Lithography refers to the transfer of a pattern onto a substrate. Lithography techniques are used in the production of a huge range of devices and materials ranging from microelectronics and MEMS devices to optical metamaterials and smart surfaces for medical and other applications. The ultimate goal and limit of lithography is to obtain fast and large scale patterning which enables the controlled positioning of individual molecules or atoms. This requires fast, large scale single nm resolution patterning. At the moment no techniques are available that can do that. Fast positioning of individual molecules or atoms over large areas can path the way for the creation and industrial application of whole new classes of materials and devices including room temperature quantum electronic devices, electronic metamaterials as well as nano filtration membranes and can push the performance of todays microelectronics.

The highest resolution (~20 nm), fast, large scale lithography technique today is photolithography where a photon beam is projected through a mask, so that the pattern from the mask is replicated by direct imaging on a substrate coated with resist. Next generation Extreme Ultra Violet (EUV) lithography uses 92 eV photons and is targeted to deliver 8 nm resolution. The EUV ultimate limit, determined by the secondary electron generation blur, is estimated to be around 6 nm, which does not enable single nm resolution patterning. Further reductions in the photolithography resolution of the patterning would increase the photon energy, exacerbating the secondary blur.
In Nanolace, a radical breakthrough to reach nm resolution lithography will be demonstrated: single nm resolution patterns will be generated with solid state and optical masks, proposed by partners in the consortium using metastable and Bose Einstein condensated atoms. Nanolace will be the first demonstration of lithography with a Bose Einstein condensate.

In the modern world everything goes wireless and everyone goes mobile. To sustain this trend,  higher frequency, smaller, more complex analogue electronics with beam steering capabilities are becoming ubiquitous. SMARTWAVE capitalizes on a newly identified technology combination to reinvent, design, fabricate and commercialize the main building block of any beam steering capable system, the phase shifter. A novel phase shifting mechanism based on reconfigurable metamaterials promises to enable phase shifting technology with excellent performance characteristics, increased speed and reduced power consumption.
SMARTWAVE technology is easily implemented in existing semiconductor fabrication lines and is inherently compatible with both III-V as well as Si and SiGe fabrication process. This ensures easy adoption of the novel idea into existing markets. To prove this, SMARTWAVE aims at demonstrating the phase shifting prototype in both technological platforms building a III-V based, K-band version to be included in a demonstrator phase array antenna for Satcomm and / or Radar applications as well as an advanced radar chipset fabricated in SiGe BiCMOS technology operating at 120GHz.
SMARTWAVE capitalizes on that technology and an agile consortium made of 1 large company, 3 SME’s with unique high tech knowledge and an academic partner with extensive III-V fabrication experience in radar modules to provide a fast track to commercialization from the design board all the way to Radar and Satcomm systems.