Josep Puigmartí wins an EIC Grant on Magnetoelectric 3D printing technology
Through the European Innovation Council (EIC), under Pillar III: Innovative Europe of the Horizon Europe program, the European Commission aims to support researchers developing high-risk innovations with the potential to create new markets and boost jobs, growth and prosperity in Europe. Within the EIC, we find the EIC Pathfinder Open which offers support for the early-stage development of radically new and disruptive technologies, with the potential to create new markets and/or address global challenges, tackling concrete problems that do not yet have a solution and which are intended to have a positive and transformative effect on our economy and society
In this context, ICREA Research Professor Josep Puigmartí has been awarded one of the grants for his project: Magnetoelectric 3D printing technology – the revolution of actuatable composites (EVA)
The EVA project puts forward a radically new 3D printing technology that will revolutionize the nature of composites, transforming them from passive elements to responsive systems that can be instructed to execute tasks – on command. A technology that can program the mechanical, magnetic and electrical anisotropy of 3D printed structures in any direction, to fabricate systems that can be wirelessly actuated to elicit variable electrical responses during operation. Such unprecedented control over the properties and active functionalities of the printed systems will offer great advantages in multiple applications such as biotechnology (e.g. scaffolds to stimulate growth and differentiation of stem cells – 1st proof-of-principle), wastewater treatment (e.g. high-efficiency catalytic membrane to free wastewaters from persistent micropollutants – 2nd proof-of-principle), next-generation robotics, security and future data-storage technologies. EVA technology will empower engineers, researchers, and industrialists wanting to develop new concepts, materials, or functional devices to fine-tune matter at will with an affordable table-top solution. A technology enabling a new generation of multifunctional actuatable composites that can be printed and leveraged to develop radically new applications impacting multiple sectors of the economy
