DOTFIVE is a three-year IP proposal for a very ambitious project focused on advanced RTD activities necessary to move the Silicon/germanium heterojunction bipolar transistor (HBT) into the operating frequency range of 0.5 terahertz (THz) (500 gigahertz GHz) enabling the future development of communication, imaging or radar Integrated Circuits (IC) working at frequencies up to 160 GHz . For a given lithography node bipolar transistors and more recently HBT have always lead the frequency race compared to MOS devices, while offering higher power density and better analogue performances (transconductance, noise, transistor matching).The main objective of this highly qualified consortium is to establish a leadership position for the European semiconductor industry in the area of millimeter wave (mmW) by research and development work on silicon based transistor devices and circuit design capabilities and know-how. SiGe HBT is a key reliable device for applications requiring power > few mW (future MOS limitation) and enabling high density, low cost integration compared to III-V. To achieve the goal DOTFIVE unites a powerful consortium:

ACAPOLY is a partnership between micro resist technology GmbH and EPFL-LMIS1 whose main objective is the development of a new set of polymer materials for MEMS/NEMS technologies with an associated process library. The materials that the partnership has planned to develop are Ormocer and SU-8. The objective is to modify both materials in a way that they can be processed using Electron Beam Lithography, Direct Laser Writing, UV-Nano Imprint Lithography and Ink-Jet printing. The developed materials and process libraries will be used to fabricate UV-NIL stamps, large arrays of LEDs for automobiles and large arrays of optical waveguides.

New magneto-transport phenomena have been discovered in magnetic multilayers and are now being optimized for industrial applications, extending the conventional electronics with new functionality. However, most of the current research on magnetic multilayer materials and its device applications rely on conventional equilibrium electron transport. The full potential of nano-structuring, which leads to a broad spectrum of novel non-equilibrium transport phenomena, is therefore not realized. In this research project we will focus on practically unexplored functional principles that can be implemented in nanostructures produced by state-of-the-art lithography and surface manipulation techniques. Our main idea is to use electrically controlled spin currents in highly non-equilibrium regimes with respect to energy and temperature; hence “spin-thermo-electronics”. The large amount of heat generated in nanoscale devices is today one of the most fundamental obstacles for reducing the size of electronics. In this proposal we turn the problem around by instead using electrically controlled local heating of magnetic nano-circuits to achieve fundamentally new functionality, relevant to several key objectives of the information and communication technology. Particular emphasis will be put on investigating and technologically evaluating the interplay of spin, charge, and heat in magnetic structures of sub-10 nm dimensions. Such structures, although inaccessible by today’s lithographic means, are in our view crucial for further miniaturization of electronic devices.

Inorganic nanotubes (INT) and particularly inorganic fullerene-like materials (IF) from 2-D layered compounds, which were discovered in the PI laboratory 16 years ago, are now in commercial use as solid lubricants (www.apnano.com) with prospects for numerous applications, also as part of nanocomposites, optical coatings, etc. The present research proposal capitalizes on the leadership role of the PI and recent developments in his laboratory, much of them not yet published. New synthetic approaches will be developed, in particular using the WS2 nanotubes as a template for the growth of new nanotubes. This include, for example PbI2@WS2 or WS2@NbSe2 core-shell nanotubes, which could not be hitherto synthesized. Other physical synthetic approaches like ablation with solar-light, or pulsed laser ablation will be used as well. Nanooctahedra of MoS2 (NbS2), which are probably the smallest IF (hollow cage) structures, will be synthesized, isolated and studied. Extensive ab-initio calculations will be used to predict the structure and properties of the new INT and IF nanoparticles. Cs-corrected transmission electron microscopy will be used to characterize the nanoparticles. In particular, atomic resolution bright field electron tomography will be developed during this study and applied to the characterization of the INT and IF nanoparticles. The optical, electrical and mechanical properties of the newly sythesized INT and IF materials will be investigated in great detail. Devices based on individual nanotubes will be (nano)fabricated and studied for variety of applications, including mechanical and gas sensors, radiation detectors, etc. Low temperature measurements of the transport properties of individual INT and IF will be performed.

The goal of IFOX is to explore, create and control novel electronic and magnetic functionalities, with focus on interfaces, in complex transition metal oxide heterostructures to develop the material platform for novel ‘More than Moore’ (MtM) and ‘beyond CMOS’ electronics, VLSI integratable with performance and functionality far beyond the state-of-the-art. To this end it will:

Spintronics, in which both the spin and the charge of the electron are used, is one of the most exciting new disciplines to emerge from nanoscience. The 3SPIN project seeks to open a new research front within spintronics: namely 3-dimensional spintronics, in which magnetic nanostructures are formed into a 3-dimensional interacting network of unrivalled density and hence technological benefit. 3SPIN will explore early-stage science that could underpin 3-dimensional metallic spintronics. The thesis of the project is: that by careful control of the constituent nanostructure properties, a 3-dimensional medium can be created in which a large number of topological solitons can exist. Although hardly studied at all to date, these solitons should be stable at room temperature, extremely compact and easy to manipulate and propagate. This makes them potentially ideal candidates to form the basis of a new spintronics in which the soliton is the basic transport vector instead of electrical current. ¬3.5M of funding is requested to form a new team of 5 researchers who, over a period of 60 months, will perform computer simulations and experimental studies of solitons in 3-dimensional networks of magnetic nanostructures and develop a laboratory demonstrator 3-dimensional memory device using solitons to represent and store data. A high performance electron beam lithography system (cost 1M¬) will be purchased to allow state-of-the-art magnetic nanostructures to be fabricated with perfect control over their magnetic properties, thus allowing the ideal conditions for solitons to be created and controllably manipulated. Outputs from the project will be a complete understanding of the properties of these new objects and a road map charting the next steps for research in the field.

