IEMN – Singapore Collaboration

The IEMN’s collaboration with Singapore is based on interactions among THALES and the university, pre-industrial activity of Singapore in Photonics (Nanyang Technological University [NTU], Institute of Material Research Engineering [IMRE] and Singapore Institute of Manufacturing Technology [SIMTech]). The collaboration owes its start to IEMN’s participation and key role in the France-Singapore Workshops on Opto-Microwaves (March 2002 and October 2005), IEMN’s participation as scientific advisor to various projects initiated by THALES at the THALES@NTU Laboratory, directed by Jean Chazelas. A project on ’Dilute Nitrides’ under MERLION program, coordinated by the French Embassy in Singapore, involving IEMN and NTU, has strengthened further this collaboration. This project has started in 2006 and has an objective to explore a new family of materials using diluted nitrides (GaAsN) lattice matched to GaAs for optoelectronic telecommunications at wavelengths of 1.55 μm. On the basis of several ‘MERLION’ projects, an agreement has been prepared between NTU (Prof. Yoon S.F.), THALES (J. Chazelas and the Director of Thales Technological Center of Singapore (P. Plante) and IEMN (Prof. D. Decoster together with the parent organizations CNRS and University of Lille 1). This agreement, signed in November 2007, is also considered to be the basis for establishing joint research activities among NTU-THALES and IEMN.
On the basis of the previous agreements, the alliance known as the CNRS International-NTU-Thales Research Alliance (CINTRA) has been setting up the CINTRA Laboratory, a joint research laboratory located at NTU, to harness the latest in science and technology to develop innovations in state-of-the-art nanotechnologies for future computing, sensing, and communication applications. The collaboration will provide opportunities to overcome and tackle critical issues and bottlenecks faced by today’s technologies in microelectronic and photonic industries, promising innovations with superior performance beyond what is available today. The above joint efforts led to the creation of the CNRS sponsored Mixed International Unit (UMI) CINTRA, which was inaugurated in December 2009.
Under this alliance, projects have been set up, first in the frame of the ANR, Nanotechnology Program, called MOCCA including NTU and French SMEs and a bilateral projects on Nanoantennas has been submitted for funding under DGA-MRIS for the French side and DSTA for the Singaporean side. Discussions are also underway between NTU and the IEMN for the establishment of a Research and Teaching Cooperation through the European Campus of Northern France (ECNF). This project considers complementary aspects to those described above and aims at both research and teaching aspects.
To strengthen the NTU/IEMN-CNRS/Thales CINTRA partnership, IEMN/CNRS has invested dedicated manpower on the study of electronic properties of  semiconducting nanocrystals and nanowires by use of Kelvin Force Microscopy (KFM) and Electric Force Microscopy (EFM). This project was coordinated by M. H. Diesinger and was matched in funds by manpower provided for complementary efforts by NTU and the French Embassy of Singapore.
Semiconducting nanocrystals obtained by ion implantation in oxides find applications in photovoltaics and electroluminescent diodes.
In addition to the above efforts, IEMN collaborates with the Institute of Material Research Engineering (IMRE) on the study of new widebandgap materials for white light and illumination purposes. This project is coordinated by M. E. Dogheche and M. S. J. Chua and M. J. H. Teng of IEMN and IMRE respectively and is the subject of a jointly supervised Ph.D thesis, supported in part by a MERLION project.