A consortium of 31 European electronics packaging, optics and photonics key players, leading equipment suppliers and testing experts launched a new project, “Advanced packaging for photonics, optics and electronics for low cost manufacturing in Europe,” simply called APPLAUSE. The project fosters the European semiconductor value chain by building new tools, methods and processes for high volume manufacturing. The €34M total budget for the three-year project (2019-2022) is co-funded by Horizon 2020 and national funding agencies and industries, as a part of the Electronics Components and Systems for European Leadership Joint Undertaking (ECSEL JU). In Finland, national public funding is provided by Business Finland.

The six use cases of APPLAUSE are: (i) a substantially smaller 3D integrated ambient light sensor for mobile and wearable applications; (ii) a high performance, low cost, uncooled thermal IR sensor for automotive and surveillance applications; (iii) high speed datacom transceivers with reduced manufacturing costs; (iv) a flexible cardiac monitoring patch; (v) miniaturized cardiac implants with advanced monitoring capabilities; and (vi) an optical water measurement module with cost-effective packaging of components. With a budget of €1M, the UTU Health Technology Group participates in the flexible cardiac monitoring patch use case, where it is responsible for gathering and analyzing patient data and creating new advanced algorithms for detection of cardiac anomalies – atrial fibrillation, heart failure and coronary artery disease.

Project website: https://applause-ecsel.eu