National Materials Innovation Programme: Feasibility Studies

Key Features

UK registered businesses can apply for a share of up to £2 million for feasibility studies. These studies aim to speed the translation of advanced materials innovations in six key high growth themes and one strategic opportunity theme.

Programme:     Innovate UK

Award:     Share of up to £2 million

Opens: 3rd Nov 2025

Closes: 17th Dec 2025

Overview

Innovate UK, part of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), will invest up to £2 million into materials innovation projects. This is subject to a sufficient number of high quality applications being received.

This funding is part of the National Materials Innovation Programme, which was announced as part of the Advanced Manufacturing Sector Plan in the UK’s Modern Industrial Strategy. This is the initial competition under the programme, designed to prime the materials community, support collaboration and accelerate the translation of new material innovations across the seven thematic areas.

Scope

The aim of this competition is to speed the translation of advanced materials innovations toward industrial adoption in the six key high growth themes and one strategic opportunity theme.

Your project must focus on one of the six high growth opportunity theme areas from the National Materials Innovation Strategy or the strategic opportunity theme area; metamaterials and metasurfaces.

Innovate UK recognise that the metamaterials and metasurfaces theme has overlap with the six high growth opportunity themes. As guidance, if your material innovation is based on a metamaterial or metasurface technology then you should apply under theme 7.

In your application you must demonstrate how the project helps enable your materials innovation to translate more rapidly to industrial adoption.

You must:

  • identify the specific sector and applications being targeted
  • clearly describe the opportunity for the technology to be applied
  • describe any future barriers and challenges you foresee to adoption

Additionally you must demonstrate how adoption of your materials innovation contributes to broader UK net zero targets, for example, through reduction in energy consumption, emissions reduction and resource efficiency.

In your application you must upload a signed letter of support, on headed paper, from a potential end user of your materials innovation. The end user must be operating within one of the eight growth driving sectors identified in the UK’s Modern Industrial Strategy (IS-8) sectors. The letter must explain the potential application of your material innovation.

Portfolio approach

Innovate UK want to fund a variety of projects across different themes, technologies, markets, applications of materials, technological maturities, business size and regions. Innovate UK call this a portfolio approach

Specific Themes

Your project must focus on one of the following:

High growth opportunity themes

  1. Net zero energy solutions

Innovate UK are seeking material innovation projects enabling:

  • next generation battery chemistries or materials to improve performance and diversify supply chains
  • large scale electrochemical energy generation and conversion, including hydrogen, such as electrode, catalysis and membrane material innovations to improve performance and reduce environmental impacts
  • widespread hydrogen deployment, including barriers, coatings, materials to enable deployment in extreme environments, and materials to enable hydrogen to X.
  • industrial or domestic heat exchange, heat storage and waste heat recovery
  • energy harvesting solutions for higher efficiency solar PV and specialist applications, including health, battery-less mobile electronic devices, and sensors
  • advanced nuclear fuels
  1. Future healthcare

Innovate UK are seeking material innovation projects enabling:

  • biocompatible materials with specific properties, such as structural or scaffolding, porous, conductivity, patient derived, injectable, 3D printable, patient specific and drug eluting materials for targeted therapies
  • bioelectronic and biocompatible materials leading to long term implantable (over 10 years) solutions
  • bioelectronic and biocompatible materials with mechanical properties, similar to tissue, for interfacing electronics with the body
  • bioelectronic and biocompatible materials which improve sensor performance in vivo
  1. Structural innovations

Innovate UK are seeking material innovation projects enabling:

  • low carbon construction such as low carbon cement or concrete, construction materials for improved energy efficiency, improved occupier health or extended in-use lifetime
  • sustainable composite systems designed and optimised for multiple applications, longer lifecycles, recycling and re-use
  • metallic materials that are strong, durable, and compatible with circular economy principles, as well as enhanced performance and tailored properties for application in new and emerging high volume applications
  • speciality high performance metallic materials to enable capability in key UK priority technologies, such as clean energy and health
  • advanced technical ceramics for a diverse range of applications in high value ceramic market segments, such as electronics, healthcare and structural
  1. Advanced surface technologies and materials durability

Innovate UK are seeking material innovation projects enabling:

  • improved surface protection performance or tribological material solutions to extend technology or infrastructure lifetime
  • material systems and functional materials for extreme conditions, especially thermal and radiation extremes, as well as multi-extreme environments
  1. Next generation electronics, telecommunications and sensors

