The European consortium Access Centre To Micro-Optics Expertise, Services and Technologies (ACTMOST), in efforts to overcome the current economic recession's roadblocks for photonics-driven product innovation, has introduced a new initiative with financial support from the European Commission. The initiative enables companies—particularly subject matter experts (SMEs)—to access top-level technology platforms and experts, and photonics was identified as an ideal test case.
ACTMOST's first support activities—which varied between a few weeks up to one year each—have been completed with a considerable industrial impact, and many more support projects are currently being delivered, says Hugo Thienpont of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel ("Free University of Brussels") in Belgium, who serves as coordinator of the consortium. The initiative has been serving 12 European companies in applications ranging from optical telecommunications, solar energy, biomedical instrumentation, security, and optical component manufacturing. Among the first industrial end-users that the initiative had served are Peira, TE Connectivity, Agfa, m-LED, SüSS Micro-Optics, Luxeole, and Anteryon.
Since January 2011, ACTMOST has been supporting European companies with timely, cost-effective, and investment-free solutions to their product innovation challenges, explains Thienpont. ACTMOST support encompasses optical design, measurement, prototyping, replication, and packaging, and then to proof-of-concept demonstration, prototyping, reliability testing, and pre-production level fabrication. The consortium's technology platform combines technologies from 14 high-tech European research laboratories to provide complete solutions to companies through R&D collaborations or hands-on training of industry staff.
ACTMOST will continue to support European companies during the next 15 months. For more information, please visit www.actmost.eu.
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