Envie de découvrir le côté insolite du CES 2025, où l’innovation technologique flirte avec l’excentricité ? Parmi les nombreuses innovations dévoilées à Las Vegas, certaines ont particulièrement marqué les esprits par leur design audacieux ainisi que leurs usages inattendus. Entre gadgets amusants et véritables révolutions domestiques, ces machines repoussent sans conteste les limites de l’imagination. ... Lire plus
L'article On vous présente les 6 robots les plus insolites du CES 2025 ! est apparu en premier sur Fredzone.Metamaterials are artificial 3D structures that can provide all sorts of properties not available with “normal” materials. Pioneered around a quarter of a century ago by physicists such as John Pendry and David Smith, metamaterials can now be found in a growing number of commercial products.
Claire Dancer and Alastair Hibbins, who are joint leads of the UK Metamaterials Network, recently talked to Matin Durrani about the power and potential of these “meta-atom” structures. Dancer is an associate professor and a 125th anniversary fellow at the University of Birmingham, UK, while Hibbins is a professor and director of the Centre of Metamaterials Research and Innovation at the University of Exeter, UK.
Alastair Hibbins (AH): If you want to describe a metamaterial in just one sentence, it’s all about adding functionality through structure. But it’s not a brand new concept. Take the stained-glass windows in cathedrals, which have essentially got plasmonic metal nanoparticles embedded in them. The colour of the glass is dictated by the size and the shape of those particles, which is what a metamaterial is all about. It’s a material where the properties we see or hear or feel depend on the structure of its building blocks.
AH: Yes, the work was reignited just before the turn of the century – in the late 1990s – when the theoretical physicist John Pendry kind of recrystallized this idea (see box “Metamaterials and John Pendry”). Based at Imperial College, London, he and others were was looking at artificial materials, such as metallic meshes, which had properties that were really different from the metal of which they were comprised.
Claire Dancer (CD): Materials can do lots of fantastic things, but metamaterials add a new functionality on top. That could be cloaking or it might be mechanically bending and flexing in a way that its constituent materials wouldn’t. You can, for example, have “auxetic metamaterials” with a honeycomb structure that gets wider – not thinner – when stretched. There are also nanoscale photonic metamaterials, which interact with light in unusual ways.
Metamaterials are fast becoming commercial reality, but they have their roots in physics –in particular, a landmark paper published in 2000 by theoretical physicist John Pendry at Imperial College, London (Phys. Rev. Lett. 85 3966). In the paper, Pendry described how a metamaterial could be created with a negative index of refraction for microwave radiation, calculating that it could be used to make a “perfect” lens that would focus an image with a resolution not restricted by the wavelength of light (Physics World September 2001 pp47–51).
A metamaterial using copper rings deposited on an electronic circuit board was built the following year by the US physicist David Smith and colleagues at the University of California, San Diego (Science 292 77). Pendry later teamed up with Smith and others to use negative-index metamaterials to create a blueprint for an invisibility cloak – the idea being that the metamaterial would guide light around an object to be hidden (Science 312 1780). While the mathematics describing how electromagnetic radiation interacts with metamaterials can be complicated, Pendry realized that it could be described elegantly by borrowing ideas from Einstein’s general theory of relativity.
Matin Durrani
CD: There are lots, including some exciting innovations in body armour and protective equipment for sport – imagine customized “auxetic helmets” and protective devices for contact sports like rugby. Metamaterials can also be used in communications, exploiting available frequencies in an efficient, discrete and distinct way. In the optical range, we can create “artificial colour”, which is leading to interesting work on different kinds of glitter and decorative substances. There are also loads of applications in acoustics, where metamaterials can absorb some of the incidental noise that plagues our world.
AH: Yes. The UK firm Sonnobex won a Business Innovation Award from the Institute of Physics (IOP) in 2018 for its metamaterials that can reduce traffic noise or the annoying “buzz” from electrical power transformers. Another British firm – Metasonnix – won an IOP business award last year for its lightweight soundproofing metamaterial panels. They let air pass through so could be great as window blinds – cutting noise and providing ventilation at the same time.
High-end audio manufacturers, such as KEF, are using metamaterials as part of the baffle behind the main loudspeaker. There’s also Metahelios, which was spun out from the University of Glasgow in 2022. It’s making on-chip, multi-wavelength pixelated cameras that are also polarization-sensitive and could have applications in defence and aerospace.
AH: Perhaps the most famous metamaterial company is Metalenz, which makes flat conformal lenses for mobile phones – enabling amazing optical performance in a compact device. It was spun off in 2021 from the work of Federico Capasso at Harvard University. You can already find its products in Apple and Samsung phones and they’re coming to Google’s devices too.