Innovate UK are seeking material innovation projects enabling:

  • wide and ultrawide bandgap materials for power electronics
  • solutions across; quantum computing and communications, quantum sensing and imaging, and quantum positioning, navigation and timing (PNT)
  • higher e­fficiency communication systems, for example, 5G, optical, radio frequency (RF), infrared (IR), radio detection and ranging (RADAR)
  1. Consumer products, packaging and specialist polymers

Innovate UK are seeking material innovation projects enabling:

  • bulk sustainable plastic packaging
  • bio-based, biodegradable, sustainable packaging
  • high value, specialist sustainable elastomeric materials to support high growth IS-8 sectors
  • sustainability through extended in life service, end of life processing or recyclability of high volume elastomeric materials

Strategic opportunity theme

  1. Metamaterials and metasurfaces

Innovate UK are seeking material innovation projects enabling:

  • reduced SWaP (Size, Weight, and Power): metamaterials or metasurfaces which enable the reduction in the SWaP demands of systems, reducing need for traditional trade offs
  • future telecommunications: metamaterials or metasurfaces enabling advances in communication technologies, healthcare, for instance, applications in 6G and satellite communications
  • energy security and net zero: metamaterials or metasurfaces enabling advances in renewable energy sources through, for instance, reduced system power consumption through acoustic and thermal management
  • healthcare: metamaterials or metasurfaces enabling advances in healthcare through, for instance, reduced cost biosensors, real time biomonitoring, point of care diagnostics, advanced prosthetics or acoustic management in clinical settings

For the purposes of the strategic opportunity theme, projects must demonstrate they meet the definition of a metamaterial as developed by the metamaterials community:

  • 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
  • a metasurface is a 2D version of a metamaterial where the structural elements are confined to a 2D plane

Note: The response or function of a metamaterial results from the ensemble effects of designed and engineered meta-atom elements.

These can take many forms, for example:

  • the response or function may be electromagnetic; photonic, RF and microwave, terahertz (THz)
  • acoustic; audio, ultrasonic, vibrational
  • magnetic, mechanical or structural, thermal, or chemical

Eligibility

Your project must:

  • have a grant funding request of between £50,000 and £100,000
  • start by 1 May 2026
  • end by 31 January 2027
  • be no more than nine months in duration
  • provide a letter of support for the project from an end user working within one of the eight growth driving sectors identified in the UK’s Modern Industrial Strategy (IS-8) sectors

Any funded organisation needs to carry out their project work in the UK and must intend to exploit the project results from or in the UK.

Projects must always start on the first of the month, even if this is a non-working day. You must not start your project until your Grant Offer Letter has been approved by Innovate UK. Any delays within Project Setup may mean we need to delay your project start date.

You must only include eligible project costs in your application. See our overview of eligible project costs. For specific guidance, see the eligibility section in this competition.

If your project’s duration falls outside of our eligibility criteria, you must provide justification by email to support@iuk.ukri.org at least 10 working days before the competition closes. We will decide whether to approve your request.

If you have not requested approval or your application has not been approved by us, you will be made ineligible. Your application will then not be sent for assessment.

Lead organisation

To work alone or lead a collaborative project your organisation must be a UK registered business of any size.

Academic institutions, research and technology organisations (RTO), charities, not for profit or public sector organisations cannot lead or work alone.

More information on the different types of organisation can be found in our Funding rules.

Project team

To collaborate with the lead, your organisation must be one of the following UK registered:

  • business of any size
  • academic institution
  • charity
  • not for profit
  • public sector organisation
  • research and technology organisation (RTO)

Each partner organisation must be invited into the Innovation Funding Service (IFS) by the lead to collaborate on a project. Once partners have accepted the invitation, they will be asked to login or to create an account in IFS. They are responsible for entering their own project costs and completing their Project Impact questions in the application.

To be an eligible collaboration, the lead and at least one other organisation must:

  • apply for funding when entering their costs into the application
  • include rationale for the collaboration and describe the structure in your application
  • ensure any one partner does not account for more than 70% of the total eligible costs

Non-funded partners

Your project can include organisations who do not claim any funding for their work on the project. Their costs will be covered from their own resources. These can include UK, EU and other non-UK organisations. Non-UK partners are permitted to carry out project work from within their home countries and exploit the results outside the UK.

Where non-funded partners have been invited to the application on IFS, their costs will count towards the total eligible project costs.

