Cage Capture Ltd, a University of Liverpool spin-out, has secured £300,000 of funding via Innovate UK (with matched funding from the university’s Enterprise Investment Fund) to further develop technology designed to remove toxic pollutants from the air.

The company (www.cagecapture.com)has been formed to commercialise a new cage-based material invented by Ming Liu and Andrew Cooper at the university’s Materials Innovation Factory.

They have designed and synthesised cage molecule solids that act like a ‘cage prison’ to capture low-concentration pollutants, using a combination of chemical and physical absorption.

Their patented technology can capture formaldehyde — the most common indoor air pollutant — at both high and low levels, and even in humid conditions (it is often released by building materials such as paint and plasterboard, as well as many other household products).

Dr Ming Liu said: “Our technology has been proven in the laboratory to be more effective at capturing formaldehyde than current methods.

“This new funding will help us to actively pursue collaborators to scaleup manufacturing of the new material.”

The Materials Innovation Factory is a collaboration between the University of Liverpool and Unilever.

It brings together materials chemistry expertise with the latest computational and robotic equipment to accelerate research and reduce the time it takes to develop new products that have the potential to address a range of societal challenges.