PHENOMEN Is A FET-Open Research Project Aiming To Lay The Foundations A New Information Technology

PHENOMEN partners kick-off the project at a meeting in the Catalan Institute of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology (ICN2), coordinator of the initiative, on Friday September 16. The project PHENOMEN is at the intersection of photonics, radio frequency signal processing and phononics and proposes to build the first practical optically-driven phonon sources and detectors. The project was retained in a strong competition with a 1.4% success rate, in the last H2020 FET-Open call, "Novel ideas for radically new technologies".

PHENOMEN is a ground breaking project designed to harness the potential of combined phononics, photonics and radio-frequency (RF) electronic signals to lay the foundations of a new information technology. This new Project, funded though the highly competitive H2020 FET-Open call, joins the efforts of three leading research institutes, three internationally recognised universities and a high-tech SME. The Consortium members kick-off the project with a meeting on Friday September 16, 2016, at the Catalan Institute of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology (ICN2), coordinated by ICREA Research Prof Dr Clivia M. Sotomayor-Torres, of the ICN2’ Phononic and Photonic Nanostructures (P2N) Group.

Most information is currently transported by electrical charge (electrons) and by light (photons). Phonons are the quanta of lattice vibrations with frequencies covering a wide range up to tens of THz and provide coupling to the surrounding environment. In PHENOMEN the core of the research will be focused on phonon-based signal processing to enable on-chip synchronisation and transfer information carried between optical channels by phonons.

This ambitious prospect could serve as a future scalable platform for, e.g., hybrid information processing with phonons. To achieve it, PHENOMEN proposes to build the first practical optically-driven phonon sources and detectors including the engineering of phonon lasers to deliver coherent phonons to the rest of the chip pumped by a continuous wave optical source. It brings together interdisciplinary scientific and technology oriented partners in an early-stage research towards the development of a radically new technology.

The experimental implementation of phonons as information carriers in a chip is completely novel and of a clear foundational character. It deals with interaction and manipulation of fundamental particles and their intrinsic dual wave-particle character. Thus, it can only be possible with the participation of an interdisciplinary consortium which will create knowledge in a synergetic fashion and add value in the form of new theoretical tools, develop novel methods to manipulate coherent phonons with light and build all-optical phononic circuits enabled by optomechanics.

The H2020 FET-Open call "Novel ideas for radically new technologies" aims to support the early stages of joint science and technology research for radically new future technological possibilities. The call is entirely non-prescriptive with regards to the nature or purpose of the technologies that are envisaged and thus targets mainly the unexpected. PHENOMEN is one of the 13 funded Research & Innovation Actions and went through a selection process with a success rate (1.4%) ten times smaller than that for an ERC grant. The retained proposals are expected to foster international collaboration in a multitude of disciplines such as robotics, nanotechnology, neuroscience, information science, biology, artificial intelligence or chemistry.

The Consortium

The PHENOMEN Consortium is made up by:

• 3 leading research institutes:
  • Institut Català de Nanociència i Nanotecnologia (ICN2) - www.icn2.cat
  • Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR) - www.nano.cnr.it
  • VTT Teknologian Tutkimuskeskus (VTT) - www.vtt.fi
• 3 universities with an internationally recognised track-record in their respective areas of expertise:
  • Universitat Politècnica de València (UPVLC) - www.upv.es
  • Università Politecnica delle Marche (UNIVPM) - www.univpm.it
  • Université des Sciences et Technologie de Lille (USTL) - www.univ-lille1.fr
• 1 industrial partner:
  • MENAPiC S.A.S (MENAPIC) - www.menapic.com