The objective of the project is to realise high-performance organic electronic devices and circuits using large-area processing compatible fabrication methods. The high performance of the organic circuits referred to here means high speed (kHz-MHz range), low parasitic capacitance, low operating voltage, and low power consumption. The related organic thin film transistor (OTFT) fabrication development will be focused to enable a high resolution nanoimprinting lithography (NIL) step, which is compatible with roll-to-roll processing environment. Applying NIL will enable smaller transistor channel lengths (down below 1 µm) and thereby an increase in the speed of the device. Another important concept to improve the performance is the self-aligned fabrication principle, in which the critical patterns of the different OTFT layers are automatically aligned in respect to each other during the fabrication. This decreases the parasitic capacitances and thereby increases the speed of the device, and is one of the key elements to enable the use of large-area fabrication techniques such as printing. Also complementary transistor technology will be developed, which will enable a decrease in operating voltage and power consumption. The high performance organic transistors will be tested in basic electronic building blocks such as inverters and ring oscillators. The technology development will be exploited in the active matrix liquid crystal display (AMLCD) and radio-frequency identification (RFID) demonstrators. In addition to showing that sufficient performance can be reached without sacrificing the mass fabrication approach, solutions for the fabrication of roll-to-roll tools in order to make serial replication viable will be provided. Finally, the design, characterization, and modeling of submicron low-power OTFTs will be done in order to support the fabrication of the demonstrators based on the technology developed in the project.

The objective of the proposal is the fabrication and study of three dimensional (3D) magnetic nanowires for ultra-high density information storage. Current memory architectures are 2D, composed of one layer of active components. The extension of data storage devices into the third dimension could result in information densities of hundreds of Gb/in2, causing a technological revolution. The project aims at implementing a 3D version of the existing 2D host institution’s idea of domain wall based shift registers to store data. In this scheme, the data bits are stored using the two possible directions of the magnetisation in thin and narrow nanowires made of soft ferromagnetic materials. The fabrication of the 3D devices will be done by using a novel promising nanolithography technique: focused electron beam induced deposition (FEBID), with unique capabilities for the creation of 3D nanostructures. We have recently demonstrated the required possibility to control domain walls in cobalt nanowires created by this technique. The patterning of magnetic nanostructures by means of conventional lithography, such as electron beam lithography and ion milling, will be explored in parallel. The control of the domain walls will be probed by magneto-optical magnetometry and magneto-electrical measurements. The two directions to be investigated for the creation of 3D magnetic devices will be the stacking of 2D magnetic nanowires, and the direct fabrication of 3D nanowires. The host group possesses patents protecting the ideas presented in this proposal. The success of the project would place the European Union in a privileged position to lead the next steps in the development of Information Technology.

This proposal addresses new scientific challenges in spintrontronics, with the focus on the miniaturization of magnetic sensors. Bismuth crystals and graphene layers show anomalously high Fermi wave length and mean free path. This allows us the observation of electron confinement effects in the length scale of nano-lithography techniques. Both systems can be grown and processed on Si-based substrates, which paves the way for the integration with the existing semiconducting technology. Quantum transport properties are to be studied twofold: by means of intense magnetic fields in nano-patterned devices, and by means of scanning tunnelling microscopy (STM) and spectroscopy (STS) at the surface level. In Bi epitaxial films and graphene flakes, Landau quantization grants access to the topology of the Fermi surface through magnetotransport measurements. The exceptional high-mobility of Bi and graphene gives rise to giant Hall and magnetoresistance effects (> 300,000 %), strongly influenced by structural parameters. Another consequence is the large spin-difussion length, which enables the transport of spin-polarized currents through large distances. Furthermore, the spin-split surface state of Bi crystals and graphene in contact with magnetic electrodes opens up the possibility of polarizing magnetically the medium and injecting spin-polarized currents. The purpose of STM studies here is to assess the influence of structural details at the atomic level on the macroscopic magnetotransport properties of Bi and graphene. STM in combination with pulsed field experiments will be used to investigate the loss of the 2-dimensional character of the electric transport as a function of the sample thickness. Both research lines are very appealing because of the enormous potential for practical device applications and the underlying Physics behind them.

The recent progress in the fabrication and direct synthesis of laterally confined structures, thanks to lithography techniques, has given rise to renewed interest in understanding the interaction between spin-polarized current and magnetic domain walls (DWs), because of it is a key technology for the future spintronics. Although there are several possible ways in which current can interact with magnetic domains, the most interesting interaction is that in which spin angular momentum transferred from the spin-polarized current results in motion of the domain wall. The main aim of the present project is the study of CIDWM in nanostrips with different configurations of magnetic anisotropy. As a starting point, permalloy nanostrips with longitudinal anisotropy will be analyzed, where the composition will be varied in order to modify the STT. In a second stage, the project will be focused towards more original systems with perpendicular anisotropy. The research combines different activities: elaboration and nanofabrication of metallic nanostrips, study of the domain wall motion induced by spin-polarized current (this includes analysis of DW topology, depinning, velocity, mobility and position as a function of dimensions of nanostrips and current) using advanced magnetic imaging techniques, and advances in the micromagnetic modeling of the spin transfer torque. An important aspect of this project will be the effort for understanding inconsistencies and unresolved issues in the interaction of spin-polarized current with DW (existence and nature of non adiabatic contribution, thermal effects, maximum speed of DW driven by current and magnitude of current required to sustain the motion of DW along a nanostrip), whose answer will determine how useful CIDWM will be for technological applications. Therefore, the project pretends to include a good balance between fundamental, applied and theoretical research