Farmers sow billions of seeds coated in thin films that hold pesticides, nutrients and colour in place. Many of those films are made with synthetic polymers that end up as microplastics in soil. At its biorefinery in Sarpsborg, Norway, Borregaard breaks wood cellulose down into fibrils with nanometre-scale diameters and sells them as Exilva, a biodegradable alternative.
Nanofibres, hundreds of times thinner than a human hair, make excellent filters, battery separators and wound dressings. The problem has always been making enough of them. In Liberec, in the north of the Czech Republic, Elmarco turned a university invention into the first industrial machines that spin nanofibres without needles, in webs up to two metres wide. In 2026 its team was a finalist for the European Inventor Award.
"Forever chemicals" are turning up in rivers and lakes across Europe, and old treatment plants struggle to remove them. A company in Hengelo makes hollow fibres with nanometre-scale pores that hold back PFAS, pesticides and pathogens while letting useful minerals through. In 2026 it won its biggest order yet: the membranes for what it says will be the world's largest plant of its kind, in Östersund, Sweden.
Almost every lithium-ion battery stores its lithium in graphite, and most of that graphite is processed in China. Sila, a Californian company founded in 2011, has spent more than a decade engineering a porous silicon material that holds far more lithium without breaking itself apart. In September 2025 it began operating an automotive-scale plant in Moses Lake, Washington, powered by hydropower.
India is building solar farms at record pace, often in dry, dusty places where panels must be washed again and again. TriNANO Technologies, a start-up from Navi Mumbai incubated at IIT Bombay, applies a transparent coating 0.4 microns thick to the glass of new or old panels. It says the coating raises output by about 4% and cuts cleaning water by 55%.
