The Start-up Challenge
An opportunity to present innovative and impactful solutions to use materials smarter, less and longer.
The nominees of the World Materials Forum Start Up Challenge 2018
AJELIS (Orsay, France)
Ion exchange fibers for industrial effluent treatment with resulting valorization of high value metal wastes at much lower treatment costs than ion exchange resins thanks to increased surface area.
AKRYVIA (Nantes, France)
Disruptive metal sheet cutting technology that offers the accuracy of laser while keeping the productivity and cost benefits of plasma.
BCOMP (Fribourg, Switzerland)
Thick flax yarns that can be combined with any type of glass or carbon fibers and create lower weight and cost composites for automotive interior parts.
CUBERG (Berkeley, California)
Non flammable and thermally stable liquid electrolyte that is compatible with both high voltage metal oxide cathodes and lithium metal anodes and results in high energy density & very safe rechargeable batteries.
ECONICK (Nancy, France)
Leveraging the experience of agromining of natural metal rich soils in Albania and Malaysia towards agromining of industrial wastes (crystal wastes for zinc, nickel and cobalt or bauxite residues for rare earth).
IMAGINE (Rosebery, Australia)
Graphene coating technology that transforms textile into smart sensors designed to identify leaks during install of dams with demonstrated improved detection of failures in the installation of geosynthetic liners at lower cost.
MALLINDA (Berkeley, California)
New material (vitrimer) and technology that enable 1 minute cycle time or less for carbon fiber composite parts used in high volume industries as well as end of product life depolymerization with recovery of resins and woven/full length fibers.
POLYSPECTRA (Berkeley, California)
New class of light activated catalysts for ruthenium mediated olefin metathesis in order to make microstructured materials with tailored geometry and chemical functionality (ex SLA) and possibly unlock the direct 3D printing of production grade parts.
POLYSTYVERT (Montréal, Canada)
Combination of 2 technology breakthroughs: 1. Ability to separate dissolved PS from the solvent for high quality recycled PS and 2. In depth purification process to up cycle and get a final recycled product with the properties of a virgin one.
REIN4CED (Leuven, Belgium)
Combination of carbon and steel fibers to develop new composite material with properties of carbon (lightweight) and steel (high impact resistant and stiffness) together with production process that guaranties proper orientation of steel fibers.
SMALLMATEK (Aveiro, Portugal)
Longer Chromium free technology that greatly increases the metal corrosion resistance while requiring lower consumption of additives thanks to encapsulated nano corrosion inhibitors into coatings. Pilot scale plant with 500l reactor in test.
THRUPORE (New Castle, Delaware)
Highly porous synthetic carbon used as customized catalysts in order to disperse precious metals more uniformly and hence improve processes of industrial chemicals with resulting higher quality and lower cost while using less precious metals.