Functionality Integration

Photo: 4mm steel cube 3D-printed with magnetic and non-magnetic areas; Source: Empa

Today, not only expensive specialty products, but also consumer products, need to provide several different functionalities to be competitive. A key question is how to add or integrate functionalities in a product? This question is not only relevant for the development and design of the product, but also for its manufacturing, commercialization, maintenance, and recycling. 

Adding a functionality to a product can be realized by combining different materials (multi-materials or hybrid materials), by adding structure to the product, often at different scales (multi-scale structures or metamaterials), or to integrate components, e.g. electronic devices or biological structures into the product. This Technical Focus Area (TFA) calls for research proposals in the area of new fabrication technologies for multi-functional products using multi-materials, multi-scale structures or metamaterials or technologies that enable an efficient integration of functional components into products.