Other US companies include Kymeta, which makes metamaterial-based antennas, and Lumotive, which is involved in solid-state LIDAR systems for autonomous vehicles and drones. There’s also Echodyne and Pivotal Commware. Those US firms have all received a huge amount of start-up and venture funding, and are doing really well at showing how metamaterials can make money and sell products.
CD: One important aim is to capitalize on all the work done in this country, supporting fundamental discovery science but driving commercialization too. We’ve been going since 2021 and have grown to a community of about 900 members – largely UK academics but with industry and overseas researchers too. We want to provide outsiders with a single source of access to the community and – as we move towards commercialization – develop ways to standardize and regulate metamaterials.
As well as providing an official definition of metamaterials (see box “Metamaterials: the official definition”), we also have a focus on talent and skills, trying to get the next generation into the field and show them it’s a good place to work.
CD: The network wants to support the beginning of the commercialization process, namely working with start-ups and getting industry engaged, hopefully with government backing. We’ve also got various special-interest groups, focusing on the commercial potential of acoustic, microwave and photonics materials. And we’ve set up four key challenge areas that cut across different areas of metamaterials research: manufacturing; space and aviation; health; and sustainability.
One of the really big things the UK Metamaterials Network has done is to crowdsource the definition of a metamaterial, which has long been a topic of debate. A metamaterial, we have concluded, is “a 3D structure with a response or function due to collective effects of their building blocks (or meta-atoms) that is not possible to achieve conventionally with any individual constituent material”.
A huge amount of work went into this definition. We talked with the community and there was lots of debate about what should be in and what should be out. But I think we’ve emerged with a really nice definition there that’s going to stay in place for many years to come. It might seem a little trivial but it’s one of our great achievements.
Alastair Hibbins
CD: The UK Metamaterials Network has been funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council to set up a Metamaterials Network Plus programme. It aims to develop more research in these areas so that metamaterials can contribute to national and global priorities by, for example, being sustainable and ensuring we have the infrastructure for testing and manufacturing metamaterials on a large scale. In particular, we now have “pump prime” funding that we can distribute to academics who want to explore new applications of – and other reserach into – metamaterials.
CD: Commercializing any new scientific idea is difficult and metamaterials are no exception. But one issue with metamaterials is to ensure industry can manufacture them in big volumes. Currently, a lot of metamaterials are made in research labs by 3D printing or by manually sticking and gluing things together, which is fine if you just want to prove some interesting physics. But to make metamaterials in industry, we need techniques that are scalable – and that, in turn, requires resources, funding, infrastructure and a supply of talented, skilled workers. The intellectual property also needs to be carefully managed as much of the underlying work is done in collaborations with universities. If there are too many barriers, companies will give up and not bother trying.
AH: If we really want to fulfil their potential, we’d ideally fund metamaterials as a national UK programme, just as we do with quantum technology. Defence has been one of the leaders in funding metamaterials because of their use in communications, but we want industry more widely to adopt metamaterials, embedding them in everyday devices. They offer game-changing control and I can see metamaterials in healthcare, such as for artificial limbs or medical imaging. Metamaterials could also provide alternatives in the energy sector, where we want to reduce the use of rare-earth and other minerals. In space and aerospace, they could function as incredibly lightweight, but really strong, blast-resistant materials for satellites and satellite communications, developing more capacity to send information around the world.
AH: The IOP has an ongoing programme of “impact projects”, informed by the physics community in the UK and Ireland. Having already covered semiconductors, quantum tech and the green economy through such projects, the IOP is now collaborating with the UK Metamaterials Network on a “pathfinder” impact project. It will examine the commercialization and exploitation of metamaterials in ICT, sustainability, health, defence and security.
CD: We’ve so far run three annual industry events showcasing the applications of metamaterials. The first two were at the National Physical Laboratory in Teddington, and in Leeds, with last year’s held at the IOP in December. It included a panel discussion about how to overcome barriers to commercialization along with demonstrations of various technologies, and presentations from academics and industrialists about their innovations. We also discussed the pathfinder project with the IOP as we’ll need the community’s help to exploit the power of metamaterials.
AH: It’s an exciting year ahead working with the IOP and we want to involve as many new sectors as possible. We’re also likely to hit a thousand members of our network: we’ll have a little celebration when we reach that milestone. We’ll be running a 2025 showcase event as well so there’s a lot to look forward to.
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December might be dark and chilly here in the northern hemisphere, but it’s summer south of the equator – and for many people that means eating ice cream.
It turns out that the physics of ice cream is rather remarkable – as I discovered when I travelled to Canada’s University of Guelph to interview the food scientist Douglas Goff. He is a leading expert on the science of frozen desserts and in this podcast he talks about the unique material properties of ice cream, the analytical tools he uses to study it, and why ice cream goes off when it is left in the freezer for too long.
