Gianluca Fiori's project is called SKIN2DTRONICS and will receive funding of ten million euros over the next six years in order to develop cutting-edge technology which will allow for the construction of electronic microcircuits on deformable and ultra-flexible materials. This is the Professor’s second ERC Grant after the one he received in 2017 for his research on paper-printable electronics.
“The idea behind SKIN2DTRONICS,” says Gianluca Fiori, “is that electronics can be integrated virtually anywhere. We aim to develop flexible electronics that are less than a micron thick and can be placed on any type of surface, regardless of its shape, irregularity and texture. This can open the way to a wide range of applications, including those in the medical field.
Specifically, we will be working to develop a flexible, biocompatible electronic device capable of monitoring the recurrence of very aggressive tumours such as glioblastoma, a brain tumour that currently has a very high mortality rate. This is due to the fact that medical checks to detect the recurrence are often delayed, as they require the use of a very expensive technique such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). The electronic device that we will develop will be able to be inserted directly into the cavity left in the brain after the surgical removal of the tumour and, thanks to its flexibility and adaptability, will be able to adhere perfectly to the edges of the cavity. The device will contain microsensors of pH, temperature and pressure that will be able to monitor the possible emergence of new tumours in real time."
"The project," concludes Fiori, "is certainly ambitious and faces a double challenge: managing to integrate the thousands of transistors needed for processing signals in a few square centimetres, analysing data and communicating with the outside world, and at the same time designing the electronics to ensure that their performance is stable even on curved and uneven surfaces."
The Synergy Grant rewards projects that are so innovative and ambitious that they require the close collaboration and integration of the knowledge of a team of scientists in order to be successful. In addition to Gianluca Fiori, the SKIN2DTRONICS team includes Andreas Kis, EPFL Lausanne (Federal Polytechnic School), Andres Castellano Gomez, CSIC Madrid (Superior Council for Scientific Research) and Kostas Kostarelos, ICN2 Barcelona (Catalan Institute of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology).
"An award such as this,” says Sergio Saponara, Director of the Department of Information Engineering “testifies to the excellence of the research carried out by our department, and its great impact on society and the production system. Our researchers have been working for many years to develop technologies for an increasingly digital society. All of the department’s future-oriented activities take place in our FoReLab laboratory, where highly integrated and interdisciplinary researchers aim to provide the tools for a 5.0 society and industry, where devices and technologies are designed and tailored to people’s needs. Thanks to the ERC Synergy Grant we will be able to develop a generation of new devices, practically a new electronics industry, with patient-centred applications such as wearable devices and medical applications".