The market introduction of high temperature wide bandgap power semiconductor devices with junction temperature exceeding 200°C significantly accelerates the trend towards high power density and severe ambient temperature electronics applications. Such evolution may have a great impact in aeronautics applications, especially with the development of More Electric Aircraft (MEA), since it can allow to reduce the mass and volume of power electronics systems. As a consequence, the aircraft operating cost can decrease. However, for electronics used under such harsh conditions, the package reliability and the heat evacuation are very critical issues. The goal of this project is to design and fabricate high performance double sided cooled power electronics modules with optimized thermomechanical properties. The assembly is based on copper joints and a copper heat sink and integrates several technological breakthroughs. Three main technological bricks will be deeply addressed in order to reach the target: 1) Synthesis of nanoporous copper films, either freestanding or directly deposited on metallized substrates with controlled microstructure: In order to limit the risks, three independent strategies will be investigated during the project: the synthesis of nanoporous copper free standing films using melt-spinning and chemical dealloying techniques, the direct on-substrate electroforming of copper-alloy followed by anodic dealloying, and the direct growth of nanoporous structures without any additional treatment by tuning electrolyte formulation and plating parameters. 2) Thermocompression of the nanoporous copper films for die attach: Conventional heating will be achieved at low pressure and in inert/reductive atmosphere. An alternative method based on laser induced fast heating will also be evaluated to thermocompress the nanoporous copper in air. Both solutions allow to limit the oxidation copper issues. The underlying physical mechanisms taking place during the thermocompression of the various morphologies and microstructures of nanoporous copper films will be in-depth investigated. The joint stability under electro-thermo-mechanical aging conditions will be evaluated. 3) Deposition of thick copper layers for substrate/heatsink assembly using electroforming process: A thick dense metal layer will be deposited on a designed sacrificial polymer preform allowing to create a wide range of complex shapes directly on the metallized substrate with low residual stresses. This technology combined to virtual prototyping will allow us to fabricate high performance heat sink patterns (liquid forced convection without phase change) in terms of high local heat transfer coefficient and low pressure drop. The thermal-hydraulic performances of the heat sinks will be analyzed with an experimental setup. The robustness of the assembly (substrate/heat-sink) under repetitive temperature variations will be also evaluated. Silicon Carbide (SiC) devices based power modules (inverter phase leg) using the aforementioned technological bricks will be realized and evaluated in the project. Electrical, thermal and robustness tests are planned to estimate the module performances. The COPPERPACK project will contribute to validate and push our concept from Technology Readiness Level (TRL) 2 up to a TRL 3-4 with a functional technological demonstrator.

Information technologies are at the cusp of another revolution triggered by the emergence of new generation of wireless telecommunication technologies and the promise of new paradigms through the quantum computer. This development requires the introduction of new materials for post CMOS technologies that offer new ultra low dissipation microwave functionalities, while remaining compatible with integration and nano-patterning. In this respect, magnetic garnets with a well-established track record of improving the performance of microwave or optical devices are prime candidates. HARMONY will demonstrate this by proof of principle in the form of an integrated analog coherent microwave converter between photon-magnon-phonon. So far the development of yttrium iron garnet (YIG) thin films for integrated solutions was hampered by the fact that high quality epitaxial growth could only be achieved on gadolinium gallium garnet (GGG) substrates. GGG, however, must be considered a matched material for both the phonon and photon character, which thus offers an energy leakage path and as a consequence prohibits the confinement of their microwave energy within the sole YIG layer. To overcome this problem, a new process developed by the group of G. Schmidt in Halle has allowed to fabricate free standing micron-size YIG beams with high magnon life time, hereby mainly avoiding the energy leakage through the substrate. These new objects have the potential to become game-changers for high-fidelity front-end telecom components operating at GHz frequencies. Furthermore, they can provide new tools for quantum information exchange between distant qbits also operating at GHz frequencies. HARMONY will initiate a technological breakthrough by providing a viable development path for integrating the coherent and efficient interconversion of information between photon-magnon-phonon on a chip. It builds on the tripartite hybridization process inside magnetic garnets that employs nested resonances of increasing finesse. HARMONY focuses on the fabrication of suspended YIG beams to remove technological road-blocks by the following goals: i) provide an efficient scheme to excite GHz phonons by magneto-elastic effects through the co-tuning of 3 cavities; ii) improve the energy efficiency with an ultra-low loss material that is isolated from the substrate for the highest finesse and iii) implement this in an integrated on-chip device. The objective of the project HARMONY will be to evaluate within a 3 years period, how these suspended garnet structures perform as microwave transducers. The project is designed as a collaboration between the group of Spintec, Néel and Halle. The synergy of their complementary track records will allow us to realize these ambitious goals. While coupling of magnons to microwave photons at low temperature will mainly be performed in Germany, the coupling of magnons to phonons will be performed in France. The micropatterning and YIG deposition is uniquely located in Halle while micromagnetic simulations and resonator design as well as characterization of all structures by FMR microscopy at room temperature is done at Spintec, matched by opto-mechanical surveys of the vibration pattern at Néel. The envisioned sequel of the HARMONY project is to extend the concept of coherent coupling to entanglement with whispering gallery optical modes.