The post The physics of ice cream: food scientist Douglas Goff talks about this remarkable material appeared first on Physics World.
In my previous article, I highlighted some of the quantum and green-energy companies that won Business Innovation Awards from the Institute of Physics in 2024. But imaging and medical-physics firms did well too. Having sat on the judging panel for the awards, I saw some fantastic entries – and picking winners wasn’t easy. Let me start, though, with Geoptic, which is one of an elite group of firms to win a second IOP business award, adding a Business Innovation Award to its start-up prize in 2020.
Geoptic is a spin-out from three collaborating groups of physicists at the universities of Durham, Sheffield and St Mary’s Twickenham. The company uses cosmic-ray muon radiography and tomography to study large engineering structures. In particular, it was honoured by the IOP for using the technique to ensure the safety of tunnels on the UK’s railway network.
Many of the railway tunnels in the UK date back to the mid-19th century. To speed up construction, temporary shafts were bored vertically down below the ground, allowing workers to dig at multiple points along the route of the tunnel. When the tunnel was complete, the shafts would be sealed, but their precise number and location is often unclear.
The shafts are a major hazard to the tunnel’s integrity, which is not great for Network Rail – the state-owned body that’s responsible for the UK’s rail infrastructure. Geoptic has, however, been working with Network Rail to provide its engineers with a clear structural view of the dangers that lurk along its route. In my view, it’s a really innovating imaging company, solving challenging real-world problems.
Another winner is Silveray, which was spun off from the University of Surrey. It’s picked up an IOP Business Start-up Award for creating flexible, “colour” X-ray detectors based on proprietary semiconductor materials. Traditional X-ray images are black and white, but what Silveray has done is to develop a nano-particle semiconductor ink that can be coated on to any surface and work at multiple wavelengths.
The X-ray detectors, which are flexible, can simply be wrapped around pipes and other structures that need to be imaged. Traditionally, this has been done using analogue X-ray film that has to be developed in an off-site dark room. That’s costly and time-consuming – especially if images failed to be recorded. Silveray’s detectors instead provide digital X-ray images in real time, making it an exciting and innovative technology that could transform the $5bn X-ray detector market.
Phlux Technology, meanwhile, has won an IOP Business Start-up Award for developing patented semiconductor technology for infrared light sensors that are 12 times more sensitive than the best existing devices, making them ideal for fast, accurate 3D imaging. Set up by researchers at the University of Sheffield, Phlux’s devices have many potential applications especially in light detection and ranging (LIDAR), laser range finders, optical-fibre test instruments and optical and quantum communications networks.
In LIDAR, Phlux’s can have 12 times greater image resolution for a given transmitter power. Its sensors could also make vehicles much safer by enabling higher-resolution images to be created over longer distances, making safety systems more effective. The first volume market for the company is likely to be in communications and where a >10 dB increase in detector sensitivity is going to be well received by the market.
Given the number of markets that will benefit from an “over an order of magnitude” improvement, Phlux is one to watch for a future Business Innovation Award too.
Let me finish by mentioning Crainio, a medical technology spin-off company from City, University of London, which has won the 2024 Lee Lucas award. This award honours promising start-up firms in the medical and healthcare sector thanks to a generous donation by Mike and Ann Lee (née Lucas). These companies need all the support, time and money they can get given the many challenging regulatory requirements in the medical sector.
Crainio’s technology allows healthcare workers to measure intracranial pressure (ICP), a vital indicator of brain health after a head injury. Currently, the only way to measure ICP directly is for a neurosurgeon to drill a hole in a patient’s skull and place an expensive probe in the brain. It’s a highly invasive procedure that can’t easily be carried out in the “golden hours” immediately after an accident, requiring access to scarce and expensive neurosurgery resources. The procedure is also medically risky, leading to potential infection, bleeding and other complications.
Crainio’s technology eliminates these risks, enabling direct measurement of ICP through a simple non-invasive probe applied to the forehead. The technology – using infrared photoplethysmography (PPG) combined with machine learning – is based on years of research and development work conducted by Panicos Kyriacou and his team of biomedical engineers at City.
Good levels of accuracy have been demonstrated in clinical studies conducted at the Royal London Hospital. It certainly seems a much better plan than drilling a hole in your head as I am sure you can agree – making Crainio a worthy winner, with its non-invasive technology it should have a positive impact on patients globally. I hope the regulatory hurdles can be quickly cleared so the company can start helping patients as soon as possible.
As I have mentioned before, all physics-based firms require time and energy to develop products and become globally significant. There’s also the perennial difficulty of explaining a product idea, which is often quite specialized, to potential investors who have little or no science background. An IOP start-up award can therefore show that your technology has won approval from judges with solid physics and business experience.
