The NanoFabNet Project will create a strong international hub for sustainable nanofabrication, whose structure, business model, detailed strategies and action plans are designed, agreed and carried by its international stakeholders during the Project duration, in order to yield a self-sustaining collaboration platform: the NanoFabNet hub, at whose centre the registered NanoFabNet membership organisation will provide an accountable, permanent secretariat. It will be responsible for the implementation of a long-term business plan, and the provision of validation services, trainings and consultations, while collaborative and cooperative activities between actors of the wider international nanofabrication community will be fostered within the open architecture of the hub, and may be supported by membership organisation, if necessary.
The hub aims to be a one-stop-shop for all matters and concerns pertaining to sustainable nanofabrication and its successful incorporation into the complex, large-scale high-value industries by bringing together governmental and academic laboratories with large industries and SMEs, and thereby offering a coordination space for past, current and future collaborative nanofabrication projects (incl. both EU-funded projects and initiatives, as well as public-to-public partnerships (P2Ps) and public-private-partnerships (PPPs)).
The necessary consolidation of the existing innovation infrastructures with the diverse and widespread nanofabrication stakeholders is currently hampered by the manifold barriers of technologies, discipline, language, regulation and geography between the individual domains and the fragmentation within them. The NanoFabNet Project specifically addresses and aims to overcome these hurdles by taking the proposed NanoFabNet hub beyond the current state-of-the-art.
Overall Objective:
The NanoFabNet Project will establish an international hub for sustainable industrial-scale nanofabrication that stands for (a) a well-implemented, guided approach to high levels of safety and sustainability, (b) trusted technical reliability and quality, and (c) compliance with and drive of harmonisation, standardisation, and regulation requirements, amongst all of its members and along their nanofabrication value chains. The hub is envisaged to have a complex, open structure, whose elements will be developed, agreed and validated in a step-wise approach to meet the high-level objectives outlined below. The achievability of these high-level objectives is specifically supported by the consultation of a wide-range of stakeholder knowledge, views and opinions, laying the foundations for an increased identification of the stakeholders with the NanoFabNet brand they are creating, and thus deepening their feeling of ownership and responsibility. This specific methodology ultimately secures the long-term sustainability of the hub and its promotion and widening from within its stakeholder community.
