Library FAQ
What materials and lifecycle requirements are requested for packaging alternatives?
Projects should utilize abundant bio-based sources (e.g., cellulose, chitin, lignin, keratin, microbial, fungal, plant materials) and demonstrate at least preliminary evidence of improved cradle-to-gate and cradle-to-grave lifecycle assessments, reducing energ...
What performance requirement must low-carbon cement innovations meet?
Any innovation that reduces CO2 emissions must still enable, meet or exceed the performance and workability criteria of incumbent products by the time of market adoption, as referenced by industry norms and standards.
What regulatory and functional aspects must packaging proposals address?
Pay attention to regulatory aspects of chemical additives for food contact, formulate to meet biodegradability criteria across EU environments, include enhanced functional characteristics (e.g., increase shelf life, enhance agricultural film productivity), and...
What technological categories must Area 1 applicants specify?
Applicants must state which of the following their technology belongs to: novel electrolyzer designs, fully-integrated PV-EC, photosynthetic devices, or solar-driven biological conversion devices.
What TRL and outcome expectations exist for cement-related projects?
Project results must demonstrate validation in a laboratory environment (TRL4). The portfolio should cover the four domains, develop common metrics and terminology, and include a rough order of magnitude estimate of potential emission reduction impacts.
Which technology domains does the cement challenge support?
1) Alternative low-carbon binders and engineered carbon mineralisation (e.g., magnesia-based, carbonation curing); 2) Technologies for more efficient use of clinker and cement (novel SCMs, particle size optimization, admixtures); 3) Technologies lowering or ne...
Which types of devices are excluded from the solar-to-X Challenge?
Devices driven by electricity or heat are not the focus, except for radically new electrolyzer designs beyond incremental R&D on mature electrolyzer designs. Partially integrated systems that do not significantly simplify the balance-of-plant are out of scope.
How could inverse design with digital twins strengthen Europe’s resilience and autonomy?
By accelerating development of advanced materials tailored to European industrial, environmental, and regulatory conditions, shortening design-to-manufacturing cycles, supporting Net-Zero Industry Act objectives, and reinforcing value chains for clean and reso...
How could perennial crops support Europe’s resilience and strategic autonomy?
Accelerated domestication could enable low-input cropping that reduces fertiliser reliance, stabilises soils, limits nutrient leakage, enhances carbon sequestration, and strengthens regionally adapted crop development aligned with EU agricultural and soil stra...
How could spin-caloritronic materials matter for Europe’s resilience and strategic autonomy?
They may broaden options for low-grade heat recovery and thermal sensing, support energy efficiency goals under EU directives, and align with STEP priorities in magnetic materials and spin-based transport, but require sustained research to address stability, s...
How does mycelium-based hybrid fermentation differ from existing food biotech approaches?
Rather than ultra-processed single-ingredient precision fermentation, it creates complex whole-food products via engineered multi-species consortia in a single fermentation step, integrating structure and function and shortening value chains while leveraging d...
How do spin-caloritronic systems differ from conventional thermoelectrics?
They generate heat-induced electrical signals via spin currents and magnetic excitations rather than relying on charge carrier diffusion and high charge mobility, making them potentially suitable for low-grade heat harvesting and sensing where classic thermoel...
How might mycelium-based hybrid fermentation affect Europe’s food resilience and autonomy?
By enabling low-input whole-food production from local residues, it could support the EU Bioeconomy and Farm to Fork strategies, shorten value chains, reduce reliance on imported proteins, and strengthen bio-based manufacturing, while requiring regulatory alig...
What are biotech-enabled perennial crops?
Perennial grain crops are multi-year harvest plants that reduce tillage and inputs; biotech-enabled approaches use genomic techniques and AI to accelerate domestication and breeding to close yield gaps with annual cereals.
What are passive daytime radiative cooling and gravity-based energy storage in buildings?
Passive daytime radiative cooling uses advanced coatings to reflect solar radiation and emit heat to the sky for indoor thermal regulation without electricity; gravity-based storage converts surplus electricity into potential energy by lifting masses in buildi...
What are spin-caloritronic materials?
Spin-caloritronic materials exploit interactions between heat, spin, and electrical transport to generate spin currents and magnetic excitations from thermal gradients, enabling solid-state heat-to-electricity conversion and sensing via spin-based mechanisms r...
What are the current limitations of spin-caloritronic technologies?
Efficiencies remain modest, the performance mechanisms are still being clarified, and module-level integration and long-term stability/scalability are at an early stage.
What benefits could energy-active buildings provide for Europe?
They could lower cooling-related electricity demand during heatwaves, reduce dependence on active cooling and electrochemical batteries, support EU building and renovation policies, strengthen construction material supply chains, and improve energy affordabili...
What is inverse design with digital twins for predictive materials manufacturing?
It combines AI-driven inverse design methods for materials with digital twins of buildings and infrastructure so candidate materials are virtually tested and optimised in realistic operational contexts prior to physical manufacturing.
What is mycelium-based hybrid fermentation for whole-food production?
It uses fungal mycelia as structural scaffolds combined with bacteria, yeasts, algae, and/or plant components in a single bioconversion process to produce novel whole-food products with complex textures, flavours, and functional properties from feedstocks incl...
What is novel about combining inverse design and digital twins?
The novelty lies in converging inverse design algorithms, high-performance computing, and physics-based simulation to explore vast material spaces goal-orientedly, and using digital twins as validation layers to assess materials under realistic conditions, cre...
What key effects underpin spin-caloritronics?
Key effects include the spin Seebeck effect (temperature gradients generating spin currents), magnon-related contributions to thermopower, and transverse thermoelectric responses such as the anomalous Nernst and magneto-Seebeck effects.
What recent advances enable coupling passive cooling and gravity-based storage at building scale?
Nanomaterial-based photonic coatings that reflect solar radiation while emitting infrared through the atmospheric window, and adaptation of gravity storage concepts for built environments, enabling reduced cooling loads and local smoothing of energy demand; in...
What recent advances make perennial grains more viable?
New genomic techniques, genomic selection, genome-targeted screening (e.g., TILLING and FIND-IT), and AI-assisted breeding pipelines can shorten breeding cycles and improve trait-selection efficiency, potentially producing competitive perennial varieties withi...