HORIZON 2020 - Making dreams come true: EU scientists turn tiny ideas into real materials

Technology relies on new ideas. And in recent decades, there has been an explosion of new ideas about materials just a fraction of the size of a human hair. Nanomaterials - materials on the scale of nanometres - promise to improve and even revolutionise products from electricity cables to personal electronics to solar panels.

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Industrial Technologies Future and emerging technologies Leadership in enabling and industrial technologies Science with and for Society France Germany Ireland Netherlands United Kingdom Switzerland

date: 09/02/2017

Project: Flexible Pilot Scale Manufacturing of Co...

acronym: CO-PILOT

See also: Project details

Turning new ideas into real materials and technologies, however, can be tricky. Relying on trial and error or luck isn’t good enough. And it can be an expensive business trying out many different material options. Now a three-year project funded by the EU as part of its Horizon 2020 programme, called CO-PILOT, promises to help.

Aike Wypkema and Maurice Mourad of TNO in the Netherlands, who coordinated the project, explain how CO-PILOT will help to turn researchers’ ideas into real materials for real-world applications.