I hope, therefore, that your company, if you have one, will be inspired to apply. Also remember that the IOP offers three other awards (Katharine Burr Blodgett, Denis Gabor and Clifford Paterson) for individuals or teams who have been involved in innovative physics with a commercial angle. Good luck – and remember, you have to be in it to win it. Award entries for 2025 will be open in February 2025.
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Au sein de notre Lab de Sèvres , vous serez accompagné(e) par un Pilote Innovation (Chef de projet) pour vous permettre de développer vos compétences sur les activités d’un des projets suivants (plusieurs stages à pourvoir). Développement et maintenance de…
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Le projet a pour vocation de sauvegarder la biodiversité et plus précisément des oiseaux aux alentours des éoliennes. Il utilise une ou plusieurs caméras au sein d’un parc d’éoliennes pour détecter les activités alentours. Ces caméras alimentent des algorithmes d’Intelligence…
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This episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast explores the science and commercial applications of metamaterials with Claire Dancer of the University of Warwick and Alastair Hibbins of the University of Exeter.
They lead the UK Metamaterials Network, which brings together people in academia, industry and governmental agencies to support and expand metamaterial R&D; nurture talent and skills; promote the adoption of metamaterials in the wider economy; and much more.
According to the network, “A metamaterial is a 3D structure with a response or function due to the collective effect of meta-atom elements that is not possible to achieve conventionally with any individual constituent material”.
In a wide-ranging conversation with Physics World’s Matin Durrani, Hibbins and Dancer talk about exciting commercial applications of metamaterials including soundproof materials and lenses for mobile phones – and how they look forward to welcoming the thousandth member of the network sometime in 2025.
The post How the UK Metamaterials Network supports scientific and commercial innovation appeared first on Physics World.
I have mentioned many times in this column the value of the business awards given by the Institute of Physics (IOP), which can be a real “stamp of approval” for firms developing new technology. Having helped to select the 2024 winners, it was great to see eight companies winning a main IOP Business Innovation Award this time round, bringing the total number of firms honoured over the last 13 years to 86. Some have won awards on more than one occasion, with Fetu being one of the latest to join this elite group.
Set up by Jonathan Fenton in 2016, FeTu originally won an IOP Business Start-up Award in 2020 for its innovative Fenton Turbine. According to Fenton, who is chief executive, it is the closest we have ever got to the ideal, closed-cycle reversible heat engine first imagined by thermodynamics pioneer Nicolas Carnot in 1824. The turbine, the firm claims, could replace compressors, air conditioners, fridges, vacuum pumps and heat pumps with efficiency savings across the board.
Back in 2020, it might have sounded like a “too-good-to-be-true” technology, but Fenton has sensibly set out to prove that’s not the case, with some remarkable results. The turbine is complex to describe but the first version promised to cut the energy cost of compressing gases like air by 25%. They claim has already been proven in independent tests carried out by researchers at the University of Bath.
One challenge of any technology with many different applications is picking which to focus on first
One challenge of any technology with many different applications is picking which to focus on first. Having decided to focus on a couple of unique selling factors in large markets, FeTu has now won a 2024 Business Innovation Award for developing a revolutionary heat engine that can generate electrical power from waste heat and geothermal sources as low as 40 °C. It has a huge market potential as it is currently not possible to do this economically.
Another winner of an IOP Business Innovation Award is Oxford Ionics, a quantum-computing firm set up in 2019 by Chris Balance and Tom Harty after doing PhDs at the University of Oxford. Their firm’s qubits are based on trapped ions, which traditionally have been controlled with lasers. It’s an approach that works well for small processors, but becomes untenable and error-prone as the size of the processor scales, and the number of qubits increases.
Instead of lasers, Oxford Ionics’ trapped-ion processors use a proprietary, patented electronic system to control the qubits. It was for this system that the company was recognized by the IOP, along with its ability to scale the architecture so that the chips can be made in large quantities on standard semiconductor production lines. That’s essential if we are to build practical quantum computers.
While it’s still early days in the commercialisation of quantum computing, Oxford Ionics is an exciting company to watch. It has already won contracts to supply the UK’s National Quantum Computing Centre at Harwell and has bagged a large contract with its partner Infineon Technologies AG in Munich to build a state-of-the-art portable quantum computer for Germany’s cybersecurity innovation agency. The two firms are one of three independent contractors selected by the agency, which is investing a total of €35m in the project.
I should also mention Dublin-based Equal1, which won the IOP’s £10,000 quantum Business Innovation and Growth (qBIG) Prize in 2024. Equal1 is developing rack-mountable quantum computers powered by a system that integrates quantum and classical components onto a single silicon chip using commercial fabrication processes. The company, which aims to develop compact quantum computers, also won 10 months of mentoring from the award’s sponsors Quantum Exponential.
