European Project CORONA Looks Back On A Promising First Year

One year has passed since the kick-off of the European project CORONA, which aims at accelerating the businesses of European companies by enabling faster product engineering. Nine partners from all along the value chain in micro- and nanotechnologies (MNT) are working towards this goal during the three-year run-time of the project.

First results were, amongst others, introduced at the NRW Nano-Conference from June 22 to 23, 2009 in Dortmund, Germany. Crucially the project partners have defined future products and thereby have approached the exploitation of the project results. Several presentations throughout Europe also sparked interest in CORONA from companies outside the consortium.

CORONA is a NMP (Nanosciences, Nanotechnologies, Materials and new Production Technologies) project in the Seventh Framework Programme (FP7) funded by the European Commission. The CORONA consortium includes companies and institutes that contribute experiences in design methodology and tools for micro- and nanotechnology, MNT production as well as networking and dissemination activities. The organizations involved are:

- IVAM e.V., Microtechnology Network, Dortmund, Germany
- Coventor Sarl, Villebon sur Yvette, France
- Elmos Advanced Packaging BV, Nijmegen, the Netherlands
- Instytut Technologii Elektronowej, Warsaw, Poland
- Process Relations GmbH, Dortmund, Germany
- Theon Sensors SA, Athens, Greece
- University of Cambridge, Cambridge, Great Britain
- Universität Siegen, Siegen, Germany
- X-FAB Semiconductor Foundries AG, Erfurt, Germany

CORONA shall support customer-lead multi-site product development and provide access to a knowledge base on design and processes as well as access to information and communication technology infrastructure and tools.

Further information on the project and on upcoming events, where CORONA will be presented, are available at www.corona-mnt.eu.