NWO Perspectief funding for flat optics

On December 13th NWO announced that one of the consortia to receive funding from the Perspectief program is the AWAVE project (Advanced Wave Engineering for Sustainable Optical Applications) with amongst others ARCNL group leader Lyuba Amitonova as one of the participating researchers. In addition to being an ARCNL group leader, Amitonova is also assistant professor at VU Amsterdam.

Photo: Lyuba Amitonova in her lab. Credits photo: Ivar Pel

With the Perspectief program, NWO challenges researchers to establish broad, cross-disciplinary consortia with industry, civil society organizations and governments to conduct research focused on societal challenges and key technologies.

Partners
The parties to work on the granted AWAVE project are: Delft University of Technology (principal investigator), ARCNL, VU Amsterdam, Eindhoven University of Technology, University of Twente, ASML, AAC Hyperion, Canon, Demcon, JMO, SCIL, Signify, Sumipro. The budget (including co-funding) is 3.1 million euros.

Flat optics to do more with less
The AWAVE project will develop flat optical components. These will enable lithography machines (for chip production) to use fewer parts, lamps to use less energy and produce more light, and inkjet printers to print more predictable, glossy, full-color images. The researchers combine two of the latest technologies to manipulate light to replace today’s large and curved optical components with flat alternatives with flat fronts and backs that generate less light distortion. The new components are easier to recycle and use fewer harmful substances. They also emit more colors of light at once. This will enable much sharper images and new applications.

More information on the NWO website.