Meanwhile, Covesion – a photonics and quantum components supplier founded in 2009 – has won an IOP Business Innovation Award for its magnesium-doped, periodically poled, lithium niobate (MgO:PPLN) crystals and waveguides. They allow light to be easily converted from one frequency to another, providing access to wavelengths that are not available from commercial laser sources.
With a manufacturing base in Southampton, Covesion works with customers and industry partners to help them design and make high quality MgO:PPLN products used in a wide range of applications. They include quantum computing, communication, sensing and timing; frequency doubling of femtosecond lasers; mid-infrared generation; atom cooling; terahertz generation and biomedical imaging. The shear breadth and global nature of the customer base is impressive.
Among the companies to win an IOP Business Start-up Award is Metasonixx, based in Brighton. Spun off from the universities of Bristol and Sussex in 2019, the firm makes mass-produced acoustic metamaterial panels, which can dramatically attenuate sound (10 dB in its Sonoblind) and yet still allow air to flow freely (3 dB or 50% attenuation). That might seem counter-intuitive, but that’s where the innovation comes in and the panels can help with noise management and ventilation, allowing industrial ventilators and heat pumps to be more widely used.
The company really got going in 2020, when it got a grant from UK Research and Innovation to see if its metamaterials could cut noise in hospitals to help patients recovering from COVID-19 and improve the well-being of staff. After Metasonixx won the Armourers and Brasiers Venture Prize in 2021 for their successes on COVID wards, the firm decided to mass-produce panels that could perform as well as traditional noise-reduction solutions but are modular and greener, with one-third of the mass and occupying one-twelfth of the space.
From a physics point of view, panels that can let air and light through in this way are interferential filters, but working over four doublings of frequency (or octaves). With manufacturing and first sales in 2023, their desk separators are now being tested in noisy offices worldwide. Metasonixx believes its products, which allow air to flow through them, could help to boost the use of industrial ventilators and heat pumps, thereby helping in the quest to meet net-zero targets.
Winning awards for Metasonixx is not a new experience, having also picked up a “Seal of Excellence Award” from the European Commission in 2023 and honoured at Bristol’s Tech-Xpo in 2024. Its new IOP award will sit very nicely in this innovative company’s trophy cabinet.
The post From qubits to metamaterials: tech that led to Institute of Physics business awards 2024 appeared first on Physics World.
What does an idea need to change the world? Physics drives scientific advancements in healthcare, green energy, sustainable materials and many other applications. However, to bridge the gap between research and real-world applications, physicists need to be equipped with entrepreneurship skills.
Many students dream of using their knowledge and passion for physics to change the world, but when it comes to developing your own product, it can be hard to know where to start. That’s where my job comes in – I have been teaching scientists and engineers entrepreneurship for more than 20 years.
Several of the world’s most successful companies, including Sony, Texas Instruments, Intel and Tesla Motors, were founded by physicists, and there are many contemporary examples too. For example, Unitary, an AI company that identifies misinformation and deepfakes, was founded by Sasha Haco, who has a PhD in theoretical physics. In materials science, Aruna Zhuma is the co-founder of Global Graphene Group, which manufactures single layers of graphene oxide for use in electronics. Zhuma has nearly 500 patents, the second largest number of any inventor in the field.
In the last decade quantum technology, which encompasses computing, sensing and communications, has spawned hundreds of start-ups, often spun out from university research. This includes cybersecurity firm ID Quantique, super sensitive detectors from Single Quantum, and quantum computing from D-Wave. Overall, about 8–9% of students in the UK start businesses straight after they graduate, with just over half (58%) of these graduate entrepreneurs founding firms in their subject area.
However, even if you aren’t planning to set up your own business, entrepreneurship skills will be important no matter what you do with your degree. If you work in industry you will need to spot trends, understand customers’ needs and contribute to products and services. In universities, promotion often requires candidates to demonstrate “knowledge transfer”, which means working with partners outside academia.
The first step of kick-starting your entrepreneurship journey is to evaluate your existing experience and goals. Do you already have an idea that you want to take forward, or just want to develop skills that will broaden your career options?
If you’re exploring the possibilities of entrepreneurship you should look for curricular modules at your university. These are normally tailored to those with no previous experience and cover topics such as opportunity spotting, market research, basic finance, team building and intellectual property. In addition, in the UK at least, many postgraduate centres for doctoral training (CDTs) now offer modules in business and entrepreneurship as part of their training programmes. These courses sometimes give students the opportunity to take part in live company projects, which are a great way to gain skills.
