Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

SUMMARY OF PROPOSAL Photonic Processing in High-Speed Manufacturing of Eco-Friendly Printable Materials & Sensors Vision: The long-term goal of this Discovery Grant is to lead an internationally-recognized research program investigating fundamental approaches to develop Advanced Fabrication Methods & Tools using Photonic Technologies in the manufacturing of low-cost eco-friendly flexible and printable materials & sensors toward their implementation in future Internet of Things (IoT) deployment. Rationale: The massive push for intelligent cyber-physical systems associated with the Industry 4.0 and the IoT revolutions aims at taking better-informed decisions in real-time based on better and readily-acquired sets of new data. For biomedical, manufacturing or consumer electronics applications, better and cheaper smart sensor architectures will obviously be at the core of this profound transformation. The urgent demand for large deployment of such ubiquitous sensor networks communicating with one another in a wirelessly seamless fashion is a crucial roadblock towards achieving these new paradigms. The research program will employ Photonic Technologies based on cutting-edge expertise to study fundamental fabrication strategies from rapid annealing processes and contactless in-line inspection of flexible materials & sensors at different stages of the printing fabrication process in order to obtain the desired sensors performance and payload. Nowadays such fabrication approach is seriously considered to be the next generation of advanced methods & tools for implementation in very-high-speed high-volume R2R and industrial inkjet manufacturing equipment.   Objectives: Building on the research momentum from the last years, we propose to explore unknown territories in order to achieve research from unprecedented advanced fabrication methods & tools. In the next five-year, we will focus on the development of photonic technologies to achieve an unparalleled fundamental approach towards low-cost eco-friendly flexible materials & sensors that can potentially transform the field of microelectronics, being able to provide more environmentally sustainable ubiquitous sensor networks in the future IoT deployment.