The UN's 2030 Agenda, adopted by world leaders in 2015, represents the new global sustainable development framework and sets 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Foremost is the Zero Hunger SDG, which seeks to end hunger and malnutrition, and ensure access to safe, nutritious, and sufficient food. One of the most productive and efficient sources remains aquaculture, which is the process of rearing, breeding, and harvesting of aquatic species, in controlled aquatic environments, like the oceans, lakes, rivers, ponds, streams and purpose built Recirculating Aquaculture systems (RAS). According to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), aquaculture is growing faster than any other major food production sector, with 50% of all sea food consumed is obtained by aquaculture. We are currently standing at a critical juncture to maintain healthy aquaculture conditions. To do so we need to continuously monitor the living environments of the fish and apply cutting edge bio-sensing to safeguard these fish farms and therefore our food security. The current consortium brings together the latest in biosensor technology, scaling up procedures, and aquaculture expertise, to safeguard our food security in the present and future years. By becoming an aquaculture pathogen testing hub and bringing to market a working diagnostic platform monitoring salmon pathogens, the consortium [Surfix (NL), Phix (NL), TunaTech (DE), CSEM (CH), and LRE Medical (DE)] aims to provide a long-term solution to ensure our collective food security. This project will build upon the BIOCDx project (ID: 732309) which successfully delivered a working prototype, however, due to lack of scalability, the overall costs of the biosensor remained very high (~€500/chip). Thus, the principal aim of PHOTO–SENS is to investigate scalable production of this technology (to reduce the costs 10 fold; €50/chip), and validation with an end–user in the aquaculture market.

Europe’s leading position in photonics and electronics can only be secured by adapting to the next generation of optoelectronic devices requirements: high performance, multi-functionality and cost efficiency in miniaturized footprint. These can only be achieved if novel schemes for on-chip integration emerge. Among the established platforms for optoelectronic integrated circuits (OEICs), silicon nitride as a wide-band and low-loss material stands outs. However, Si3N4 itself has no active effect and the heterogeneous integration of active III-V and II-VI semiconductor chips is currently very complicated and costly. MatEl offers a unique solution to this challenge and promises to enable a novel on-chip integration scheme: Laser Digital Processing - Laser Transfer and Laser Soldering - will be employed for the accurate and fast alignment and bonding of any type of chip package (OEIC) on Si3N4. The hybrid platform will be enhanced bythe monolithic integration of advanced materials (graphene and high-quality PZT), which will enable multiple functionalities in miniaturized footprint. MatEl will thus demonstrate two next-gen optoelectronic devices at TRL5: 1) 2D light source for AR displays with integrated RGB lasers and OEIC-based demultiplexers. 2) Bio-photonic sensor for antibodies detection with on-chip VCSEL at 850 nm featuring graphene photodetectors. Overall, MatEl ’s hybrid platform will combine the wide bandwidth and high confinement provided by Si3N4 with the active functionality of III-V and II-VI lasers, supporting a broad spectrum of next-gen applications, extending far beyond these demo applications. Hence, MatEl will reinforce the existing collaborations within the consortium and introduce new eco-systems, estimated to strengthen the EU photonics and microelectronics industrial capability by generating multi M€ turnovers to the involved SMEs and more than 200 new employment positions by the end of its timeframe.

Photonics is a key enabling technology in the realization of modern medical devices with applications ranging from diagnostics to personalised monitoring and therapeutics. Characteristic nature of both photonics and medical applications is high diversity. Therefore, the more widespread use of photonics technologies in scattered ecosystems presents major challenges for the technological values chains comprising end-user companies and manufacturers. In conjunction with highly regulated validation and production processes, the timespan from the proof-of-concept to product launch takes years causing high costs. Relying on existing pilot line concept, PhotonMed aims at accelerated uptake of the latest photonics technologies in medical device applications. PhotonMed project is applied to continuously renew the technology offering of photonics pilot line and to invite new members and countries to join the ecosystem. Within research-oriented PhotonMed project RTOs and industrial parties can develop their technology offering while the end-user companies get matured demonstrators based on the latest research results.