AMBER awarded new research contract
The Advanced Materials and BioEngineering Research (AMBER) centre at Trinity College Dublin (TCD), Ireland, has won a research contract to develop a new class of magnetic materials for electronics.
The AMBER centre has found itself in receipt of a number of research contracts in the past, including the recent extension to its Nokia Bell Labs partnership and separate 2D-materials study, worth a combined €3m.
It has now been chosen as one of the 22 Horizon 2020 research submissions that will receive a research contract worth over €4.4m under the Future and Emerging Technologies – Open (FET Open) programme.
The project that AMBER will be taking on, known as ‘terahertz radio communication using high anisotropy spin torque resonators’ (TRANSPIRE), is set to be led by Professor Plamen Stamenov from TCD with collaborators from Germany, Norway and Switzerland.
The TRANSPIRE project will aim to develop a whole new class of magnetic materials.
These new materials could enable on-chip and chip-to-chip data links at least 100 times – or even 1,000 times – faster than current standards.
Benefits could be wide-ranging to any sector that requires fast data transfer speeds for uses within the internet of things (IoT) space; personal and substance security screening; medical spectrometry and imaging; and geophysical and atmospheric research.
Stamenov said the TRANSPIRE project is a necessity given the severe crowding of our airwaves with AM, FM, digital and microwave frequencies.
He added: “The terahertz bands offer new opportunities and some unchartered ‘territory’, but are rather difficult to work at.”
“Our ambition within TRANSPIRE is to start the development of a low-cost, compact and reliable, room-temperature terahertz technology which could underpin the next wave of the big data revolution.”
