0. Executive Summary Nanotechnology has great potential for helping address Sustainable Development Goals in many different industry sectors, but its industry uptake is made difficult due to the need for highly specialized equipment and expertise. The NanoTechNow competence centre aims to signifi- cantly lower this threshold for industry partners and to establish new and long-term collaborations with the world-leading centre for nanoscience at Lund University, NanoLund, as well as RISE Research Institutes of Sweden. Background and Challenge Nanotechnology – long considered a techno- logy of the future – is now maturing and is increasingly enabling new contributions to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Developmenti in a wide spectrum of industry branches. However, several serious obstacles to the uptake of new capabilities remain. There is a need for access to highly specialised expertise and equipment for materials characterisation, for the evaluation of the safety of nanomat- erials from a product life-cycle perspective, and for production upscaling of the manu- facturing of nanostructures. Together, these challenges represent for many companies a significant initial barrier to considering nano-enabled solutions. During a transition period, and before a company can acquire in-house expertise and equipment, Figure 1 – Stakeholder Map. It is easy for companies close collaboration with a university- or to join the Network and subsequently project activities. institute research environment is often needed. Unique opportunities forming the basis for this Centre The proposed centre aims to address the above challenges by leveraging the unique confluence of three opportunities: First, the centre builds on the momentum of NanoLund, a flagship research environment at Lund University with 56 research groups, an annual turnover of about €19 million, and 130 PhD students. It is the top international environment in the world when it comes to upscaling products using nanowire-based technology production platforms. NanoLund is also rapidly establishing itself as the leading centre for Nanosafety in Sweden. The various NanoLund spin-offs (about one emerging every 2-3 years) have attracted over €200 million in private investments so far. Through decades-long visionary leadership, NanoLund has established a strong culture of broad multidisciplinary collaboration and research excellence. It is now time leverage this experience in innovation and R&D to ramp-up and establish broader long-term collaborations with major industries and a host of SMEs in Sweden. Second, Lund University very recently took the decision to establish university operations in a new campus in Science Village Scandinavia, next to the new synchrotron MAX IV (in operation) and the neutron source ESS (under construction). NanoLund scientists are centrally involved in the development of MAX IV beamlines (such as NanoMax), and the centre will therefore be in an outstanding position to serve as a gateway for industry to engage with MAX IV. By spearheading Lund University’s new campus, NanoLund will be at the heart of what is envisioned to become a fully integrated environment for education, top-level research, innovation and production. Third, the government-owned, nation-wide Research Institutes of Sweden (RISE), with 2700 employees and a turnover of €265 million in 2017, recently decided to increase their presence in Lund to enhance their relationship with NanoLund in areas including nanosafety, power electronics, renewable energy, lighting and sensors. A very strong industry network and culture for collaborating with industry, including connecting to about a hundred test and demonstration facilities, make RISE an excellent partner for scaling-up NanoLund technology in collaboration with industry. Purpose and Vision The key notion of is that, following 2-3 decades of basic R&D, nanotechnology now is ready to be implemented in many sectors. Its purpose is to help industrial companies from multiple sectors leverage the unique, combined competences of NanoLund, RISE and MAX IV, by providing a dynamic, low-threshold, low-risk way of exploring new technologies. ’s vision is to build lasting, long-term collaborations between industrial partners, NanoLund, and RISE that ultimately lead to a nanomaterials-based industry in Sweden. Approach and Organisation will initially focus on a set of four specific research pipelines, selected because (i) these have particular high potential to deliver impact for the global Sustainable Development Goals, and (ii) because of existing research excellence at NanoLund in these areas: Power, Energy, Lighting & UV, and Precision Medicine. These pipelines are ready to go from day one with specific needs-driven R&D projects involving SMEs and major companies (see Fig. 1 on the cover page) who target the associated value chains. To engage additional companies and create longterm relations, we will form the that will provide a forum for companies with a potential interest in nanotechnology to interact, discuss needs and identify possible solutions jointly with scientists. Seed projects (typically a few weeks up to 1-2 years), co-financed by , will offer a low- threshold, low-risk way of testing and safety-testing a technology and accessing a wealth of characterisation and production equipment in collaboration with NanoLund and/or RISE, and help leverage additional funding sources. Outcomes We are targeting a number of tangible outcomes that will be measured by specific Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), including: new collaborations and competence exchange with SMEs as well as major and international Swedish companies with NanoLund, RISE and MAX IV; a self-supported, vibrant Industry Network in the arena; opening new markets and increase market share for our industry partners, with associated added jobs. The structure, and all activities, goals, performance indicators and reporting of are targeted towards contributing to the Sustainable Development Goals in quantified ways. 1. Existing activities in the field Nanoscience and nanotechnology are interdisciplinary subjects and were early on identified (together with nanoelectronics) as a Key Enabling Technology (KET) by the European Union2. Many of the technology-based solutions to societal grand challenges are expected to involve nanotechnology. The sector has an expected 2023 market of $1.3 billion for nanodevices, $9.4 billion for nanomaterials, and $7.8 billion for nanowire-based technology.3 1a. Work by the stakeholders in the selected research field NanoLund NanoLund Basic Stats NanoLund is a world-leading research environment that uses the NanoLund is the largest environment unique opportunities offered by nanoscience to advance in Sweden for nanoscience. It is world- fundamental science and help address society’s grand challenges leading in the science of semiconductor (see info square, right, for basic statistics). It is one of two nanostructures and their applications. Swedish Strategic Research Areas (SRAs) in nanoscience and 56 Research Groups in 2017 nanotechnology selected by the Swedish government in 2009 (the other is Chalmers). In the 2014 evaluation of all 43 SRAs in 326 Staff in total 2017 Sweden, NanoLund was one of only five to receive the top grade 132 PhD students in 2017 (about 20 PhDs (Excellent) in all categories. NanoLund (initiated 1988) brings graduated annually) together more than 300 researchers from the engineering, natural science and medical faculties at Lund University (LU). NanoLund 250+ Engineering nanoscience students features better gender balance than most departments in graduated since 2003 engineering and science nationally and efforts to further improve 100 Students trained in practical this balance are continuous and ongoing (see section 3e). nanofabrication every year Core expertise - NanoLund has a specific focus on the synthesis, €19 million in turnover in 2017 processing and application of semiconductor nanostructures. (63% externally financed) Specifically, nanowires are grown from “seed” metal particles in a reaction chamber that contains the constituents as metalorganic 315 Publications total in 2017, 171 in pure vapour. The low dimensionality (typically 10-100 nanometers nanoscience, with average Journal wide and up to 10 micrometers long) and the ability to control the Impact Factor 7.2 constituents very precisely (down to single atomic layers) offers €200+ million attracted in investments for unique freedom for combining components with different atomic startups since start in 1988 spacing with combinations of dopants in new ways, enabling the tailoring of materials for e.g. specific electromagnetic properties for optoelectronics, ranging from light-emitting diodes and infrared detectors to solar cells (NanoLund and Sol Voltaics AB have world records4 in nanowire photovoltaics). By utilising design flexibility in geometry and chemical surface composition applications open for biotechnology, e.g. single-cell probes, nano/microfluidic sorting, neuronal interfaces, and much more. These competences form one of the bases for . Research Excellence5 – In its core area of nanowire-based technologies, NanoLund is scientifically on a par with the other two worldwide “best-in-class” research environments at UC Berkeley and Harvard in terms of volume of publications and citations6. Since 2011 the researchers affiliated with NanoLund have gone from publishing about 200 papers annually, to over 300 publications per year in the last two years, with an average Journal