Circular innovative advanced materials: facilitating the transition from design to markets (RIA) (Innovative Advanced Materials for the EU and Made in Europe partnerships)

About this call

Expected Outcome:

Innovative advanced materials designed for circularity are adopted in products faster, through accelerated production and technology uptake;

Business models become available to enhance the use of circular advanced materials in strategic value chains; and

Resource efficiency (materials and energy) is increased significantly through a focus on circular advanced materials.

Quality standards, harmonisation and regulatory requirements are addressed facilitating simplified market transition.

Scope:

The focus of this topic is on enabling circularity and resilient supply networks through R&I in advanced materials, in particular recyclable polymers and composites, magnets and metal (alloys) for additive manufacturing, and on accelerating their pathway to market. Proposals should develop new innovative advanced materials (IAMs) with superior or novel functionalities designed for circularity. The scope includes necessary developments of related processes and technologies to ensure integration in industrial manufacturing facilitating uptake of the developed solutions. Proposals should also develop circular business models considering the cost of changes needed along the life cycle of these new materials to facilitate their uptake.

The scope covers the full innovation cycle from the design for circularity and functional integration (new materials designs), development and scaleup (including scalable recovery, recycling and valorisation at end of life), to demonstration of industrial uptake and integration into products. The transformative potential of the developed solutions is to be showcased by demonstrators and industrial use cases. Projects should also explore possibilities to transfer developed solutions to other applications or sectors.

The SSbD framework [1] should guide the innovation process towards safer and more sustainable chemicals and advanced materials. Where relevant data generated within the proposal may be shared with the Common Data Platform for Chemicals. The new alternatives to be developed should meet the technical functions required in the specific applications while aligning their innovation process decision making with such framework.

Best use of digital tools and FAIR data, including AI and data-driven approaches throughout the innovation process should support the circular transition for industry and circular product design. This includes sharing FAIR and interoperable data and tools across supply networks and value chains, to foster circularity, including data needed for materials and component development, production and circular product design.

The approach should foster collaboration among stakeholders along the innovation chain and industrial value networks to accelerate the development and adoption of new circular solutions.

Projects should build on, or seek collaboration with, existing projects in EU Member States and Associated Countries and develop synergies with other relevant European, national or regional initiatives, funding programmes and platforms, in particular with the Materials Commons for Europe.

Proposals should support strategic value chains in the fields of energy and construction. The portfolio approach will be used to fund at least one proposal from each of these two. Proposers should declare in their proposal the main application area of their proposal (i.e., energy or construction).

Proposals should include a business case and exploitation strategy, as outlined in the introduction to this Destination.

This topic implements the co-programmed European Partnerships Innovative Advanced Materials for the EU (IAM4EU) and Made in Europe (MiE).

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Activities are expected to start at TRL 4-5 and achieve TRL 6 by the end of the project – see General Annex B.

[1] See documents defining the SSbD framework and criteria on: https://ec.europa.eu/info/research-and-innovation/research-area/industrial-research-and-innovation/key-enabling-technologies/advanced-materials-and-chemicals_en