As a small or medium-sized enterprise (SME), you can apply for the funding program "Microelectronics. Trustworthy and sustainable. For Germany and Europe" of the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) if you are conducting research in the fields of electronics, autonomous driving or high-performance computing.
The funded part of the research project must be completely assigned to one or more of the following categories:
- Basic research
- industrial research
- experimental development
As an SME, you can apply for funding alone or together with collaborative partners, for example a research institution or university. The research tasks and objectives must clearly exceed the state of the art and be characterized by a high scientific-technical and economic risk.
As an SME, you can generally receive funding of up to 50 percent.
Universities, research and scientific institutions and comparable institutions that do not fall within the scope of scientific activities can receive individual funding of up to 100 percent.
Universities and university hospitals also receive a project allowance of 20 percent for non-economic research projects.
They may receive funding for:
- Personnel costs: costs for researchers, technicians and other personnel, insofar as they are employed for the project
- Costs for instruments and equipment, insofar and as long as they are used for the project
- costs for contract research: knowledge and for patents acquired from third parties directly or under license, as well as costs for consulting and equivalent services used exclusively for the project
- additional overheads and other costs
The funding period is usually up to 3 years.
The results of the funded project may only be used in the Federal Republic of Germany or the European Economic Area (EEA) and Switzerland.
There is no entitlement to the grant. Rather, the granting authority decides on the basis of its dutiful discretion within the framework of the available budget funds.