Nanoparticle synthesis and deposition tools provider VSParticle (VSP) has raised a €6.5 million A2 extension round led by NordicNinja  amd previous investor Plural.

VSP’s technology enables materials to be broken down to the size of nanoparticles and produced at the push of a button, allowing university researchers and commercial R&D teams to experiment to create new materials that will power next-generation products. 

It can take up to 10 years to discover new materials in a lab and a further five to bring them to mass production, but VSP’s technology is supporting teams to reduce the overall time of material discovery down to only one year.

In particular, VSP’s technology is enabling the mass production of catalyst-coated Porous Transport Layers (PTLs), which are the key components in electrolysers and are essential to the production of green hydrogen. 

Green hydrogen is essential to reduce dependence on fossil fuels and power a more sustainable future for industries such as shipping, transport, heating, and aviation. Yet, the process currently relies on using scarce resources, including platinum and iridium.

VSParticle has shipped its flagship product, the VSP-P1 Nanoprinter, to teams across Asia, the Middle East, Europe, and North America, including the Sorbonne University Abu Dhabi, the San Francisco-based Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, the Materials Discovery Research Institute (MDRI) in the Chicago area, and the Dutch Institute for Fundamental Energy Research over the past year, who are using it to accelerate material development for innovative industrial solutions.

Customers are using VSP printers to develop new material combinations for PTLs, with a predicted 10x savings in scarce metals, such as iridium, and introduce new products faster and cheaper. 

By 2027, the first components that have been developed using VSP’s technology should be in the market, creating the end product that will support green hydrogen production. 

Aaike van Vugt, co-founder and CEO of VSParticle, said: 

“Our technology is empowering university researchers and commercial R&D teams across the world to create new materials that will transform the production of green hydrogen and reduce emissions in carbon-intensive industries.”

Rainer Sternfeld, Partner at NordicNinja, said: 

“VSParticle’s technology is transforming material innovation and, combined with AI, this will be the basis of world-changing discovery and synthesis over the next decades.

 We’re delighted to be supporting the impressive VSP team in this extension round, particularly with their Japanese expansion plans to capitalise on the drive to scale the development of green hydrogen. We can’t wait to see what they achieve next.”

Sten Tamkivi, partner at Plural, said: 

“Material discovery has always been extremely important in science but over the past 12 months, the world has woken up to the need to speed up innovation so we can find the solutions to global challenges, including decarbonizing society.

 VSParticle is the only company that is driving discovery at the critical early levels so teams can scale experimentation and development of next-generation materials.”

The new investment will further develop VSP’s technology so that its next-generation printers have up to 100 times higher output. It will also support the company in expanding to Japan and doubling down in the US and Europe.