The LMU project iNSyT-ONE has received a Transition Grant from the European Innovation Council to advance a patented microscope platform for real-time quality control of nanomaterials.

The LMU project iNSyT-ONE has received a 2.45 million euros EIC Transition Grant from the European Innovation Council to advance a patented microscope platform for real-time quality control of nanomaterials. The project was selected in the highly competitive 2025 EIC Transition call, in which 40 projects were chosen from 611 submitted proposals across Europe. Over the next three years, the funding will support technology maturation, industrial validation, and preparation for market entry.

Dr. Philipp Baaske, Vice President for Entrepreneurship at LMU, congratulates: “With EIC Transition, the European Innovation Council (EIC) supports outstanding innovations with strong commercial potential. I am delighted that, with this support, the iNSyT-ONE team at LMU can further develop their groundbreaking nanotechnology to market readiness and thus pave the way for an LMU spin-off.”

New microscope to revolutionize the quality control of nanomaterials

Nanomaterials in general and quantum dots in particular are considered key-enabling materials for broad range of applications ranging from display technology and energy conversion to biomedical imaging and diagnostics. Today’s nanomaterial tests reduce billions of data points to a single average. What gets lost here are the crucial differences between individual particles. When a product fails, manufacturers only see the result but not the cause.

This is precisely where the new technology transfer project comes in. The goal is to advance to market readiness a technology that provides a window into the details by individually analysing and visualising nanoparticles that previously got lost in statistical noise.

“Our technology represents a fundamental step forward in the quality control of nanomaterials,” says the project lead, LMU Nanoscientist, Dr. Mohsen Beladi, who has been working at the interface of nanoscience and technology development for several years. “From the beginning, it was clear to me that this technology had the potential to go far beyond the lab. By turning the underlying physics into a direct optical signal from individual nanoparticles, it opens a practical way to solve one of the field’s central challenges. Rather than relying on bulk averages, as is still common in industrial practice, we can analyze thousands of nanoparticles individually and generate real-time information for each of them, enabling faster, smarter, and far more reliable nanomaterial manufacturing.”

The work was published in prestigious journals such as Nature and Nature Materials (AIP), building on research carried out during the PhD of Dr. Christoph Gruber, now responsible for operations and hardware development. “Once it became clear that the method also has strong potential beyond our own work, we had it patented. That was a turning point in thinking about how the approach could be applied more widely,” he says.

From single-particle science to industrial quality metrics

The system will be designed for industrial demands – high throughput, speed, and real-time monitoring – delivering reliable quality metrics for each individual nanoparticle within minutes.

“Our goal is to translate complex single-particle measurements into automated, real-time quality metrics that industry can actually use,” explains Dr. Simone Ezendam. She leads the development of the needed software, which will enable automated analysis and seamless data processing, making this transition possible. The resulting data can then be fed directly back into production processes, boosting yields, reducing waste, and accelerating product release—a decisive step toward resilient and competitive European nanomaterial manufacturing.

“Nanomaterials may be tiny, but they already underpin tens-of-billions-euro value chains and many of the key technologies we all depend on. Our mission is to reduce raw material use, increase production resilience, and ultimately improve output and margins” Dr. Jan Englert, commercial officer of the team says.

Scientific origin at LMU

The scientific foundations of iNSyT-ONE were established within the Nanomaterials for Energy group led by Prof. Emiliano Cortés at LMU’s Nano-Institute Munich, Faculty of Physics. Cortés initiated the research direction, has continuously hosted the work at LMU, and serves as mentor and advisor to the iNSyT-ONE team as the project evolved from basic research into a technology transfer effort aligned with LMU’s energy and nanoscience ecosystem – including the excellence cluster e-conversion, the Bavarian program on Solar Technologies (SolTech), and the Center for Nanoscience (CeNS). A key milestone in this trajectory was an ERC grant, which provided an important foundational steppingstone for the translation pathway.

“When we began this research five years ago, we never envisioned it could lead to a venture,” says Cortés. “But the relevance, impact, and truly mind-blowing results the team obtained made it clear that there is real technological potential here.”