The objectives of the interdisciplinary project IQubits are to (i) develop and demonstrate experimentally high-temperature (high-T) Si and SiGe electron/hole-spin qubits and qubit integrated circuits (ICs) in commercial 22nm Fully-Depleted Silicon-on-Insulator (FDSOI) CMOS foundry technology as the enabling fundamental building blocks of quantum computing technologies, (ii) verify the scalability of these qubits to 10nm dimensions through fabrication experiments and (iii) prove through atomistic simulations that, at 2nm dimensions, they are suitable for 300K operation. The proposed 22nm FDSOI qubit ICs consist of coupled quantum-dot electron and hole spin qubits, placed in the atomic-scale channel of multi-gate n- and p-MOSFETs, and of 60-240GHz spin control/readout circuits integrated on the same die in state-of-the-art FDSOI CMOS foundry technology. To assess the impact of future CMOS scaling, more aggressively scaled Si-channel SOI and nitride-channel qubit structures will also be designed and fabricated in two experimental processes with 10nm gate half pitch. The latter will be developed in this project. The plan is for the III-nitrides (III-N) qubits to be ultimately grown on a SOI wafer, to be compatible with CMOS. Because of their larger bandgap, III-N hold a better prospect than Si and SiGe for qubits with larger coupling energy and mode energy splitting, and 300K operation. As a radical breakthrough, the fabricated qubits will feature coupling energies on the order of 0.25-1 meV corresponding to control frequencies in the 60-240GHz range, suitable for operation at 3–12 degrees Kelvin, two orders of magnitude higher than today's qubits. The tuned mm-wave circuits allow for 10-20ps spin control pulses which help to filter out wideband thermal noise and largely enhance the ratio between the gating and the decoherence times. Thermal noise filtering and fast control of the spin may lead to even higher temperature operation for a given energy-level splitting.

Information-and-communication technologies have been historically powered by silicon, with development and production taking place mostly, albeit not exclusively, in the United States and in Asia. The current and major worldwide drive for big data, machine learning, and quantum computing will push away from this all-silicon platform, and provide a unique opportunity and a clean slate for European industry to rapidly deploy novel technologies based on innovative materials and devices. Leadership will require fast exploration of materials’ properties (e.g. memory effects for memristive computing), linking properties to performance in unexplored architectures, and assessing their business potential. INTERSECT wants to leverage European leadership in materials’ modelling software and infrastructure, as embodied in track record of the team, to provide industry-ready integrated solutions that are fully compliant with a vision of semantic interoperability driven by standardized ontologies. The resulting IM2D framework - an interoperable material-to-device simulation platform - will integrate some of the most used open-source materials modelling codes (Quantum ESPRESSO and SIESTA) with models and modelling software for emerging devices (GinestraTM) via the SimPhony infrastructure for semantic interoperability and ontologies, powered by the AiiDA workflow engine, and its data-on-demand capabilities and apps interface. API-compliance with established standards will allow pipelines to and from public repositories, and embedding into the front-end of materials hubs, such as MarketPlace, while testing, validation, and standardization will take place together with the industrial partners. INTERSECT will drive the uptake of materials modelling software in industry, bridging the gap between academic innovation and industrial novel production, with a goal of accelerating by one order of magnitude the process of materials’ selection and device design and deployment.

In a multi-disciplinary approach, FIXIT aims at the development of a disruptive, ferroelectric ultra-low power memory and computing technology, fostering the hardware implementation of novel AI-driven electronic systems. Ferroelectricity is the most energy-efficient non-volatile storage technology. FIXIT leverages two recent European discoveries of CMOS compatible ferroelectric materials: ferroelectric HfO2 as first reported in 2011 by NaMLab – the coordinator of FIXIT, and ferroelectric wurtzite AlScN discovered by the Project partner CAU in 2019. Our major goal is the scaling of ferroelectric synaptic devices to the <20nm regime while maintaining their analogue and multi-level switching properties. Moreover, we aim at the integration of these scaled devices into ultra-dense crossbar arrays featuring non-volatile multi-bit digital functionality and highly parallel multiply and accumulate operations, representing the synaptic interconnects calculation at the heart of AI-algorithms. In our consortium we build on the vast, interdisciplinary, and complementary expertise of the 11 project partners (3 industries, 1 SME, 4 universities, 3 RTOs) covering know-how on material, process and device development, CMOS integration, equipment and manufacturing, physical and electrical characterization, TCAD modelling, packaging, circuit design and system integration. Pushing European research in this topic will sustain the first-mover advantage and contribute to the European industry capability to provide advanced circuits for its needs. This is in-line with the European Chips Act, where the Commission has identified technological leadership in semiconductor technologies as indispensable for European digital sovereignty, and decided to support the field with large investments. FIXIT will also support Europe’s competitiveness in semiconductors with a systematic outreach to students, the training of young researchers and the building of international cooperation.

The project FORESi aims at FOstering a Recycled European Silicon supply. through the first worldwide industrial demonstration of a cradle-to-cradle Silicon value chain. To contribute to a sustainable energy sovereignty for Europe, FORESi will demonstrate a circular recycling process from end-of-life PV panels towards new photovoltaics and EV batteries applications. The project will demonstrate the technical, economic and environmental viability of the entire recycling process, and deliver the design of an optimised recycling turnkey factory of end-of-life PV panels, paving the way for a European industrial mass production of recycled Silicon. FORESi will also develop an online integrated platform for recovery of PV panels, and deliver a PV Testing Methodology to Reuse and Repair EoL PV modules.