Quantum Semiconductor Technologies Exploiting Antimony

Project Information

QUANTIMONY

Grant agreement ID: 956548

DOI

10.3030/956548

Project closed

EC signature date 18 August 2020

Start date 1 December 2020

End date 30 November 2024

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions

Total cost

€ 3 769 297,92

EU contribution

€ 3 769 297,92

Coordinated by

AGENCIA ESTATAL CONSEJO SUPERIOR DE INVESTIGACIONES CIENTIFICAS
Spain

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - QUANTIMONY (Quantum Semiconductor Technologies Exploiting Antimony)

Reporting period: 2022-12-01 to 2024-11-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Quantimony was conceived as an Innovative Training Network in Quantum Semiconductor Technologies exploiting Antimony to provide high level training to 14 early stage researchers in the overarching field of semiconductors science and technology, covering all scientific and engineering aspects from material growth through to industrial exploitation.
The primary aim of the action was to optimize Europe’s research activities in the field of III-Sb by high-level training, accelerating the development of new technologies across the full range of technology readiness levels, from fundamental research at universities and research institutes through to product development and commercial production.
This covered a wide range of areas of application, including electronics, datacoms and telecoms, energy harvesting and environmental monitoring with consequent impact on essential strategic sectors such as transport, healthcare, aerospace, defence and security.
Stakeholders from the defence and aerospace sector have historically driven the development of III-Sb technologies. Small and medium size enterprises (SMEs) supply this market with products such as ultrahigh-frequency transistors and high-performance infrared and thermal detectors in small quantities and with the associated high production costs. Quantimony aimed at removing these constraints to unveil the full potential of III-Sb technologies for society.
We achieved this by using a three-fold approach of: 1) focusing on emerging applications of III-Sb with huge societal and/or commercial gains, 2) combining the most advanced scientific methods to accelerate their development, and 3) involving, from the beginning, the industrial agents which can monitor, upscale and exploit this knowledge.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

As the first transnational coordinated action focused on the scientific and industrial challenges posed by III-Sb quantum technologies, our first objective was to mitigate the current fragmentation of our community to solve present challenges and those of the future. This has been accomplished in two ways:
• Firstly, by establishing large cohesion among its beneficiaries and partners. Thanks to the extensive ESR secondment program and the complementary skills and strengths available at the different network nodes, most of the research activities have been completed through the participation of at least two organizations, sometimes three.
• Secondly, the network has been very effective in creating awareness about the III-Sb research field and in promoting new collaborations beyond the consortium. In the last three years, the network has organized 17 training activities distributed in 12 different events. Researchers and collaborators from 51 different external organizations have attended these meetings, either as participants or invited speakers.

Out of 14 ESRs initially recruited, 13 ESRs have completed the maximum-allowed 36-month recruitment period and are writing their PhD Thesis manuscripts.
QUANTIMONY’s scientific results have been communicated and disseminated in 61 scientific, industry and hybrid events, and 26 open access scientific publications which acknowledge the Action.
Public engagement is reflected in the organization and participation in more than 120 outreach activities.

Exploitation wise, QUANTIMONY has established a path for further exploitation of III-Sb semiconductors identifying new Key Exploitable Results.
Some of them need of further academic and industrial research and, to this end, beneficiaries and partners have raised ~4.8 M€ in new bids to international (820 k€) and national calls (3.98 M€).
Other results are mature enough to start addressing different markets and we estimate that these new business opportunities, assuming a 10 % annual market increase, will ead to a total estimated revenue by 2030 of >7 M€.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

QUANTIMONY also delivered a range of long term potential technological and societal benefits that will sustainably improve quality of life for the European citizen, contributing to a Europe more connected, healthier, securer, happier and environmentally sustainable.
We did so establishing the foundations of a solid knowledge exchange ecosystem amongst the main European academic and industrial actors on the field of III-Sb semiconductors paving the way for new industrial applications.
For instance:
- A crucial scientific and engineering challenge of QUANTIMONY was to develop better and more scalable infrared sources and detectors for environmental and health monitoring applications. To this respect, the project results have paved the way to develop in the future new cavity enhanced mid-infrared detectors and to integrate both active components in photonic circuits for on-chip sensing applications.
- Towards the challenge of developing new Nonvolatile Random Access Memory Technology, QUANTIMONY have strengthened the collaboration and joint activities towards the industrialization of new universal computer memories based on III-Sb. This patented technology partly developed during the project aims to take a stake of the $100 billion per year memory chip industry.
- Towards the Quantum Communication Technologies challenge, the research carried out on III-Sb quantum dots has led to new collaborations and activities in the field of single photon sources (SPS) development using III-Sb quantum dots with type I confinement and emission around 1.5 microns which was not foreseen in the proposal.
- The research done to find the optimal epitaxial growth conditions and to transfer them to industrial epitaxy reactors will play a crucial role in the scalability of any semiconductor technology in general and of those based on antimony materials in particular. The expanded knowledge on the process conditions, and the simulation of said process conditions in industrial reactors done during QUANTIMONY, will enable to straightforwardly develop products when the market requires them.
- Finally, our understanding of the intriguing electronic, optical and magnetic properties of III-Sb semiconductors has largely expanded. New software tools for multiband k.p and atomistic methods have been developed and deployed within the network to improve the characteristics of different III-Sb materials and devices, including single photon emitters, solar cells, Interband Cascade Lasers (ICL), Interband Cascade Detectors and type-II superlattices (T2SLs). Many of these new tools become now part of commercial products of our industrial software developing companies and include evolutionary methods done in QUANTIMONY which will leverage on the emergence of artificial intelligence (AI), opening completely new perspectives in the future.
Many of these results will arrive to the European Semiconductor Industry within 5 years to remain competitive in transforming effective and efficient materials and architectures, designs and integration technologies into deployable products at the beginning of the semiconductor value chain. In 10 years, III-Sb technologies, like new computer memory devices developed in this project are understood as key for several downstream semiconductor industries, as well as for the creation of new SMEs linked to the development of emerging Quantum Computing and Networking Technologies.

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