Henry Royce Institute

The Henry Royce Institute is the UK’s national institute for advanced materials research and innovation. Providing access to world-class research capabilities, infrastructure, expertise, and skills development, Royce works with the UK materials community to develop solutions to national and global challenges.

Over £150m of equipment is available, easy to access and technically supported.

With its Hub at The University of Manchester, Royce is a partnership of eleven leading research institutions. Through this partnership, Royce coordinates over 700 academic, technical and research staff and over £200 million of equipment.

Royce is the front door to the UK materials research and innovation community and its facilities and expertise are open to both academia and industry. Whether you are a researcher, a large company, or an SME, Royce can help to meet your R&D needs. At The University of Manchester specifically it can help make, test, characterise and model materials in line with the institute’s research themes: 2D Materials, Advanced Metals Processing, Atoms to Devices, Biomedical Materials, Chemical Materials Design, Nuclear Materials and Materials Systems for Demanding Environments.

Royce’s purpose is rooted in delivering real-life solutions.

It does this by offering industry a unique combination of materials science expertise, technical skills, and the very latest facilities and equipment.

By linking together key ‘make and test’ capabilities, with digital technologies and the support of dedicated technology platform leads – expert technical staff who provide partners with a unique interconnectivity between academic innovation and industry application – it supports agile and cost-effective materials discovery and deployment.

As a result, it provides industry partners with the capabilities to revolutionalise the technological pipeline, and transform research into products that help address our most pressing economic, social and technological challenges.

By helping partners discover, develop and exploit new materials – or simply, applying an existing material to a new process – it provides a centre for excellence, empowering UK businesses in leading the way to creating new and more sustainable materials to be used in everyday life. Its expertise includes:

Next-generation low energy loss materials for electronic devices

High-temperature superconductors

Anodes and conductive membranes for batteries

Recycled sustainable fibre composites

Biocompatible implants and regenerative materials for vascular tissue healing and replacement

Our impact

Royce is supporting and growing world-recognised excellence in UK materials research, accelerating commercial exploitation, and delivering both positive economic and societal impact for the UK.