RoLA–FLEX is an industry driven project which provides innovative solutions to the existing OLAE challenges associated with performance and lifetime, through: (a) the fabrication and upscaling of organic semiconductors with high charge mobilities (up to 10 cm2/Vs) and high power conversion efficiencies (16% in OPV cell and 12% in OPV module); (b) the development of metal oxides for charge carrier selective contacts and metal nanoinks for highly conductive micropatterns with increased environmental stability; (c) the seamless incorporation of high speed laser digital processing in Roll-2-Roll OPV module fabrication and photolithography based OTFT manufacturing and (d) the demonstration of two TRL5+ OLAE prototypes enabled by the developed materials and innovative processes: 1. A smart energy platform for IoT devices powered by ITO-free and flexible OPVs operating at low indoor light conditions. 2. A new generation of bezel-less and fully bendable smart watches integrating FHD, ultra-bright OLCD/OTFT displays. RoLA-FLEX will advance all the aforementioned technologies to at least TRL5 within its timeframe. RoLA-FLEX will create an opportunity for a yearly increase in revenues of almost €400 M only 6 years after its end, accompanied by hundreds of new jobs. A timely investment in the early days of these new markets can ensure significant market share for the SMEs and Industries involved and greatly boost EU’s competitiveness globally.

HIPERLAM is an SME driven Research and Innovation Action (RIA) well-aligned to the Factories of the Future (FoF) Initiative with a strong emphasis upon demonstrating superior cost and speed performance in end-to-end processes featuring laser-based additive manufacturing in two key applications requiring high resolution printed conductive metallic lines, namely laser printed RFID antenna and laser printed Fingerprint sensors. Existing subtractive top-down process will be replaced by HIPERLAM’s additive process for both Applications. Process maps illustrate the existing multiple processing steps compared to HIPERLAM’s significantly fewer steps. Real-time diagnostics are included and Modelling investigations will be undertaken to support optimisation. The promise of HIPERLAM’s high resolution laser based additive manufacturing solutions is to transform the manufacturing processing speed by 10x for laser printed RFID antenna (Application 1) and 5x in the case of the lead-time for laser printed fingerprint sensor design (Application 2). Similarly, HIPERLAM promises to reduce costs by 20x and 50% respectively for Application 1 and Application 2. HIPERLAM features high resolution LIFT Printing and Laser Sintering utilising novel high viscous inks to achieve printed conductive metallic structures down to 10 µm resolution over large areas (10 to 1000 cm2) suitable for scale-up to full production. The targeted applications address global market needs and will support mainstream adoption of AM processes in EU industry by displacing existing processes with smart, flexible, digitally enabled manufacturing technology. HIPERLAM business cases promise significant revenue growth in both application spaces and in the potential for consortium partners to establish themselves in pre-eminent positions in high resolution, low cost, high throughput AM technology.

The here proposed DIMAP project focuses on the development of novel ink materials for 3D multi-material printing by PolyJet technology. We will advance the state-of-the art of AM through modifications of their fundamental material properties by mainly using nanoscale material enhanced inks. This widens the range of current available AM materials and implements functionalities in final objects. Therefore applications will not be limited to rapid prototyping but can be used directly in production processes. DIMAP will show this transition in two selected application fields: the production soft robotic arms/joints and customized luminaires. In order to cope with these new material classes the existing PolyJet technology is further developed and therefore improved. The DIMAP project targets at the following objectives: additive manufactured joints, additive manufactured luminaires, ceramic enhanced materials, electrically conducting materials, light-weight polymeric materials, high-strength polymeric materials, novel multi-material 3D-printer and safe by design. With the development of novel ink materials based on nanotechnology improvement of the mechanical properties (ceramic enhanced and high-strength polymeric inks), the electrical conductivity (metal enhanced inks) and the weightiness (light weight polymeric materials) are achieved. Based on the voxel printing by PolyJet these new materials lead to a huge broadening of the range of available digital material combinations. Further focus points during the material and printer development are safe by design approaches, work place safety, risk assessment, collaboration with EU safety cluster and life cycle assessment. An established roadmap at the end of project enables the identification of future development needs in related fields order to allow Europe also in the future to compete at the forefront of the additive manufacturing revolution.

The vision of TINKER is to provide a new cost- and resource efficient pathway for RADAR and LIDAR sensor package fabrication with high throughput up to 250units/min, improved automation by 20%, improved accuracy by 50% and reliability by a factor of 100 to the European automotive and microelectronic industry via additive manufacturing and inline feedback control mechanisms. Autonomous driving and self-driving cars represent one prominent example for the use of microelectronics and sensor, most importantly RADAR and LIDAR sensors. Their respective markets have a big potential, e.g. it is estimated that the market size of LIDAR in automotive will double itself in the next two years (within 2020 to 2022). The public awareness and the industrial need for further miniaturization of such sensor packages is the main driver of ongoing efforts in the automotive sector to be able to integrate such devices into the car body like in the bumps and head lamps instead of attaching them (e.g. on top of the car in case of LIDAR device). Safety (for the driver and others) is the most important key aspect of the automotive sector. Therefore highly-value and high performance RADAR and LIDAR systems are required for advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS) as well as robotic cars. Current bottlenecks are relevantly large size of such sensor devices, their weight and power consumption. Since these factors are highly limited within cars, further miniaturization and improving functionality and efficient use of resources is highly demanded.