H2020 ERC - Consolidator Grant 2020-2025
ERC grant(s)
ELFO
Electronic Food: enabling edible electronic systems for biomedical and food monitoring applications
Abstract: ELFO will provide the foundations of a new enabling technology for disruptive edible electronic systems, with applications in advanced biomedical devices for continuous monitoring of the health status within the gastro-intestinal (GI) tract, as well as in electronic tags for food monitoring, serving public health and providing at the same time a very powerful tool against counterfeiting. These systems will be unperceivable and mass produced mainly with mask-less, printing and direct-writing methods. Besides being completely safe for ingestion, such devices will also be perceived as food, favouring public acceptance. Such an ambitious plan will be implemented by: i) creating knowledge on electronic properties of food and food derivatives and complementing them with edible solutionprocessable, mainly carbon-based semiconductors, thus developing an extended library of edible electronic materials; ii) developing large area, solution-based, printing and direct-writing scalable processes with high lateral resolution for the precise patterning of edible functional materials; iii) developing edible electronic components required in systems, from logic to power and sensors; iv) validating the progress with two proof-of-concept systems, an edible radiofrequency pill with controlled drug delivery, answering the need for compliance monitoring devices and actuators within the gut, and an edible passive food Radio-Frequency identification tag, answering the need for certification and anti-counterfeiting devices directly onto or into food products. ELFO will give solid engineering grounds to the visionary perspectives of edible electronics, introducing imperceptible intelligence in any edible item, thus accessing more information on what we eat, how it is assimilated and enabling biomedical devices for mass health screening.
HEROIC
H2020 ERC - Starting Grant 2015-2020
High-frequency printed and direct-written Organic-hybrid Integrated Circuits
Abstract: The HEROIC project aims at filling the gap between the currently low operation frequencies of printed, organic flexible electronics and the high-frequency regime, by demonstrating polymer-based field-effect transistors with maximum operation frequencies of 1 GHz and complementary integrated logic circuits switching in the 10-100 MHz range, fabricated by means of printing and direct-writing scalable processes in order to retain low temperature manufacturability of cost-effective large area electronics on plastic. The recent development of semiconducting polymers with mobilities in the range of 1 to 10 cm^2/Vs, and even higher in the case of aligned films, suggests that suitably downscaled printed polymer transistors with operation frequencies in the GHz regime, at least three orders of magnitude higher than current printed polymer devices, are achievable, by addressing in a holistic approach the specific challenges set in the HEROIC trans-disciplinary research programme: (i)development of scalable high resolution processes for the patterning of functional inks, where printing will be combined with direct-writing techniques such as fs-laser machining, both in an additive and subtractive approach; (ii)development of printable nanoscale hybrid dielectrics with high specific capacitance, where low-k polymer buffer materials will be combined with solution processable high-k dielectrics, such as insulating metal oxides; (iii)improvement of the control of charge injection and transport in printed polymer and hybrid semiconductors, where high-mobility 1-D and 2-D structures are included in polymer films; (iv)development of advanced printed and direct-written transistors architectures with low parasitic capacitances for high-speed operation. HEROIC will radically advance and expand the applicability of polymer-based printed electronics, thus making it suitable for next generation portable and wearable short-range wireless communicating devices with low power consumption
Total budget: 1.608.125,00€
Total contribution: 1.608.125,00€