European Space GaN (ESGAN) aims to develop a 200V Enhancement mode GaN transistor (normally off) for use in power management circuits for space applications. The advantages obtained from Gallium Nitride (GaN) such as reduced mass, increased efficiency and the potential of radiation hardness are well known and the project will aim to exploit these in the development of the technology. Devices will be designed, produced, tested for radiation effects, thermal effects, structural effects and reliability performance and will be demonstrated in an application to verify the desired performance. The end goal will be to proceed with a space evaluation leading to a space qualification of the produced devices. Another of the principal objectives is to establish and exercise a fully capable, committed European Supply Chain to remove dependency from other countries and geographical regions. To achieve the goals of the project a strong consortium has been established in which the members cover each of the stages of the supply chain. The consortium is composed of the following companies. AIXTRON, a company dedicated to the design and manufacture of equipment to grow advanced substrates for GaN transistors. SEMI ZABALA, a company dedicated to the design, test and packaging of GaN transistors and integrated circuits. X-FAB, a semiconductor foundry company that has developed and offers processing services for GaN transistors. AIRBUS DEFENCE & SPACE, are one of Europe´s leading companies dedicated to the design and manufacture of satellite equipment and systems. The consortium covers an end to end supply chain from materials, design, processing packaging and test through to end users.

Crystalline silicon wafer solar cells have been dominating the photovoltaic market so far due to the availability and stability of c-Si and the decades of Si technology development. However, without new ways to improve the conversion efficiencies further significant cost reductions will be difficult and the c-Si technology will not be able to maintain its dominant role. In the SiTaSol project we want to increase conversion efficiencies of c-Si solar cells to 30 % by combining it with III-V top absorbers. Such a tandem solar cell will result in huge savings of land area and material consumption for photovoltaic electricity generation and offers clear advantages compared to today’s products. The III-V/Si tandem cell with an active Si bottom junction with one front and back contact is a drop-in-replacement for today’s Si flat plate terrestrial PV. To make this technology cost competitive, the additional costs for the 2-5 µm Ga(In)AsP epitaxy and processing must remain below 1 €/wafer to enable module costs <0.5 €/Watt-peak. It is the intention of the SiTaSol project to evaluate processes which can meet this challenging cost target and to proof that such a solar cell can be produced in large scale. Key priorities are focused on the development of a new growth reactor with efficient use of the precursor gases, enhanced waste treatment, recycling of metals and low cost preparation of the c-Si growth substrate. High performance devices will be demonstrated in an industrial relevant environment. The project SiTaSol approaches these challenges with a strong industrial perspective and brings together some of the most well-known European partners in the field of Si PV and III-V compound semiconductors. Furthermore SiTaSol will support the competitiveness of the European industry by providing innovative solutions for lowering manufacturing costs of III-V materials which are essential in today’s electronic products including laptops, photonic sensors and light emitting diodes.

Heat management is a paramount challenge in many cutting edge technologies, including new GaN electronic technology, turbine thermal coatings, resistive memories, or thermoelectrics. Further progress requires the help of accurate modeling tools that can predict the performance of new complex materials integrated in these increasingly demanding novel devices. However, there is currently no general predictive approach to tackle the complex multiscale modeling of heat flow through such nano and micro-structured systems. The state of the art, our predictive approach “ShengBTE.org”, currently covers the electronic and atomistic scales, going directly from them to predict the macroscopic thermal conductivity of homogeneous bulk materials, but it does not tackle a mesoscopic structure. This project will extend this predictive approach into the mesoscale, enabling it to fully describe thermal transport from the electronic ab initio level, through the atomistic one, all the way into the mesoscopic structure level, within a single model. The project is a 6 partner effort with complementary fields of expertise, 3 academic and 3 from industry. The widened approach will be validated against an extensive range of test case scenarios, including carefully designed experimental measurements taken during the project. The project will deliver a professional multiscale software permitting, for the first time, the prediction of heat flux through complex structured materials of industrial interest. The performance of the modeling tool will be then demonstrated in an industrial setting, to design a new generation of substrates for power electronics based on innovating layered materials. This project is expected to have large impacts in a wide range of industrial applications, particularly in the rapidly evolving field of GaN based power electronics, and in all new technologies where thermal transport is a key issue.

The overall objective in SKYTOP is to make cross-fertilization between different topological classes of materials to realize devices with intertwined electronic spin and topology. In particular, in this project the aim is to combine two “topological classes”, one existing in real space associated with skyrmions and a second one defined in the reciprocal space associated with topological insulators (TI) and Weyl semimetals (WSM). The project consists of the following technical objectives: 1) Develop thin film TI-technology and exploratory research on topological WSM; 2) Develop a functional TI/Weyl-Skyrmion media platform 3) Demonstrate TI/Weyl-Skyrmion based devices. The main idea is to take advantage of the strong charge-to-spin conversion effect anticipated in TI with strong spin orbit coupling (SOC) to nucleate and control the skyrmion dynamics. SKYTOP proposes skyrmion-based bio-inspired devices and reconfigurable filters with enhanced efficiency and new functionality that could lead to a paradigm shift in ultra-dense low power nanoelectronics. SKYTOP will also expected to open a route for exploitation of the emerging Weyl semimetal materials which are currently being investigated at the basic research level.