TKI Top sector HTSM grant for Mónica Acuautla Meneses

Via ASML, Dr. Mónica Acuautla Meneses of the Engineering and Technology Institute Groningen (ENTEG) has been awarded a TKI grant of EUR 1,140,000 within the Topsector HTSM. The grant is for her project ‘Smart Hysteretic Piezoelectric Actuator for Set and Forget Wafer Table’. The consortium that is led by Mónica Acuautla Meneses also consists of Professors Bayu Jayawardhana (ENTEG) and Beatriz Noheda (ZIAM) of the University of Groningen, Dr. Robert Huisman (SRON) and partners from ASML and Physik Instrumente.

Smart Hysteretic Piezoelectric Actuator

The grant will be used to finance two PhD students who will fabricate piezoelectric thin films with high remnant deformation to develop a Smart Hysteretic Piezoelectric Actuator (HPA). This approach will allow keeping the piezoelectric element at the desired deformation without the constant application of the electric field, reducing power consumption and increasing the lifespan of the system. Moreover, a mechatronic engineering approach will be used to implement the HPA in a lithography system of ASML to improve the performance of the system and compensate quasi-static correction of the wafer table and scale-up towards large numbers of actuators. The project envisions more applications such as energy harvesting, MEMS/NEMS, biomedical systems, and low power devices for IoT and wearable electronics.