts in electronic circuits, wireless systems and enabling software. By drawing these complementary activities together it is proposed to develop an advanced training programme to equip the next generation of very high calibre doctoral students with the required technical expertise, RRI, ES, commercial and business skills to enable the > £24 billion annual turnover UK electronics and photonics manufacturing industry to create the optimised, closely integrated systems of the future. The PES CDT will provide a wide range of learning methods for research students, well beyond that conventionally available, so that they can gain the required skills. In addition to conventional lectures and seminars, for example, there will be bespoke experimental coursework activities, educational retreats, reading clubs, road-mapping activities, RRI and ES studies, secondments to companies and other research laboratories and business and entrepreneurship courses. Students trained by the CDT will be equipped to expand the range of applications into which these technologies are deployed in key sectors of the Digital Futures and wider economy, such as communications, industrial manufacturing, consumer electronics, data processing, defence, energy, engineering, security and medicine.

As communications move towards higher frequencies for higher data rates, concrete structures and buildings will significantly reduce the electromagnetic signal strength compared to windows. The overarching vision of TRANSMETA is to create transparent intelligent reflecting metasurfaces that could be placed on the windows of buildings or vehicles, and which would intelligently reflect the incoming electromagnetic wave from a base station directly to the user (either inside or outside) to improve signal reception quality. Metasurfaces can also filter certain frequencies, change the polarisation, or reduce the reflections from radar. The challenges to achieving this are: 1. For transparent conductors there is a trade-off between optical transparency and electrical conductivity in terms of layer thickness and frequency response which needs to be quantified. There are also practical challenges in how to connect these materials electrically and physically to the conventional opaque electronics. TRANSMETA will address this by investigating two approaches for the conductors: i) metallic meshes on the sub-micron scale where the lines are too small for the human eye to see; ii), if the results are not as required, a complementary technique using indium tin oxide will also be investigated. To test their performance, transparent antennas and static metasurfaces, such as frequency selective surfaces, will be fabricated and measured. 2. Novel metasurfaces must be designed based on the material properties. TRANSMETA will address this by carrying out extensive studies using commercial electromagnetic software with input from the earlier measurements. The effect of the ground plane at the rear of the metasurface will be investigated and we will aim to maximise the optical transparency. As an alternative to the reflecting metasurfaces, transmitting surfaces will also be designed where no rear ground plane is required. 3. The practical challenges of fabricating these metasurfaces must be investigated. TRANSMETA will initially make static (non-intelligent) metasurfaces which can reflect the signal between two fixed positions, tested by blocking the direct signal in the anechoic chambers at Loughborough University. This will be applicable if there were known communication dead zones in buildings which will become increasingly common as we move towards higher frequencies. Of course, optical transparency is not always essential for these novel metasurfaces, but it increases the scope of applications. 4. To make the metasurface intelligent, reconfigurability must be integrated into the system. TRANSMETA will address this with two techniques: i) vanadium dioxide where the properties change from being an insulator to a conductor when a direct current is applied, ii) PIN diodes. There are challenges in integrating these techniques into the system while also maximising the transparency. The direct current bias lines can be made transparent, but their optimum position and orientation are critical to the overall performance. 5. A further challenge in achieving the intelligence is being able to sense where the transmitter and user are located in order to reflect the signal in the correct direction. TRANSMETA will develop a sensing system that uses the pilot signals from the base station and user and then applies signal processing to retrieve the directions. A field-programmable gate array (FPGA) will control the metasurface behaviour accordingly. Finally, all these elements will be integrated together to create metasurface demonstrators which will be tested in real-world environments with support from our 12 industrial Project Partners. The impact of successfully completing this project will be improved capability for beyond-5G communication systems. Utilising transparent conductors will enable these intelligent metasurfaces to be employed in vehicles and building windows.