You should also look out for extracurricular opportunities, from speaker events and workshops to more intensive bootcamps, competitions and start-up weekends. There is no mark or grade for these events, so they allow students to take risks and experiment.
Like any kind of research, commercializing physics requires resources such as equipment and laboratory space. For early-stage founders, access to business incubators – organizations that provide shared facilities – is invaluable. You would use an incubator at a relatively early stage to finalize your product, and they can be found in many universities.
Accelerator programmes, which aim to fast-track your idea once you have a product ready and usually run for a defined length of time, can also be beneficial. For example, the University of Southampton has the Future Worlds Programme based in the physical sciences faculty. Outside academia, the European Space Agency has incubators for space technology ideas at locations throughout Europe, and the Institute of Physics also has workspace and an accelerator programme for recently graduated physicists and especially welcomes quantum technology businesses. The Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) CERN Business Incubation Centre focuses on high-energy physics ideas and grants access to equipment that would be otherwise unaffordable for a new start-up.
More accelerator programmes supporting physics ideas include Duality, which is a Chicago-based 12-month accelerator programme for quantum ideas; Quantum Delta NL, based in the Netherlands, which provides programmes and shared facilities for quantum research; and Techstars Industries of the Future, which has locations worldwide.
It’s the multimillion-pound deals that make headlines but to get to that stage you will need to gain investors’ confidence, securing smaller funds to take your idea forward step-by-step. This could be used to protect your intellectual property with a patent, make a prototype or road test your technology.
Since early-stage businesses are high risk, this money is likely to come from grants and awards, with commercial investors such as venture capital or banks holding back until they see the idea can succeed. Funding can come from government agencies like the STFC in the UK, or US government scheme America’s Seed Fund. These grants are for encouraging innovation, applied research and for finding disruptive new technology, and no return is expected. Early-stage commercial funding might come from organizations such as Seedcamp, and some accelerator programmes offer funding, or at least organize a “demo day” on completion where you can showcase your venture to potential investors.
While you’re a student, you can take advantage of the venture competitions that run at many universities, where students pitch an idea to a panel of judges. The prizes can be significant, ranging from £10k to £100k, and often come with extra support such as lab space, mentoring and help filing patents. Some of these programmes are physics-specific, for example the Eli and Britt Harari Enterprise Award at the University of Manchester, which is sponsored by physics graduate Eli Harari (founder of SanDisc) awards funding for graphene-related ideas.
Finally, remember that physics innovations don’t always happen in the lab. Theoretical physicist Stephen Wolfram founded Wolfram Research in 1988, which makes computational technology including the answer engine Wolfram Alpha.
There are many examples of students and recent graduates making a success from entrepreneurship. Wai Lau is a Manchester physics graduate who also has a master’s of enterprise degree. He started a business focused on digital energy management, identifying energy waste, while learning about entrepreneurship. His business Cloud Enterprise has now branched out to a wider range of digital products and services.
Computational physics graduate Gregory Mead at Imperial College London started Musicmetric, which uses complex data analytics to keep track of and rank music artists and is used by music labels and artists. He was able to get funding from Imperial Innovations after making a prototype and Musicmetric was eventually bought by Apple.
AssestCool Thermal Metaphotonics technology cools overhead power lines reducing power losses using novel coatings. It entered the Venture Further competition at the University of Manchester and has now had a £2.25m investment from Gritstone Capital.
Entrepreneurship skills are being increasingly recognized as necessary for physics graduates. In the UK, the IOP Degree Accreditation Framework, the standard for physics degrees, expects students to have “business awareness, intellectual property, digital media and entrepreneurship skills”.
Thinking about taking the leap into business can be daunting, but university is the ideal time to think about entrepreneurship. You have nothing to lose and plenty of support available.
The post From the blackboard to the boardroom: why university is a great place to become an entrepreneur appeared first on Physics World.
UK physics “deep tech” could be missing out on almost a £1bn of investment each year. That is according to a new report by the Institute of Physics (IOP), which publishes Physics World. It finds that venture capital investors often struggle to invest in high-innovation physics industries given the lack of a “one-size-fits-all” commercialisation pathway that is seen in others areas such as biotech.
According to the report, physics-based businesses add about £230bn to the UK economy each year and employ more than 2.7 million full-time employees. The UK also has one of the largest venture-capital markets in Europe and the highest rates of spin-out activity, especially in biotech.
Despite this, however, venture capital investment in “deep tech” physics – start-ups whose business model is based on high-tech innovation or significant scientific advances – remains low, attracting £7.4bn or 30% of UK science venture-capital investment.
To find out the reasons for this discrepancy, the IOP interviewed science-led businesses as well as 32 leading venture capital investors. Based on these discussions, it was found that many investors are confused about certain aspects of physics-based start-ups, finding that they often do not follow the familiar lifecycle of development as seen other areas like biotech.
