Projects.

FICOSA

Design and development of Cameras for the motor industry, such as parking cameras, the camera monitoring system (CMS) in cars, and small surround view cameras with low power use. An advanced level, megapixel Adas parking camera which includes functions such as object and pedestrian detection, dynamic overlays, and online calibration. This camera delivers excellent image quality and benefits from the platform approach of the components manufacturer. There is no need to rely on a central ECU as all the image processing and machine vision functions are performed by the camera.

POROUS4APP

The main idea of POROUS4APP project is based on the fabrication of functional nanoporous carbonaceous materials at pilot plant scale from natural resources (polysaccharide). The process for nanoporous carbon fabrication is already well known as one of the POROUS4APP partner has developed the STARBON® technology at TRL5 which consist of swelling, drying and pyrolysis of natural resources and in this case Starch. What POROUS4APP project will bring to the European community is the development of new metal/metal-oxide doped-nanoporous carbonaceous materials based on a known technology. This technology needs to be upscaled and modified to enable a full flexibility of the material characteristics to be applied to various industrial applications.

In POROUS4APP it will be intended to produce not only carbonaceous nanoporous materials but carbonaceous material with enhanced functionality by using impregnation and sol/gel strategy. This will allow POROUS4APP materials to reach the challenging requirements of state of the art high added value materials at lower cost for applications in energy storage such as lithium-ion battery and also in chemical catalysis process. These applications need materials with well defined porosity to reach high efficiency level of their functional systems.

BASMATI

The BASMATI project will address the development of active nanomaterial and electrochemical inks for printing technologies such as screen and inkjet printing. The ink formulations will be tested on a case study through printing of a thin film battery. The general objective of the project is to scale-up the ink formulations to pilot line ensuring large volume fabrication of new products with improved properties for printing application. Especially, the particles definition at nanometer size will be one key parameter for the compatibility in ink jet printing

NanoCaTe

NanoCaTe, a project co-financed by the European Commission, will develop a more efficient thermoelectric- and storage material based on nanocarbon to reclaim waste heat by thermoelectric generators and to storage the energy in super capacitors or secondary batteries for manifold applications like pulsed sensors or mobile electronic devices.

The integration of the developed materials into harvester and storage devices is a further step to characterize the performance of the innovative materials.

Finally, a demonstrator consisting of harvester, storage and energy management represents a self-sustaining, universally usable, and maintenance-free power supply.

The project will substantially strengthen the position of Europe in the field of thermoelectric and storage materials by developing devices with increased lifetime produced by cost-efficient technologies and therefore contributing to a further promotion of cleaner energy technologies.

PRINT4PACK

The main target of the PRINT4PACK project is developing a low cost and high productivity gravure printing process to produce smart printed electronic devices capable of measuring, storing and supplying temperature data autonomously on polymeric films used on food packaging. The technology comprises a printed temperature sensor, printed power supplier (supercapacitor), and printed RFID antenna coupled with very low costs chips. The project also includes development of suitable polymer substrates with appropriate properties for high speed /high precision printing.

The main objective of this work focuses on the scientific and technological challenges that the fabrication and optimization of liquid lens faces. Those are mainly related to the materials used and their associated fabrication techniques, in order to have stable devices with high performance for long term functionality. The work reported here contributes the research to reduce the actuation voltage and to increase stability and reliability of electrowetting devices such as liquid lenses at laboratory scale.

The project addresses various aspects related to liquid lenses: (a), improvement of the hydrophobic layer deposition process leading contact angle recovery enhancement, (b) investigation of the dielectric materials and deposition techniques to reduce the required applied voltage (c) specific design of electrodes for 2D movement of the liquid lens, and (d) investigation of nonaqueous liquids to improve the dynamic behavior and long term cycling functionality. (e) An attempt is made to develop behavioral models that can explain EWOD phenomena with electronic circuit software.