PRISMA is a revolutionary thin-film micropump realized with novel ceria-based oxides actuating materials in the frame of the FET-OPEN BioWings project, which can be used as an innovative pumping system in wearable insulin delivery devices for the treatment of diabetes. The integration of the PRISMA micropump in insulin patch pumps addresses the 3 most important pain points that still keep the vast majority of diabetic patients away from this life-saving treatment: 1) Size, which is more than two orders of magnitude smaller than state of the art. 2) Higher drug delivery accuracy within the ?5% range ensures the highest therapeutic efficacy. 3) drastic reduction in energy consumption. Besides the short-term vision to realise extremely compact and accurate patch pumps, the long term goal is to allow the realisation of multi-drug delivery systems, making real the much-lauded multi-hormone treatment. The main objective of this project is to validate the pump and its manufacturing process in a real operating environment, proving to system integrators that all specifications are consistently met to pave the way for the post-project system integration and clinical validation. This will pave the way to the launch of a startup company that will take care of the final steps of the development roadmap and will establish long-term cooperation agreements with prominent medical device manufacturers for the integration of PRISMA in next-generation single and multi-hormone smart patches.

More efficient rechargeable batteries must be developed for utilizing sustainable energy sources and stopping the rapidly advancing climate change. The current technology cannot be merely extended for the next-generation storage systems. New approaches are required, especially for understanding and controlling the complex chemistry at the electrode-electrolyte interface. It has already been established that such control can, in principle, be realized by the solid electrolyte interphase (SEI), a stable passivating layer formed on the electrode. Such a layer should enable continuous transport of ions across it, but the fundamental understanding of what SEI components and architectures may give rise to such transport is not yet available. The ultimate goal of this ERC project is to establish structure-function correlation for the SEI by implementing methodologies for directly probing interfaces at the atomic-molecular level and for guiding the design of novel interphases. We will achieve this goal by introducing to materials science a set of NMR 'tools' based on chemical exchange saturation transfer (CEST), commonly used to study dynamics in biomolecular-NMR. Here we propose to develop variants of CEST to probe ion dynamics across the SEI. Implementing these new approaches in situ, we will disentangle the multistep transport process at the electrolyte-SEI-electrode interfaces. Coupled with sensitivity enhancement by Dynamic Nuclear Polarization from inherent polarization sources, we will identify the SEI components participating in the ion exchange processes. Integrating our results with the battery performance, we will determine the pathways and bottlenecks for transport across the SEI. Applying advanced NMR methods combined with controlled surface chemistry to state-of-the-art battery materials, such as lithium and beyond metal anodes, high-energy cathodes and composite electrolytes, we will establish design rules for next-generation energy storage systems.

Very High Energy Electrons (VHEE) as those produced by compact laser plasma accelerators are ideal candidate in radiotherapy (RT). The corresponding dose distribution of the already produced low divergence and quasi-monoenergetic electron beam portends significant potential to treat deep tissue tumors, due to VHEE’s narrow radial dose deposition profile and long penetration distance. Our technological breakthrough is creating VHEE beam suitable for radiation therapy with a single laser and in relatively small space. Therefore, we expect our discovery to enable smaller, simpler and cheaper RT machinery with superior therapy performance. This will bring added value to RT device manufacturers and operators. Our approach substantially reduces the size of the acceleration complex leading to significantly smaller footprint, and investments in such facilities. We also enable increasing patient throughput while facilitating lower radiation protection requirements. The approach is safer for patients – for instance, our numerical studies of dose deposition in cases of prostate cancer indicate that VHEE reduces 20% of the ionizing radiation in healthy tissues. Moreover, obesity makes cancer treatment more difficult and adverse side effects more common, for which VHEE-RT represents an efficient and economically pertinent solution. In addition to increasing the technology maturity in this PoC, we will study and prepare commercialization plans of the approach and variety of VHEE-RT components. Moreover, we will carry out IP protection and networking tasks with collaborators, potential customers and investors for improving our chances of commercialization success.