EIC Pathfinder 2023

Specific Objectives:

• Unconventional refrigeration technologies and systems including but not limited to functionalised Phase Change Materials (PCM), thermochemical materials, thermophotonic, elastomeric, barocaloric, magnetocaloric or thermally regenerative electrochemical cycles; new compression-expander mechanisms (i.e. electrochemical compression), use of mixed refrigerants or other novel cycles configurations;
• Computational modelling and validation of energy-intensive low-temperature heat transfer processes, materials and components including their design, manufacturing, optimisation and dynamic performance (i.e. novel heat exchangers, compressors etc.);
• Ultra-energy efficient operations and logistics along the cooling supply chain and final use, decoupling supply and demand via thermal carriers (PCMs, thermochemical materials, ice slurries, liquid air, molecular storage etc.) or systems integration, including mobile cold energy storage and associated charging solutions; interoperability of district networks, reversible heating and cooling infrastructures, or cold-to-power solutions;
• New designs and concepts for food processing and medical applications; unconventional refrigeration principles (such as thermoelectric, magnetocaloric, electrocaloric, elastomeric or barocaloric, photonic cooling conversion) or new compression-expander mechanisms (scroll, electrochemical compression), mixed refrigerants, novel cycles configurations.

Specific Objectives:

• Computational design solutions that advance the state of the art of algorithmically generated design, topology optimisation, agent-based modelling, physical simulation, digital representations such as digital twins and nature inspired design. New algorithmic design solutions may enable breakthroughs in functional integration of complex systems. These solutions may also blur boundaries of nano-scale, micro-scale, meso-scale, and macro- scale, and allow for new developments in meta-materials or bio-mimicry in terms of building structures and patterns.
• Digital fabrication solutions synchronous with a vast potential of the nearly unlimited complexity of computational design. Digital fabrication can relate to all digitally enabled manufacturing technologies, in particular to novel concepts for additive manufacturing such as new 3D printing techniques to realise the highly complex design definitions at voxel level with ever-higher resolution. Beyond advancing and further building on the known practices of layered extrusion and binder jetting, processes such as rapid liquid printing in a carrier suspension can be a promising new pathway for digital fabrication for the AEC. In addition, quality assurance (QA) and quality control (QC) may be enabled by
  new scanning technologies such as Computed Tomography (CT/ μCT) to detect
  defects and build a digital “as built” model, albeit at the dimensional scale and
  fabrication context AEC needs.
• Alternative materials as a field where the mix with digital design and digital
  fabrication technologies can be demonstrated by the AEC sector to vastly reduce the use of cement and its CO2 emissions in the transition to net zero. With a deeper adoption of digitalisation in design and fabrication on the potential of adopting alternative materials widens. Digital design and digital fabrication can enable a widespread adoption of bio-based materials, as for example all known and new timber derivatives, fungal architecture, bamboo, hemp, and others, natural materials such as earth, clay, stone as well as recycled and waste-based materials currently considered as inferior. By a similar token, new pathways for engineered materials can also emerge here, as for instance applications of composites and algorithmically generated “meta-materials”. The adoption of such materials allows the AEC sector to reduce or even remove carbon permanently from the atmosphere and economic cycle.

Will only fund multi-disciplinary research proposals that include at least nutritional, microbiome and glycan research aspects. The research focus can be on one or more of the Challenge specific objectives. Proposals are expected to investigate the interactions among nutrition, human gut microbiome and glycans beyond the state- of-the-art, to better clarify the role of diet into human health, including for example the interactions of whole plant foods, highly processed food and fermented foods with the human gut microbiome and glycans.

Specific Objectives:

• Investigate causal relationships among diet, microbiome and glycans, with potential impact on personalising human diet.
• Identify food ingredients, food technology processes, additives and dietary patterns that have negative effects on human health and, aging.
• Identify food ingredients, food technology processes and additives that have a beneficial effect on human health, and aging.
• Develop recommendations for the reformulation of new food products and processes with no- or fewer additives.

Create opportunities for discovery of new environmentally friendly electronic materials, thus reducing its environmental impact and the need for critical raw materials and hazardous chemicals.

Specific Objectives:

• Advanced electronic materials for unconventional devices:
• small-molecule and polymeric organic materials,
• solution-processable inorganic materials,
• hybrid organic-inorganic materials,
• polymer-matrix nano-composite materials,
• bio-based and nature-inspired materials
• for the manufacturing of n- and p-semiconductors, dielectrics, conductors, including transparent conductors, particularly those suitable to make functional inks, passivation /encapsulation / packaging materials, flexible /stretchable substrates, etc.
• Advanced processes:
• production methods based on solution processing such as blade coating, slot die coating, spray coating, screen printing, inkjet printing, offset, gravure and flexo-printing, or
• other techniques particularly suitable for sheet-to-sheet or roll-to-roll manufacturing.
• Unconventional applications including e-textile/e-skin:
• backplane and logic circuits,
• microprocessors (4-8 bits),
• sensors,
• displays,
• power supplies,
• wireless transmitters/receivers, etc.

Development of technologies required for in-space energy harvesting and transmission, and of novel propulsion technologies that will use such harvested energy.

Specific Objectives:

• Scalable solutions (e.g., solar energy harvesting antennas, on-board spacecraft photovoltaic cells) for in-orbit efficient solar energy collection and storage.
• Conversion of the harvested energy in a form, appropriate for transmission at long distances in empty space.
• Efficient wireless and secure power transmission of the transformed energy between in-space harvesting devices on spacecraft and re-translation stations or other final receivers. This may require a grid of re-transmitting stations, which not only amplify the wireless transmission, but also redirect the transmission as necessary.