EU project to deliver smaller and cheaper components for laptops and mobile phones
A new EU funded project is set to help European companies in the microwave communication sector to mass produce and commercialise low-cost and environmentally friendly ferroelectric films for tuneable microwave devices and systems. Such films will lead to cheaper, smaller and energy-saving components for mobile communication devices such as laptops and mobile phones, and could potentially also be useful for optoelectronics and sensor applications. Project coordinator, Professor Spartak Gevorgian from Chalmers University in Sweden, explains: 'The devices based on these films offer a substantial reduction of cost, sizes and power consumption, i.e. features useful for power hungry microwave systems, especially in portable/handheld devices such as mobile phones, laptops etc. They can also be applied in adaptable/reconfigurable microwave systems consisting of a large number of tuneable components, such as large phased array antennas and tuneable metamaterials'. NANOSTAR, standing for nano-structured ferroelectric films for tuneable acoustic resonators and devices, is a specific targeted research project (STREP) supported with 2.8 million euro under the IST priority of the Sixth Framework Program (FP6). The three-year initiative gathers six academic, research and industrial partners from Sweden, the Netherlands, France, Switzerland and Russia, combining expertise and know-how in theoretical and experimental physics, materials science, manufacturing, device and system engineering. The main milestones of the project will be the development of industry-relevant fabrication processes for ferroelectric films with radically new properties; the validation of these processes via device demonstrators and, more generally, the generation of new knowledge in the physics of fabrication technologies. The project will also aim to improve the properties of ferroelectric films through, for example, the reduction of temperature dependence, addressing lag and loss effects as well as noise and parameter drift, and aiming for increased long-term stability and tuneability.