The ICMM gets 2 ERC Synergy Grants to develop the electronics for the future

Image

The electronics of the future need the Materials Science Institute of Madrid (ICMM), part of the National Research Council (CSIC) of Spain. Mar García-Hernández and Andrés Castellanos-Gómez, both members of the ICMM, dependent on the Ministry of Science, Innovation, and Universities, have just obtained two prestigious grants from the European Research Council (ERC Synergy) with an endowment of 14 and 10 million euros, respectively. Of them, more than 7 million will be spent on developing their projects at the CSIC.

Electronics in human skin

Castellanos-Gómez's project is titled SKIN2DTRONICS and will develop, over six years, ultra-thin and flexible electronics that can be integrated into rough or curved surfaces, such as skin or other biological structures. The work teams will develop "the necessary technology" for the large-scale integration of transistors and sensors based on two-dimensional (2D) materials on ultra-flexible supports: "This represents an advance for conventional flexible electronics, which still depends on rigid silicon chips," explains the researcher.

To achieve this, experts in sensors, flexible electronics, two-dimensional materials and bioengineering have come together. "This project ensures a multidisciplinary and highly collaborative approach," adds Castellanos-Gómez.

The potential of this technology will be demonstrated almost from the beginning, as the project will create a pioneering device for postoperative monitoring in brain surgeries. This instrument will not require external cables and will allow "unprecedented real-time monitoring," says the researcher, who emphasizes that this development "will not only have applications in medicine, but will also open the door to new developments in portable devices, the Internet of Things and intelligent systems integrated into everyday surfaces.

"We are going to do what is known as 'enabling technology', a facilitating technology," the researcher mentions, and explains: "We open the doors so that this technology exists and other teams can also develop applications with it."

Quantum electronics at room temperature

Mar García-Hernández is part of the METRIQS project, which proposes a revolution in electronics, creating a novel metamaterials platform with new concepts for the synthesis of materials and the control of physical properties in condensed matter. In this way, they will fuse materials of type van der Waal (that is, two-dimensional materials that have a layered structure, such as graphene) with the so-called transition metal oxides (TMO, in English, materials with notable properties ranging from superconductivity to ferroelectricity in a format of rotated membranes that does not exist in nature). “We will keep the benefit of both worlds,” says García.

“There are many ways to make new materials, but this is unique,” ​​highlights the researcher. Until now, the researchers have 'played' with the structures that form the layers of van der Waals-type materials in rotated layers, but this team goes one step further: “We will do the same thing, but with materials that do not have layers. It would be like twisting them, rotating them, as we want,” she exemplifies. “This way, we open a route for the synthesis of metamaterials” which, in addition, they already know can bring many benefits: “We have already seen that novel states and physical properties appear in these metamaterials,” says the researcher referring to a paper published in Nature at the beginning of 2024 and in which she already demonstrated, together with Jacobo Santamaría (also part of the project) how the manufacture of rotated oxide crystals opens new possibilities in information storage and processing.

Now, they will build new composite metamaterials that they will custom design, achieving unique functionalities thanks to the creation of unique geometric structures at the interfaces of this new material. “We open the door to new devices with lower energy consumption, but this could also open the door to quantum devices at room temperature, or at least at higher temperatures than current ones,” says García-Hernández.

“It is not about making just another material, it is that if we are able to control the interface problems that appear when joining van der Waal materials with TMOs, we open the door to a unique combination of usable properties,” celebrates García-Hernández. "This project unites two separate scientific communities and families of materials, into a team with highly complementary skills, knowledge and resources," she concludes.

ERC Synergy

The ERC Synergy grants are designed for projects so ambitious that they cannot be carried out by a single team. For this reason, they are all made up of highly prestigious international consortia and have one of the highest financial allocations granted by the European Commission. The project by Mar García-Hernández, with the participation of Denmark (with Peter Bøggild and Mads Brandbyge's teams, from the Danmarks Tekniske Universitet) and Spain (the team from the CSIC, part of the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities, and that of Jacobo Santamaría, from the Complutense University of Madrid). These last two have formed the Associated Unit 'Laboratory of heterostructures with application in spintronics' for decades.

For his part, the Castellanos-Gómez project is led by four internationally renowned researchers: Gianluca Fiori (University of Pisa, Italy), Andrés Castellanos-Gómez (ICMM-CSIC), Andras Kis (from the Federal Polytechnic School of Lausanne (EPFL), in Switzerland), and Kostas Kostarelos (from the Catalan Institute of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology (ICN2), a joint center of the CSIC and the Catalan Government). “Together we provide extensive experience in sensors, flexible electronics, two-dimensional materials, and bioengineering,” explains Castellanos-Gómez, who celebrates that the project “involves the synergistic collaboration of four laboratories distributed in three countries, which ensures a multidisciplinary and highly collaborative.”