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European research centres and industry have joined in a new research consortium called Q2M, short for “batch integration of High-Quality materials to Microsystems”. Q2M will develop novel microfabrication technologies for heterogenous integration of materials and microdevices. The European Union supports the consortium during a three-year period with 3.2 MEuro, through its EU Sixth Framework programme.

Microfabrication techniques are used for the production of a myriad of components and systems with feature sizes in the range from a few millimetres down to 100 nanometres. Application fields include the automotive industry, telecom applications, publishing applications, medical applications and biotechnical instrumentation. In the course of this project, the new techniques evolved will be applied to specific applications in microvalving, spatial light modulators (SLM), and wireless communication components (RF-MEMS).

- There exist a number of high-quality materials for sensing and micromotion control, such as shape memory materials, piezoceramic materials and specific ultra-flat single crystalline layers, which are displaying excellent characteristics for sensor applications and micro motion control. However, the mainstream microstructuring techniques stem from the microelectronic Integrated Circuit fabrication technology. Typically, combining these conventional microfabrication techniques with novel materials leads to various problems of fabrication process incompatibility! This is one of the major bottlenecks for the development of novel applications, says Wouter van der Wijngaart, associate professor at the Microsystem Technology Lab at KTH, and also Q2M coordinator.

The Q2M Consortium, which was created to push this technology beyond its current barriers, will follow two general strategies: using the high quality materials as a component of novel composites, and developing novel transfer bonding methods. Composites allow material incorporation to microstructures in a larger variety of manufacturing methods, whereas in transfer bonding, whole layers of high quality material can be transferred to semiconductor or polymer microstructure substrates in a batch manner using adhesive, glue-like layers.

The Q2M Consortium includes academic partners and technology development companies – each of these an expert/pioneer in a core aspect of this truly multidisciplinary scientific challenge – as well as technology end-users, which were chosen to anchor the work in real industrial needs and also to create the basis for further development and exploitation.

The project website address is http://q2m.4m-net.org.

For further information please apply to:
Wouter van der Wijngaart, Associate Professor
Microsystem Technology Lab, KTH, Q2M Project Coordinator.
Phone: +46–733254021, E-mail: wouter@ee.kth.se

The Consortium partners include:
KTH - Royal Institute of Technology (project coordinator, SE)
Cranfield University (UK)
Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (BE)
FZK - Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe (DE)
Fraunhofer IPMS (DE)
Pondus Instruments (SE)
20/10 Perfect Vision (DE)
Steinbeis Transfer Centre ASICON (DE)
IBM Research (CH)
VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland (FI)
LK Products (FI)

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