Imec Joins Graphene Flagship

To coincide with Graphene Week 2014, the Graphene Flagship announced that one of the largest-ever European research initiatives is doubling in size, with 66 new partners are being invited to join the consortium following the results of a €9 million competitive call. Imec was among the new partners to join the Graphene Flagship.

“Imec aims to show that graphene can form the basis of practical optoelectronic devices, such as high speed modulators and detectors, for use in low power optical interconnects,” said Cedric Huyghebaert, team leader of imec’s graphene group. “During the past five years, we have built a strong knowledge in graphene device making, focused on the generic building blocks like contacting, doping and gate engineering, which are essential to progress in any graphene application. This knowledge, combined with our unique experience in integrating novel materials into CMOS-processes, and our state-of-the-art optoelectronic silicon waveguide platform, makes imec a very suitable place to develop hybrid-silicon-graphene optoelectronic devices compatible with CMOS.”

Graphene was made and tested in Europe, leading to the 2010 Nobel Prize in Physics for Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov from the University of Manchester.

With the €1 billion Graphene Flagship, Europe will be able to turn cutting-edge scientific research into marketable products. This major initiative places Europe in the driving seat for the global race to develop graphene technologies.