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PROBLEM TO SOLVE

The green transition depends on several critical materials, from lithium, gallium, and rare earth elements to titanium, copper, and graphite. Their supply chains are constrained and often associated with substantial environmental and societal costs. Technologies for recovering these from valuable waste sources including e-waste, permanent magnets, spent batteries, and solar panels remain limited or underdeveloped. We are seeking biology-based* solutions that can recover high-value critical materials from complex waste streams, improve their selective separation and isolation, or replace them altogether with novel materials.

The Critical Materials Challenge focuses on two tracks:

Improved recovery or replacement of virgin critical materials. Demand for critical materials is projected to almost double by 2040, and refining capacity remains concentrated in a handful of countries. Separation is the bottleneck; it is reagent- and energy-intensive, and material is lost during processing. For many applications, no viable substitute exists. This track invites Biosolutions* that separate and purify critical materials more selectively and efficiently or replace them with novel and sustainable high-performing alternative materials.
Recycling complex waste streams. Critical materials are increasingly locked in complex mixed waste streams where conventional recycling is polluting, energy-intensive, and sacrifices both purity and yield. This track invites Biosolutions* that can recover and return these high-value components at high purity and high yield.

*Solutions may contain chemistry components as part of the complete process.

WHAT ARE WE LOOKING FOR

We seek established group leaders with an entrepreneurial mindset developing technologies within Biosolutions. Successful solutions should demonstrate initial validated data for competitive performance against incumbents, potential to reach cost parity, compatibility with relevant processes, and a credible path to reliable and sustainable scale-up within one of the following areas:

Improved recovery or replacement of virgin critical materials. Solutions that secure critical materials by making conventional extraction and refining processes more cost-effective, or by removing dependency altogether through bio-derived substitutes. Examples include:

Bioleaching and bio-recovery of base metals and rare earth elements from low-grade ores, tailings, and mine water.
Engineered proteins, peptides, or biosorbents that selectively separate target elements from primary process streams to reduce reagent, energy or number of steps of conventional refining.
Bio-derived or biologically manufactured substitutes that reduce or eliminate the need for critical materials in high-performance applications.

Recycling of critical materials from complex waste streams. Enzymatic, microbial, or protein-engineered systems operating at any step of the recovery chain, from breaking open complex waste to delivering high-spec, commercially usable outputs. Examples include:

Processes to strip organics, polymers, coatings, and binders blocking access to target materials.
Bioleaching, engineered metallophores, or other biogenic metal-binding molecules to mobilize material from waste streams.
Engineered protein, peptide, or whole-cell binders, biosorption, or bioprecipitation for selective isolation from mixed leachates.
Technologies to convert recovered streams into defined, high-specification outputs able to re-enter manufacturing directly.

More information about the Critical Materials Challenge can be found here.

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