Physics businesses are not, for example, always able to transition from being tech focussed to being product-led in the early stages of development, which prevents venture capitalists from committing large amounts of money. Another issue is that venture capitalists are less familiar with the technologies, timescales and “returns profile” of physics deep tech.
The IOP report estimates that if the full investment potential of physics deep tech is unlocked then it could result in an extra £4.5bn of additional funding over the next five years. In a foreword to the report, Hermann Hauser, the tech entrepreneur and founder of Acorn Computers, highlights “uncovered issues within the system that are holding back UK venture capital investment” into physics-based tech. “Physics deep-tech businesses generate huge value and have unique characteristics – so our national approach to finance for these businesses must be articulated in ways that recognise their needs,” writes Hauser.
Physics deep tech is central to the UK’s future prosperity
Tom Grinyer
At the same time, investors see a lot of opportunity in subjects such as quantum and semiconductor physics as well as with artificial intelligences and nuclear fusion. Jo Slota-Newson, a managing partner at Almanac Ventures who co-wrote the report, says there is “huge potential” for physics deep-tech businesses but “venture capital funds are being held back from raising and deploying capital to support this crucial sector”.
The IOP is now calling for a coordinated effort from government, investors as well as the business and science communities to develop “investment pathways” to address the issues raised in the report. For example, the UK government should ensure grant and debt-financing options are available to support physics tech at “all stages of development”.
Slota-Newson, who has a background in science including a PhD in chemistry from the University of Cambridge, says that such moves should be “at the heart” of the UK’s government’s plans for growth. “Investors, innovators and government need to work together to deliver an environment where at every stage in their development there are opportunities for our deep tech entrepreneurs to access funding and support,” adds Slota-Newson. “If we achieve that we can build the science-driven, innovative economy, which will provide a sustainable future of growth, security and prosperity.”
The report also says that the IOP should play a role by continuing to highlight successful physics deep-tech businesses and to help them attract investment from both the UK and international venture-capital firms. Indeed, Tom Grinyer, group chief executive officer of the IOP, says that getting the model right could “supercharge the UK economy as a global leader in the technologies that will define the next industrial revolution”.
“Physics deep tech is central to the UK’s future prosperity — the growth industries of the future lean very heavily on physics and will help both generate economic growth and help move us to a lower carbon, more sustainable economy,” says Grinyer. “By leveraging government support, sharing information better and designing our financial support of this key sector in a more intelligent way we can unlock billions in extra investment.”
That view is backed by Hauser. “Increased investment, economic growth, and solutions to some of our biggest societal challenges [will move] us towards a better world for future generations,” he writes. “The prize is too big to miss”.
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The most important and pressing issue of our times is the transition to clean energy while meeting rising global demand. Cheap, abundant and reliable energy underpins the quality of life for all – and one potentially exciting way to do this is space-based solar power (SBSP). It would involve capturing sunlight in space and beaming it as microwaves down to Earth, where it would be converted into electricity to power the grid.
For proponents of SBSP such as myself, it’s a hugely promising technology. Others, though, are more sceptical. Earlier this year, for example, NASA published a report from its Office of Technology, Policy and Strategy that questioned the cost and practicality of SBSP. Henri Barde, a retired engineer who used to work for the European Space Agency (ESA) in Noordwijk, the Netherlands, has also examined the technical challenges in a report for the IEEE.
Some of these sceptical positions on SBSP were addressed in a recent Physics World article by James McKenzie. Conventional solar power is cheap, he argued, so why bother putting large solar power satellites in space? After all, the biggest barriers to building more solar plants here on Earth aren’t technical, but mostly come in the form of belligerent planning officials and local residents who don’t want their views ruined.
However, in my view we need to take a whole-energy-system perspective to see why innovation is essential for the energy transition. Wind, solar and batteries are “low-density” renewables, requiring many tonnes of minerals to be mined and refined for each megawatt-hour of energy. How can this be sustainable and give us energy security, especially when so much of our supply of these minerals depends on production in China?
Low-density renewables also require a Herculean expansion in electricity grid transmission pylons and cables to connect them to users. Other drawbacks of wind and solar is that they depend on the weather and require suitable storage – which currently does not exist at the capacity or cost needed. These forms of energy also need duplicated back-up, which is expensive, and other sources of baseload power for times when it’s cloudy or there’s no wind.
With no night or weather in space, however, a solar panel in space generates 13 times as much energy than the same panel on Earth. SBSP, if built, would generate power continuously, transmitted as microwaves through the atmosphere with almost no loss. It could therefore deliver baseload power 24 hours a day, irrespective of local weather conditions on Earth.
