EIC Transition 2023

Maturation of Micro-Nano-Bio technologies developed in previous EU-funded projects to enable their transition to market, and the creation of the business plans to guide their next steps.

Specific Objectives:

• To realise and validate a fully functional integrated Micro-Nano-Bio device or system hinging on Micro-Nano-Bio modules developed under previous EU- funded projects. Focus is on integration and/or refinement (e.g. further miniaturisation, production scaling etc.) of the existing modules to realise, within the limited time-span of the project, a transitionable investment-ready product.
• The development of devices or systems under this Challenge should lead to a high-impact technological development driven by market needs. Examples of these include:
• the acceleration of the discovery of the principles underlying cell, or pathogen, biology by means of advanced milli/micro-fluidics (e.g., complex 3D flows, organ- or body-on-chip, nanopores/nanocavities), integrated bio- sensing (e.g., using MEMS/NEMS, photonics and imaging, surface functionalisation, arrays), novel biomaterials and chemistries and others.
• the automation of clinical workflows, reducing sample volumes, offering unique data sets aiding in diagnostic, therapy optimisation and follow-up, miniaturising assays and displacing execution to point-of-care settings if advantageous, etc.
• the streamlining of therapy discovery or production, while minimising animal testing. To this end proposers can rely on high-performance computing and advanced Artificial Intelligence (AI) / Machine Learning (ML), experiment parallelisation enabled by array microarchitectures, embedded closed-loop control for autonomous process optimisation and so on.

Focus on demonstrating novel devices, sensors or technologies that have a clear and quantifiable advantage with respect to one or several of the key issues mentioned above compared with existing alternatives for similar class of problems or applications:

Specific Objectives:

• Materials, processes, and systems – such as chemical, biological, and physical technologies-solutions, including bio-inspired and nature-based – aimed at detecting/monitoring, preventing, reducing, or eliminating environmental recalcitrant and/or emerging contaminants present in air, soil, or hydrosphere.
• Technologies that, without using critical raw materials52 or ensuring their full reuse and/or recycling (sorting and refining), will enable the onset of synergies between sensors and artificial intelligence, at the interface of environment/sustainability and data science, so allowing the implementation of environmental monitoring and/or remediation actions.
• Solutions that detect, combine, analyse, and interpret data (environmental intelligence) including signals of ecosystem stress caused by a broad range of factors (i.e. water scarcity, habitat disruption, global warming, etc.), also coming from different sources – in situ (e.g., biological, chemical, or physical sensors) or remotely (e.g., satellite).
• Technologies with minimised carbon footprint, measured through a full life- cycle analysis, in order to ultimately protect/clean the environment from contaminations and to avoid the exposure of people to contaminants as well as to mitigate or reverse the effects of climate change.

Advance technological developments of the light states in driven nonlinear systems and to develop novel platforms for chip-scale frequency combs.

Specific Objectives:

• Advancing or maturing novel technologies for chip-scale frequency combs for applications that require multiple frequencies of coherent laser light, with higher than the currently mainstream conversion efficiencies and with extensions to wavelength ranges, across all spectral regions with integrated photonic technologies.
• Mature the frequency combs technologies to include integration options for other functional elements, compatible with wafer scale manufacturing. Use of new nonlinear materials such as Gallium Phosphide, Lithium Niobate and others may be considered as well.
• Exploit the precision of optical frequency combs by developing concepts for new industrial applications such as:
• Integrated multi-channel light sources for optical communication in datacentres,
• Highly efficient sensors that measure mid-infrared molecular spectra,
• Optical atomic clocks on a chip.