The EMJM SMACCs is a unique 2-year 120 ECTS Master Degree, aiming at educating the next generation of engineers and scientists in Smart Cities and Communities.The SMACCs implements a curriculum specialized on fundamental pillars of a city sustainability, i.e. Energy, Transport, Buildings, Urban Planning and ICT as a key enabling factor for implementing sustainable solutions. Professionals mastering these aspects are urgently needed to accompany the sustainable and smart transition of our cities, through the massive deployment of multi-sector renewable energy communities in urban and peri-urban areas.The SMACCs proposes an international curriculum jointly designed and delivered by 4 European HEIs (Belgium, Spain, Greece, Finland) based on compulsory physical mobility between the four HEIs, with the support of more than 50 public or private Associated Partners from Europe and the whole world, in order to boost the students’ exposure to the professional and academic sectors.The programme fosters excellence through the high quality of its academic contents, developed in connection with the research activities of the 4 SMACCs HEIs and the ecosystem of partners, and through the attraction of the best students worldwide thanks to the implementation of a competitive, fair and transparent application system.The EMJM will benefit the following target groups:*Students & Young professionals: acquiring new state-of-the-art knowledge will improve chances on the labour market, in which demand in energy, ICT, transport and buildings is continuously growing*Academic staff: the MSc will increase the opportunities for research collaboration and exchange of good practices*Universities: the programme will foster international cooperation and visibility and diversify the recruitment of students*Companies: the MSc will provide a source of knowledgeable workers, at regional and transnational levels*Society: will benefit from the latest innovation in Smart Cities and Communities

Organic solar cells (OSCs) have the potential to become an environmental friendly, inexpensive, large area and flexible photovoltaics technology. Their main advantages are low process temperatures, the potential for very low cost due to abundant materials and scalable processing, and the possibility of producing flexible devices on plastic substrates. To improve their commercialization capacity, to compete with established power generation and to complement other renewable energy technologies, the performance of state-of-the-art OSCs needs to be further improved. Our goals within SEPOMO – Spins in Efficient Photovoltaic devices based on Organic Molecules – are to bring the performance of OSCs forward by taking advantage of the so far unexplored degree of freedom of photogenerated species in organic materials, their spin. This challenging idea provides a unified platform for the excellent research to promote the world-wide position of Europe in the field of organic photovoltaics and electronics, and to train strongly motivated early stage researchers (ESRs) for a career in science and technology oriented industry that is rapidly growing. Our scientific objectives are to develop several novel routes to enhance the efficiency of OSC by understanding and exploiting the electronic spin interactions. This will allow us to address crucial bottlenecks in state-of-the-art OSCs: we will increase the quantum efficiency by reducing the dominant recombination losses and by enhancing the light harvesting and exciton generation, e.g. by means of internal upconversion of excited states. Our ESRs will be trained within this interdisciplinary (physics, chemistry, engineering) and intersectoral (academia, R&D center, enterprise) consortium in highly relevant fundamental yet application-oriented research with the potential to commercialise the results. The hard and soft skills learned in our network are central for the ESRs to pursue their individual careers in academics or industry.

The proposed project will couple delocalized-state charge-carrier transport in MXenes and in state-of-the-art organic semiconductor crystals (OSCs) to realize high-speed electronic devices fabricated by printing of MXene/OSC blends. We will synthesize inks comprising MXenes and OSCs, which will allow us to print organic thin film transistors (OTFTs) on flexible substrates. We will explore novel OSCs based on the [1]benzothieno[3,2-b][1]benzothiophene (BTBT) and dinaphtho[2,3-b:2',3'-f]thieno[3,2-b]thiophene (DNTT) scaffolds. MXenes will be synthesized from the following compounds: Ti3AlC2, Nb2AlC, and V2AlC. All-printed OTFTs will comprise MXene/OSC-blend channels and MXene printed contacts. The mobility of the charge carriers in these devices will exceed 50 cm2/Vs and the Ion/Ioff ratio will reach values of 105. Towards this end, we will perform detailed multiscale characterization of morphological, structural, energetic, and transport properties of the blend layers fabricated by printing. The results will serve as input for theoretical modelling of the electronic properties at the microscopic interface environment of the MXene/OSC interfaces and charge transport through the MXene/OSC blend. The modelling results will, in turn, serve to optimize the protocol of synthesis of MXene/OSC blends and fabrication of OTFTs. Once the properties of the layers are optimized and thoroughly theoretically described, OTFTs will be printed and their fabrication protocol will be optimized to yield the highest possible mobility and on/off ratio. Throughout the project strong emphasis will be devoted to dissemination of the results via a variety of communication channels which will address audiences ranging from experts in the field, policymakers, young science-oriented individuals and general audience. The partners of the consortium cover all pertinent areas of the project. They include experts in the areas of: synthesis of advanced two-dimensional (2D) materials and high-mobility OSCs, theoretical modelling of electronic properties of 2D–material/OSC interfaces, and fabrication and characterization of advanced organic electronic devices. The project is highly complementary to the activities carried out within several Graphene Flagship work packages, i.e. WP1, WP3, WP9 and WP13, thus it will offer new ideas and inputs of wide interest to the Graphene Flagship endeavour.