New H2020-funded electronics projects
The European Commission has announced three new projects to receive funding as part of the micro and nanoelectronics & photonics sector of Horizon 2020’s Industrial Leadership pillar.
Synthesys3 is the latest development in the four-year Synthesys project that began in September 2013, comprising 20 European natural history museums, universities and research organisations. Synthesys aims to produce integrated, accessible resources for scientists interested in the natural sciences.
Insect and plant specimens, slides of fossil samples and microscopic life forms are maintained by museums and institutes. The unparalleled collections are becoming accessible digitally as well as physically by the EU-funded Synthesys3 project, which is democratising research whilst preserving the taxonomic data and specimens.
The SOLARH2 project was established by the German Research Foundation (DFG) in 2011, following the proposal of the Technical University of Darmstadt and other research institutions.
Collaboration in the project has expanded to a pan-European research network that seeks to harness the potential of solar fuel, a clean energy source deemed to be a potential replacement for fossil fuels.
The project states its challenge as the coupling of semiconductors “for efficient light absorption and separation with metallic, solid or biomimetic catalysts for the (hydrogen) H2 and (oxygen) O2 evolution reaction from H2O.”
Finally, the NanoSmell project aims to augment consumer experience of video games and television viewing through controlled odour-emission, with auxiliary benefits in other areas such as pest control and medicine.
Odour emission in TVs, phones or computers has thus far been impossible due to relatively little information about the olfactory code, as well as a lack of technological advancements in this area. In the NanoSmell project, however, molecular neuroscientists and experts in nanotechnology and bioengineering have taken on this challenge.
