Eugenio Coronado receives a new FET-OPEN project for European support for Future and Emerging Technologies

06/11/2020

The Professor of Inorganic Chemistry at the University of Valencia Eugenio Coronado has just received funding from the H2020 FET-OPEN call. SINFONIA, as the project is called, is the third initiative that the researcher from the Institute of Molecular Science (ICMol) maintains active in this line of European support to advanced and innovative technologies.

Posed in the field of ICT, SINFONIA (Selectively activated information technology by hybrid organic Interfaces) proposes the storage and transport of information in hybrid interfaces formed by photoactive molecules and antiferromagnetic materials. “It is a new approach to information technology that, unlike conventional CMOS technology, has a very low energy consumption, since it does not require electrical currents or electrodes to store and transmit information”, he says. Coronado, a Spanish participant in this highly competitive project and closely related to ICMol’s strategic research lines focused on molecular spintronics and two-dimensional materials. “Our contribution to this project consists of developing hybrid surfaces formed by photoactive molecules anchored on an antiferromagnetic material that allows transforming an optical stimulus into a magnetic signal that can be propagated at distances of hundreds of nanometres”, he points out. “Our dream is to design a purely molecular nano-sized device, where the photoactive unit and the antiferromagnetic material are based on molecules and in which the latter is a two-dimensional material of nanometric thickness; a challenge that will test both the chemical versatility of our approach and the miniaturisation possibilities of this new technology”, he concludes.

FET-OPEN grants are aimed at strengthening large scientific and technical research projects of excellence linked to disruptive technologies and carried out through collaboration. In the case of SINFONIA, in addition to the University of Valencia, the Politecnico di Milano and the Università degli Studi di Milano, the Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche of Italy, the CIC nanoGUNE of San Sebastián, the French CNRS, the company THATec Innovation GmbH – specialised in customised systems for optical scanning microscopy and in the automation of laboratory infrastructure –, and the THALES SA group, a world leader in electronics and a key player in numerous markets such as aerospace, land transport, identity and digital security, physical and cyber security and defence.

Coordinated by the Politecnico di Milano (Italy), SINFONIA is scheduled to begin execution in early 2021. The project, which will last for three years, has a global budget of 3.3 million euros, 408,000 of which will be managed from the ICMol.

This is the third FET-OPEN that the professor of Inorganic Chemistry and director of the Institute of Molecular Science (ICMol) of the University of Valencia maintains active, since it has another two achieved in 2019 and 2018, which are developed in the fields of molecular spintronics (COSMICS project) and quantum computing (FATMOLS project).