Advanced materials: 2025’s breakthrough year and what comes next in 2026

By Marc Ambasna-Jones 10 Dec 25 Reading time: 5 mins

After decades “operating in the shadows,” as Henry Royce Institute CEO Professor David Knowles put it, the UK unveiled its first-ever National Materials Innovation Strategy (NMIS) this year. It was formally launched in January at the Houses of Parliament and immediately written into the government’s Modern Industrial Strategy as one of Britain’s “frontier” technologies.

It was the culmination of a lot of dogged work by the Henry Royce Institute, to turn research potential into business opportunity. And while the economic potential is significant, the strategy is equally about net zero and environmental resilience, using materials innovation to cut emissions, redesign supply chains and tackle sector-wide sustainability challenges. That focus aligns closely with initiatives such as the MATcelerate Zero programme, which brings universities and industry together to accelerate low-carbon materials into commercial use.

On 31 October, Innovate UK announced up to £2 million in new funding for businesses pursuing “cutting-edge materials innovation projects aligned with the Royce-facilitated National Materials Innovation Strategy” – the first competition under the National Materials Innovation Programme (NMIP). Grants of £50,000–£100,000 opened for applications on 3 November, targeting feasibility studies across NMIS’s six high-growth opportunity areas (see below) and the emerging priority of metamaterials and metasurfaces. Small in cash terms, but symbolically an important step towards backing the development and delivery of new materials.

The scale of the sector and why 2025 was a milestone

Although often hidden inside supply chains, the UK’s advanced materials footprint is already substantial. Commentary around NMIS places its current contribution at roughly £45 billion a year, covering everything from novel composites to advanced semiconductors, and supporting hundreds of thousands of jobs.

NMIS itself lays out six opportunity themes, from energy materials and sustainable manufacturing to next-generation telecommunications, structural innovations, and advanced surface technologies. These are underpinned by two cross-cutting priorities – sustainability and Materials 4.0 (PDF), the data-driven, AI-enabled future of materials discovery and design.

For the first time, the UK has a single, national framework tying research infrastructure, industrial need, and government strategy together.

Critically, NMIS was folded directly into the Advanced Manufacturing Sector Plan within the Modern Industrial Strategy. It signals a wider government recognition that the UK cannot compete on volume manufacturing, but can compete on high-value, high-performance materials, where know-how, intellectual property and specialist facilities matter more than sheer scale.

The Henry Royce Institute has been central here. Alongside providing research infrastructure, the Institute has been repeatedly clear that the UK’s longstanding weakness lies not in discovery but in translation. It refers to this as the “valley of death” between lab breakthroughs and industrial adoption.

NMIP’s first £2 million hints at a new direction, one that emphasises early feasibility, demonstration, and collaboration between SMEs, universities, and applied research.

Why semiconductors have dragged materials science into the spotlight

If there was a single industrial reason materials science stopped being a background discipline in 2025, it was semiconductors. The UK’s chip ambitions have run straight into the limits of silicon and suddenly the conversation has shifted from microelectronics design to what those electronics are actually made from.

As Professor Martin Kuball, Director of the Centre for Device Thermography and Reliability at the University of Bristol, put it earlier this year, “an end user doesn’t care whether this is silicon carbide, gallium nitride or gallium oxide. They just want it to work efficiently.”

It’s a deceptively simple point that goes straight to the heart of the UK’s opportunity. Whether it’s EV fast chargers, grid converters, aerospace systems, or cooling-hungry AI data centres, the next wave of progress depends on wide-bandgap materials – gallium nitride (GaN), silicon carbide (SiC), diamond – that can handle higher voltages, higher frequencies, and much more heat than silicon ever could.

Kuball’s broader argument is that the UK doesn’t need to chase wafer megafabs. Instead, it can lead at the materials-rich end of the semiconductor value chain – advanced substrates, high-voltage devices, photonics, packaging, thermal management, and specialised process technology. As he put it, this combination of materials science and precision engineering is “where the UK can have a truly transformative impact.”

That logic is increasingly reflected in policy. In government briefings on the UK’s ambition to build a £1 trillion tech economy, advanced materials and semiconductor capability were repeatedly mentioned together, not as separate sectors, but as mutually dependent for long-term competitiveness. To a large extent, semiconductor success now depends on materials success, and NMIS arrives precisely at the moment when the industry’s shift beyond silicon becomes unavoidable.

Where 2026 is heading

If 2025 was about building the architecture (the strategy, the alignment, the early funding) then 2026 will be about evidence in the real world; materials that prove their performance in industry settings.

A few priorities are already coming into focus.

Scaling NMIP beyond symbolic funding
The first £2 million is a welcome start, but it won’t shift an industry on its own. The question for 2026 is whether Innovate UK follows this with larger, multi-year competitions that move projects from feasibility work into pilot manufacturing. That’s the step the UK has historically avoided and the one it now needs to take.

SMEs will set the pace
Because NMIP feasibility grants are sized for smaller companies, much of the early momentum will depend on spinouts and specialist manufacturers. These are the firms working on advanced composites, coatings, metamaterials, power-electronics substrates, and critical-minerals recovery. And they’re the ones capable of turning a £50,000 study into a meaningful prototype within months rather than years.

Materials 4.0 must become real infrastructure
NMIS places heavy emphasis on data-driven materials science – AI-led discovery, high-throughput experimentation, advanced simulation and integrated digital design. These capabilities remain uneven across the UK, and almost absent in many SMEs. Creating shared national infrastructure, rather than isolated pockets of excellence, will be essential.

Net-zero supply chains will be the measure of progress
Many of the UK’s toughest climate challenges are, fundamentally, materials challenges. Think recyclable composites for construction, lightweight components for aviation, better thermal systems for data centres, credible low-carbon alternatives to concrete and steel. Government and industry will be looking for early wins here, not just in semiconductors but across infrastructure and manufacturing.

The global market is moving quickly
Europe is expanding its advanced materials partnerships, the US is pulling supply chains west through the CHIPS Act, and Asian nations are investing heavily in advanced ceramics, compound semiconductors, and battery materials. Whether the UK keeps pace will depend on how quickly NMIS moves from strategy to execution.

Marc Ambasna-Jones / Editor

Working as a technology journalist and writer since 1989, Marc has written for a wide range of titles on technology, business, education, politics and sustainability, with work appearing in The Guardian, The Register, New Statesman, Computer Weekly and many more.