With the development of powerful real-time imaging modalities, the sector of minimally invasive surgery has grown massively in the last decades. The easy and reliable navigation of the medical devices used in these environments is one of the key aspects for the success of such an operation. Currently, only a limited spectrum of devices for these interventions is available defined by the medical device manufacturers. The physician has to choose from this available (predefined) product range. However, for a successful outcome of advanced minimally invasive interventions it is essential to fulfil the needs of the physician who has to solve a complex task: navigating and operating in the human vascular system without having a direct view. Each physician has her or his own imagination of the ideal device for a specific intervention regarding handling and visibility. To maximise the ease of use of the medical devices and, thus, to optimise the outcome of the intervention a customised product would be the perfect solution. Therefore, the OPENMIND will develop the first highly flexible process chain for the on-demand production of entirely customised minimally invasive medical devices. This process chain will close the gap between efficiently produced standard products and individually designed products, enabling even the production of small batch sizes down to single batches in a continuous, automated and fully monitored process chain. The OPENMIND project will be using a guide wire as demonstrator device for showing the successful outcome of the project. The process chain will be completed by a comprehensive monitoring and data mining toolset. All relevant process data will be monitored and analysed in order to reduce development times by predicting appropriate parameter sets for the manufacturing of new customised products. Furthermore, the data will be used to realise automated optimisation of the running process.

Despite more than 200 years of development of batteries, the physical limits of battery performance are far from being reached. The complexity of physio-chemical processes inside batteries render any development strongly dependent on a proper description and monitoring of the inherent evolution and interaction of all materials involved in the functioning of an electrochemical cell. It can be said that rarely any progress in a technology where all basic processes are understood did depend so much on characterization than electrochemical energy storage systems. The mean figures of merit (specific energy per mass, volume or cost unit, cyclability) can all theoretically be substantially improved, under the condition of a proper understanding of where and how their limits are reached in today’s industrialized systems. This underlines how much this important branch of our technological future depends on novel and accessible characterization techniques. Given this grand challenge, access to advanced characterisation solutions for the EU industry will be key to accelerate innovation and reduce the large cost share of materials. However, several bottlenecks are preventing access by companies to novel techniques, to which TEESMAT brings a comprehensive response by leveraging European strengths from 11 Countries and facilitating access to physical facilities, capabilities and services implementing novel characterisation solutions with unprecendenteed capability & performance. Instrumental to this is the launch of a sustainable Open Innovation Test Bed in which qualified public/private partners will demonstrate high-value services for materials advanced characterisation on industrial cases in the value chain of electrochemical energy storage systems. A strong EU community will be built up to propel the continuity of the initiative beyond TEESMAT with a viable, business driven and lean model of operation to create a market for advanced characterisation services, ultimately.

Bringing intelligence and communication to everyday objects is a major challenge for future electronics. This « Internet of Things » concept envisions wide dissemination with new performances: robustness, large area, flexibility, eco-efficient large volume manufacturing at low cost. Beyond current TOLAE demonstration, a major technology jump driving the scalability towards nanoscale resolution via high-definition cost-effective printing is required to deliver the properties and electrical performances expected by applications. ATLASS Innovation Action takes this huge step by bringing high resolution technologies to the printing industries for the demonstration of products at TRL6 in high impact markets. New multifunctional high-performing inks (semiconductor mobility >1cm2/Vs, dielectrics, ferroelectrics) and high-resolution (down to 500nm and ~100nm thickness) R2R/S2S printing including nano-imprinting and gravure printing will be engineered and scaled-up on pre-industrial pilot lines, enabling high performance devices (speed ~ 10 MHz). In-line control and novel automatic optical inspection tools and methodology will be installed to ramp-up the yield of developed processes (>99%) thus enabling cost-efficient fabrication of advanced circuits (>1000 transistors, 50kHz clock rate). The technology capability is benchmarked with conventional TOLAE process and demonstrated with 4 applications in the field of Interactive objects and Sensing surfaces (temperature tag for smart food packaging, electronic label for logistics, impact force sensing foils for automotive safety -, proximity sensing for safer human-robot collaboration ). With a consortium of 11 top companies (7 SMEs) from the cutting-edge, fast growing printed electronics sector and 4 RTOs with high-level technology expertise, ATLASS will strongly impact the global market of sensors, labels and smart objects expected to reach revenue of several EUR billion with printed sensors’ share of EUR 644 million by 2022.