RETICLES will provide a platform that nurtures the growth of a design ecosystem in Europe. This will be achieved by building on the existing EUROPRACTICE platform, sustaining its key elements and extending it with new services and technologies. EUROPRACTICE is a well-established and widely used platform that provides European academia and SMEs with a full range of microelectronic services needed to; design, fabricate, package and integrate microelectronic circuits. This service includes affordable access to industry-standard design tools, access to a wide range of fabrication technologies (multi-project wafers and small volume production of ASICs, photonics, MEMS, microfluidics etc.), full technical support and design methodology training. By building on the EUROPRACTICE services, the project will deliver impact already from the start. The platform will then be extended to meet new technology challenges and further support semiconductor sovereignty for Europe. Emerging technologies from European research centres and pilot lines will be added to the platform, including those with lower TRL. Design efficiency will be enhanced and supported through design re-use and establishing a design IP exchange repository. Efficient design at the smallest geometries will be enabled with advanced design tools and new Cloud based solutions for high-value IP. The creation of smarter integrated systems will be stimulated through advanced system integration of dissimilar semiconductor technologies and chiplets. A pipeline of talent for Europe delivered through comprehensive up-skilling and re-skilling training courses, and economic growth facilitated by supporting subsequent commercialisation of academic research. Through advanced design tools, leading edge semiconductor technologies and bespoke training, RETICLES will provide a breeding ground for cutting-edge research, deep-tech start-ups and growth of the semiconductor design ecosystem in Europe.

The digital and electric transformation of our society is enabled by high-performance integrated circuits which require to solve increasingly complex computing tasks. The development of artificial neural networks in the last decade enabled a massive performance gain in computing hardware. However, this progress has led to a large rise in power consumption due to poorly optimized hardware architectures and computationally demanding training algorithm that require cloud computing. Besides the vast energy cost, cloud computing also poses serious concerns for customer privacy and the vulnerability of the system to hacking. To address this issue, there is a need for novel compact, integrable, low energy hardware that allows local, in-chip training and fast real-time inference (edge AI) in autonomous and embedded systems. NeuroSky propose a novel ultra-low energy, fast, and compact hardware solution to solve intensive and complex cognitive tasks. Our approach is based on reservoir and deep physical neural network computing, which exploits the ultra-low power excitation of nanoscale disordered topological spin textures to perform high performance cognitive tasks. The topological spin textures will be integrated in a magnetic tunnel junction (MTJ) to excite its dynamics electrically with low power and detect it with a large electrical readout signal. This approach combines the advantages of spintronic devices while allowing complex recognition tasks with very low energy by exploiting the spin texture intrinsic memory, complexity, non-linearity and their low power excitation. The objective of the project is to demonstrate the proof of concept of devices based on this approach, evaluate their performance and benchmark it to existing hardware implementations. We will also explore spatio-temporal coupled reservoirs such as coupled MTJs and deep physical neural network implementation and evaluate the scalability to larger arrays. To reach this objective, we will develop a large panel of novel and unexplored scientific and technical solutions covering the field of material engineering, device fabrication and characterization, metrology, and algorithmic and hardware design. The development of a ultralow power edge AI hardware solution proposed in Neurosky addresses the current broad societal need for more energy efficient AI chips with increased data protection and privacy which operates without any cloud connection. The technology could have a signficant societal and economical impact on a broad range of applications ranging from smart sensors in space and harsch environment, predictive maintenance, healthcare and automotive.