Driven by curiosity. Driving changeSpinouts
Examples of our spinouts
Advanced materials | Energy systems
Immaterial
Developing advanced porous structures in metal-organic frameworks (MOFs), for applications from carbon capture to industrial separation technologies.
Industrial processing
Colorifix
Colorifix uses synthetic biology to develop a more sustainable textile dyeing process, reducing the materials traditionally required in manufacturing.
Imaging science | Biomedical engineering
Clarity Sensors
Develops next-generation X-ray detectors using semiconductor materials, enabling higher-resolution imaging with lower radiation doses.
The curious story of a spinout
Spinouts often begin with fundamental research and years of exploration. The journey from a scientific discovery to a commercial technology can take many years, as researchers develop new understanding and find ways to apply it beyond the laboratory.
An unexpected discovery combines with curiosity
The lab was quiet.
A postgraduate student hung a white lab coat on their shoulders, tugged on a pair of purple gloves distractedly and wandered over to yesterday’s experiment. Another day, another set of results. With any luck, this one would finally go right. There were easier things to think about anyway – the chapter that still needed writing, whether there was any milk left at home, and how on earth they were going to make the flat presentable before their parents arrived at the weekend.
Then they stopped.
That wasn’t right.
The material sitting in front of them wasn’t what they had been trying to make. What they saw was a transparent, crystalline material unlike anything they had expected. It caught the light almost like a piece of glass. It was unusual enough to immediately make them stop thinking about how much milk was in the fridge. And beautiful enough to make them look twice.
They picked it up and went to find Professor David Fairen-Jimenez.
That unexpected result sparked a new direction of research that would eventually lead to the creation of spinout company Immaterial.
Metal-organic frameworks, or MOFs, were still an emerging area of materials science. But Professor Fairen-Jimenez recognised their potential early on and his Adsorption and Advanced Materials group went on to help shape the field, developing new ways to design, understand and engineer these remarkable porous materials for practical use.
Over the following years, David’s lab helped move MOFs from an exciting area of academic research towards practical engineering. By combining experimental science with computational modelling and machine learning, the team advanced new ways to identify, design, densify and engineer these remarkable porous materials, before tackling one of the field’s biggest challenges – how to shape them into forms that could actually be used outside the laboratory.
That work became the foundation of Immaterial, established in 2015 to turn years of research into technologies for carbon capture, hydrogen storage, clean air and other energy transition applications. Today, the company develops monolithic MOFs and the engineering systems that allow them to work in real industrial environments.
The company expanded, in 2026, to open a pilot manufacturing facility in Sawston, south of Cambridge.
The facility marked a milestone in translating advanced materials research into industrial production, enabling the company to manufacture its proprietary metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) at scale for customers worldwide.