Self-assembly of mechanoplasmonic bacterial cellulose-metal nanoparticle composites

Nanocomposites of metal nanoparticles (NPs) and bacterial nanocellulose (BC) enable fabrication of soft and biocompatible materials for optical, catalytic, electronic, and biomedical applications. Current BC-NP nanocomposites are typically prepared by in situ synthesis of the NPs or electrostatic adsorption of surface functionalized NPs, which limits possibilities to control and tune NP size, shape, concentration, and surface chemistry and influences the properties and performance of the materials. Here a self-assembly strategy is described for fabrication of complex and well-defined BC-NP composites using colloidal gold and silver NPs of different sizes, shapes, and concentrations. The self-assembly process results in nanocomposites with distinct biophysical and optical properties. In addition to antibacterial materials and materials with excellent senor performance, materials with unique mechanoplasmonic properties are developed. The homogenous incorporation of plasmonic gold NPs in the BC enables extensive modulation of the optical properties by mechanical stimuli. Compression gives rise to near-field coupling between adsorbed NPs, resulting in tunable spectral variations and enhanced broadband absorption that amplify both nonlinear optical and thermoplasmonic effects and enables novel biosensing strategies

6G Vision, Value, Use Cases and Technologies from European 6G Flagship Project Hexa-X

While 5G is being deployed and the economy and society begin to reap the associated benefits, the research and development community starts to focus on the next, 6th Generation (6G) of wireless communications. Although there are papers available in the literature on visions, requirements and technical enablers for 6G from various academic perspectives, there is a lack of joint industry and academic work towards 6G. In this paper a consolidated view on vision, values, use cases and key enabling technologies from leading industry stakeholders and academia is presented. The authors represent the mobile communications ecosystem with competences spanning hardware, link layer and networking aspects, as well as standardization and regulation. The second contribution of the paper is revisiting and analyzing the key concurrent initiatives on 6G. A third contribution of the paper is the identification and justification of six key 6G research challenges: (i) “connecting”, in the sense of empowering, exploiting and governing, intelligence; (ii) realizing a network of networks, i.e., leveraging on existing networks and investments, while reinventing roles and protocols where needed; (iii) delivering extreme experiences, when/where needed; (iv) (environmental, economic, social) sustainability to address the major challenges of current societies; (v) trustworthiness as an ingrained fundamental design principle; (vi) supporting cost-effective global service coverage. A fourth contribution is a comprehensive specification of a concrete first-set of industry and academia jointly defined use cases for 6G, e.g., massive twinning, cooperative robots, immersive telepresence, and others. Finally, the anticipated evolutions in the radio, network and management/orchestration domains are discussed

Architecture landscape

The network architecture evolution journey will carry on in the years ahead, driving a large scale adoption of 5th Generation (5G) and 5G-Advanced use cases with significantly decreased deployment and operational costs, and enabling new and innovative use-case-driven solutions towards 6th Generation (6G) with higher economic and societal values. The goal of this chapter, thus, is to present the envisioned societal impact, use cases and the End-to-End (E2E) 6G architecture. The E2E 6G architecture includes summarization of the various technical enablers as well as the system and functional views of the architecture

Setting 6G Architecture in Motion - the Hexa-X Approach

The most recent cellular generation, 5G, is being deployed on a large scale globally. The capabilities of 5G surpass all previous generations of cellular networks and support many new services compared to 4G. Despite this, at the same time, preparations for 6G have begun since user demands and technical development continuously push the boundaries of what is possible. Demands come not only from users. Also, society sets requirements, e.g., sustainability, coverage, and privacy. To support the necessary features in the network needed to meet the requirements, a new generation of the architecture is needed; one based on the most forward-looking design principles together with trends in networks, use cases, and whatnot. To show that the proposed new features will allow the future network to meet the set requirements, key performance indicators (KPIs) have to be defined. In this paper, we present six of the KPIs that the European 6G flagship project Hexa-X has identified as the fundamental ones to measure the most important aspects of a new 6G architecture

6G E2E Architecture Framework with Sustainability and Security Considerations

The research on 6G in the EU-funded flagship project Hexa-X started with the investigation of the most important technology enablers and the evaluation of relevant 6G use cases. The next step is to integrate these enablers in a 6G E2E architecture that fulfills all use case-based Key Performance (KPI) and Key Value Indicators (KVI) and that follows the guidelines of general architectural principles. In addition, the main focus of an E2E 6G architecture must be on security and sustainability which both will have increased importance for future communication networks and society