SBSP could easily produce more or less power as needed, effectively smoothing out the unpredictable and varying output from wind and solar
Another advantage of SBSP is that could easily produce more or less power as needed, effectively smoothing out the unpredictable and varying output from wind and solar. We currently do this using fossil-fuel-powered gas-fired “peaker” plants, which could therefore be put out to pasture. SBSP is also scalable, allowing the energy it produces to be easily exported to other nations without expensive cables, giving it a truly global impact.
A recent whole-energy-system study by researchers at Imperial College London concluded that introducing just 8 GW of SBSP into the UK’s energy mix would deliver system savings of over £4bn every year. In my view, which is shared by others too, the utility of SBSP is likely to be even greater when considering whole continents or global alliances. It can give us affordable and reliable clean energy.
My firm, Space Solar, has designed a solar-power satellite called CASSIOPeiA, which is more than twice as powerful – based on the key metric of power per unit mass – as ESA’s design. So far, we have built and successfully demonstrated our power beaming technology, and following £5m of engineering design work, we have arguably the most technically mature design in the world.
If all goes to plan, we’ll have our first commercial product by 2029. Offering 30 MW of power, it could be launched by a single Starship rocket, and scale to gigawatt systems from there. Sure, there are engineering challenges, but these are mostly based on ensuring that the economics remain competitive. Space Solar is also lucky in having world-class experts working in spacecraft engineering, advanced photovoltaics, power beaming and in-space robotics.
But why then was NASA’s study so sceptical of SBSP? I think it was because the report made absurdly conservative assumptions of the economics. NASA assumed an operating life of only 10 years: so to run for 30 years, the whole solar power satellite would have to be built and launched three times. Yet satellites today generally last for more than 25 years, with most baselined for a minimum 15 year life.
The NASA report also assumed that a satellite launched by Starship would remain at around $1500/kg. However, other independent analyses, such as “Space: the dawn of a new age” produced in 2022 by Citi Group, have forecast that it will be an order of magnitude less – just at $100/kg – by 2040. I could go on as there are plenty more examples of risk-averse thinking in the NASA report.
Buried in the report, however, the study also looked at more reasonable scenarios than the “baseline” and concluded that “these conditions would make SBSP systems highly competitive with any assessed terrestrial renewable electricity production technology’s 2050 cost projections”. Curiously, these findings did not make it into the executive summary.
The NASA study has been widely criticized, including by former NASA physicist John Mankins, who invented another approach to space solar dubbed SPS Alpha. Speaking on a recent episode of the DownLink podcast, he suspected NASA’s gloomy stance may in part be because it focuses on space tech and space exploration rather than energy for Earth. NASA bosses might fear that if they were directed by Congress to pursue SBSP, money for other priorities might be at risk.
I also question Barde’s sceptical opinion of the technology of SBSP, which he expressed in an article for IEEE Spectrum. Barde appeared not to understand many of the design features that make SPBSP technically feasible. He wrote, for example, about “gigawatts of power coursing through microwave systems” of the solar panels on the satellite, which sounds ominous and challenging to achieve.
In reality, the gigawatts of sunlight are reflected onto a large area of photovoltaics containing a billion or so solar cells. Each cell, which includes an antenna and electronic components to convert the sunlight into microwaves, is arranged in a sandwich module just a few millimetres thick handling just 2 W of power. So although the satellite delivers gigawatts overall, the figure is much lower at the component level. What’s more, each cell can be made using tried and tested radio-frequency components.
As for Barde’s fears about thermal management – in other words, how we can stop the satellite from overheating – that has already been analysed in detail. The plan is to use passive radiative cooling without active systems. Barde also warns of temperature swings as the satellites pass through eclipse during the spring and autumn equinox. But this problem is common to all satellites and has, in any case, been analysed as part of our engineering work. In essence, Barde’s claim of “insurmountable technical difficulties” is simply his opinion.
Until the first solar power satellite is commissioned, there will always be sceptics [but] that was also true of reusable rockets and cubesats, both of which are now mainstream technology
Until the first solar power satellite is commissioned, there will always be sceptics of what we are doing. However, that was also true of reusable rockets and cubesats, both of which are now mainstream technology. SBSP is a “no-regrets” investment that will see huge environmental and economic benefits, with spin-off technologies in wireless power beaming, in-space assembly and photovoltaics.
It is the ultimate blend of space technology and societal benefit, which will inspire the next generation of students into physics and engineering. Currently, the UK has a leadership position in SBSP, and if we have the vision and ambition, there is nothing to lose and everything to gain from backing this. We just need to get on with the job.
The post Space-based solar power: ‘We have nothing to lose and everything to gain’ appeared first on Physics World.
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