Subcontractors

Subcontractors are allowed in this competition and are limited to no more than 30% of the project’s total eligible costs.

Subcontractors can be from anywhere in the UK and you must select them through your usual procurement process.

You can use subcontractors from overseas but must make the case in your application as to why you cannot use subcontractors from the UK.

You must provide a detailed rationale, evidence of the potential UK contractors you approached and the reasons why they were unable to work with you. We will not accept a cheaper cost as a sufficient reason to use an overseas subcontractor.

All subcontractor costs must be justified and appropriate to the total project costs.

Number of applications

A business can only lead on one application but can be included as a collaborator in two further applications.

If a business is not leading any application, it can collaborate in any number of applications.

An academic institution, charity, not for profit, public sector organisation or RTO can collaborate on any number of applications.

Sanctions

This competition will not fund you, or provide any financial benefit to any individual or entities directly or indirectly involved with you, which would expose Innovate UK or any direct or indirect beneficiary of funding from Innovate UK to UK Sanctions. For example, through any procurement, commercial, business development or supply chain activity with any entity as lead, partner or subcontractor related to these countries, administrations and terrorist groups.

Use of animals in research and innovation

Innovate UK expects and supports the provision and safeguarding of welfare standards for animals used in research and innovation, according to best practice and up to date guidance.

Any projects selected for funding which involve animals will be asked to provide additional information on welfare and ethical considerations, as well as compliance with any relevant legislation as part of the project start-up process. This information will be reviewed before an award is made.

You can use a previously submitted application to apply for this competition.

Exclusions

Innovate UK are not funding projects that:

  • are not described by any of the themes listed
  • are focused on chemical or raw materials synthesis, rather than adoption of materials innovations in an end application
  • are focused solely on the defence sector, but we will recognise dual use material innovations providing the primary focus is on civil applications
  • do not show a clear and realistic sector and application opportunity for later adoption
  • do not provide a letter of support as described in the eligibility and scope sections

Innovate UK cannot fund projects that are:

  • dependent on export performance, for example, giving a subsidy to a baker on the condition that it exports a certain quantity of bread to another country
  • dependent on domestic inputs usage, for example, giving a subsidy to a baker on the condition that it uses 50% UK flour in their product

Funding Costs

A maximum of £2 million has been allocated to fund innovation projects in this competition. This is subject to us receiving a sufficient number of high quality applications. Funding will be in the form of a grant.

Innovate UK reserve the right to adjust funding allocations for any of our competitions under exceptional circumstances, for example, in response to changes in policy, portfolio funding considerations, or broader government funding decisions.

If your organisation’s work on the project is commercial or economic, your funding request must not exceed the limits below. These limits apply even if your organisation normally acts non-economically but for the purpose of this project will be undertaking commercial or economic activity.

The balance between your total eligible project costs and the amount of grant awarded must be funded by the organisation receiving the grant.

For feasibility studies in the Research, Development and Innovation Streamlined Subsidy Scheme you can get funding for your eligible project costs of:

Category 1: Feasibility studies

  • up to 70% if you are a micro or small organisation
  • up to 60% if you are a medium sized organisation
  • up to 50% if you are a large organisation

For more information on company sizes, refer to the company accounts guidance.

If you are applying for an award funded under State aid Regulations, the definitions are set out in the European Commission Recommendation of 6 May 2003.

Innovate UK may revoke our decision to provide funding without notice if government commitment for this initiative is withdrawn.

Research participation

The research organisations undertaking non-economic activity as part of the project can share up to 30% of the total eligible project costs. If your consortium contains more than one research organisation undertaking non-economic activity, this maximum is shared between them. Of that 30% you can get funding for your eligible project costs of up to:

  • 100% of your eligible project costs if you are an RTO, charity, not for profit organisation, public sector organisation or research organisation
  • 80% of full economic costs (FEC) if you are a Je-S registered institution such as an academic

Eligibility criteria for claiming 80% of FEC funding

  1. Research organisations using the Je-S system must submit their costs through the Je-S system which calculates the 80% FEC figure.
  2. On IFS, only the 80% FEC output should be entered at 100% funding.
  3. Applicants do not need to show the remaining 20% on the finance table.

To find out more see our: Cost Guidance for Academics.

Interested in applying for this competition?

Book an appointment to speak to one of our advisors to discuss your eligibility to apply for this Grant Funding opportunity.