Cover image shows the reactor built in the CARES laboratory to scale up nanomaterials.
Nanomaterials are structures that exhibit unique physical and chemical properties due to their size. It can enhance a product’s quality and impart properties such as antimicrobial functions or added strength when integrated into applications such as electronics, cosmetics, and coatings.
Traditionally, scientists have not been able to control the chemistry of nanomaterials when scaling up their volume. This has caused new nanoparticle formulations to be time- and cost-intensive for various industries.
A new technology developed at CARES by Dr Nicholas Jose combines advanced reactor technology, flow chemistry, and Artificial Intelligence to produce nanomaterials a hundred times faster than conventional methods, with a scale of up to 100kg per day. The technology is currently being commercialised by Dr Jose’s spin-off, Accelerated Materials (AM), which has operations in the UK and Singapore.
“By pairing our reactor technologies with Artificial Intelligence, we can drastically simplify complex, highly uncertain challenges in materials design and process optimisation, saving up to 50% of the costs for R&D. When each experiment can cost thousands of pounds, this acceleration is invaluable, ” says Dr Jose, founder of Accelerated Materials.
As a trained chemical engineer, Dr Jose completed his PhD at the University of Cambridge, spending 2 years in the UK and 2 years at CARES in Singapore where he developed the methods that would form the core of AM’s technology. In succession, the core of AM’s operations would form as the spin-off expanded its operations in Singapore.
With AM’s technology proven to optimise reactions and decrease overall operational costs by 90% the next focus was to target specific markets to enter – in other words, finding the “product market fit”.
“From a comprehensive overview of the nanomaterials market, we found that the dynamic, high-value electronics & semiconductor industry is primed for fast adoption of new production techniques for nanomaterials. Through our grant-funded project, AMPLE at CARES, we conducted multiple studies with industry leaders, which showed that the market as a whole has high R&D costs, high demands for innovation, and relatively low barriers to entry.”
With the success of recent fundraising efforts, Accelerated Materials continues to expand the company in both Singapore and the UK. This marks a significant step in CARES’ role as a platform to support spin-offs, business innovation, and translating research into enterprise.
The technology used in Accelerated Materials was developed from ideas and techniques from research programmes supported by the National Research Foundation, Prime Minister’s Office, Singapore under its Campus for Research Excellence and Technological Enterprise (CREATE) programme, SMART Innovation Centre Innovate Grant, and Central Gap Fund (Award NRF2020NRF-CG001-028).
