Pooling funding to accelerate the move to smart electronics

Published in Horizon, 13 June 2014

If we want Europe to gain market share in developing technology for smart devices like phones and tablets, we must embrace public–private partnerships, according to Dr Andreas Wild, executive director of the EU’s new Electronic Components and Systems for European Leadership (ECSEL) Joint Technology Initiative.

Why is electronics so important to the EU?

‘Back in June 2011 the European Commission’s High-Level Group on Key Enabling Technologies recognised certain technologies as being important for Europe, and one of these technology areas was micro- and nanoelectronics, including semiconductors. In a nutshell, nanoelectronics provides the ‘smart’ in everything. If you have a smartphone, it’s smart because there’s a chip inside with software embedded in it and functionalities integrated around it. A smart card is not smart because of the fancy plastic, but because behind the gold pattern there is a chip with embedded software and integrated functionalities. Likewise, every smart object is smart because of the chip inside – and that’s micro- and nanoelectronics. There are economic implications of being able to make smart products, and there are also strategic implications in safety, security, autonomy and independence.’ […]

The rest of this article is published here.