Professor Jordi Sort receives a new Proof of Concept grant from the ERC

ICREA professor from the UAB Department of Physics Jordi Sort has been one of the researchers chosen to be funded by the European Research Council (ERC) with a Proof of Concept grant, aimed at bringing cutting-edge research advances to the market. The grant, of €150,000, will be aimed at serving as a bridge between scientific results and the first commercialization phases of the project Magneto-ionic data-security device integrated on flexible substrates (SECURE-FLEXIMAG).

Prof. Jordi Sort received his PhD Degree in Materials Science from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) in 2002 (Extraordinary Award). The topic of his PhD dissertation was the study of magnetic exchange interactions in ferromagnetic-antiferromagnetic systems. He worked for two years as Postdoctoral Researcher at the SPINTEC Laboratory (Grenoble) and subsequently stayed several months at the Argonne National Laboratory (USA). He also performed long-term secondments at the Grenoble High Magnetic Fields Laboratory and at Los Alamos National Laboratory. At present, Prof. Sort leads the “Group of Smart Nanoengineered Materials, Nanomechanics and Nanomagnetism (Gnm3)” at the UAB, which focuses its research activities on the synthesis of a wide variety of functional materials and the study of their structural, magnetic, magnetoelectric, mechanical and thermal properties. This research aims at enhancing the performance of these materials in new technological applications that go beyond the state-of-the-art.

Prof. Sort’s research activity was awarded by the Catalan Physical Society (Jordi Porta i Jué’s Prize, 2000), as well as by the Spanish Royal Physical Society (Young Researcher Award in Experimental Physics, 2003), the Federation of Materials Societies (FEMS Prize in Materials Science & Technology, 2015) and by UPC/Naturgy (Duran Farell Award for Technological Research, 2020). Prof. Sort has supervised 20 PhD Theses and has published around 380 articles that have received approximately 13,100 citations (h=57) in the ISI Web of Science. Many of these articles have been published in top-ranked journals. He has issued 7 patents and managed 40 national/international research projects. In 2014 Prof. Jordi Sort was awarded a Consolidator Grant from the European Research Council (ERC). He was also the coordinator of the “BeMAGIC” network, with a total of 24 partners from throughout Europe. In 2022 he was awarded an Advanced Grant from the ERC with the project “Voltage-Reconfigurable Magnetic Invisibility: A New Concept for Data Security Based on Engineered Magnetoelectric Materials (REMINDS)”, which focuses on the use of magnetoelectric materials for data security applications.

SECURE-FLEXIMAG project

Traditional methods of safeguarding data often fall short in today’s rapidly evolving information technology landscape. Passwords are vulnerable to hacking, and while encryption offers enhanced security, it significantly increases data processing costs and slows performance. Storing secret keys in battery-backed memory is also inefficient in terms of energy consumption. The advent of physical unclonable functions (PUFs), which create unique device fingerprints based on random physical properties, marked a significant leap in hardware-level data security. Despite recent progress in PUF technology, challenges such as energy efficiency, cost, scalability, randomness, and reconfigurability remain. Overcoming these hurdles requires innovative materials and designs.

Magneto-ionic data-security device integrated on flexible substrates (SECURE-FLEXIMAG) aims to strengthen data security and promote technology transfer by building on the PI's recent research in three key areas. First, magneto-ionics — control of magnetism via voltage-driven ion motion — to selectively alter the magnetic state of patterned micro/nano-dots. Second, ferromagnetic-antiferromagnetic exchange coupling to lock access to data. And finally, stochastic magnetization reversal phenomena in arrays of non-interacting magnetic dots. These effects can be synergistically combined to develop an advanced data-security device that will largely surpass conventional password methods and current PUF approaches in terms of energy and cost efficiency as well as protection reliability. The project will explore market prospects and business development strategies in collaboration with various stakeholders and potential end users.