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Products and services

Exploiting and commercialising new technology

NPL has an excellent track record

Applying technology transfer to maximise the impact of our research

We are in the business of finding solutions to your problems, so we are always happy to discuss the best ways of achieving this. We are actively looking for licensee and partners to work with us. You can collaborate with us in a range of different ways, including:  

  1. Setting up a new spinout company which can help leverage private funding for a new opportunity
  2. Negotiating a new licence between NPL and an existing independent company with the resources or market position to secure impact from our research

The intellectual property (IP) may result from a collaborative research project or from NPL propriety work. When a potentially valuable innovation has been identified and protected appropriately, NPL works with the researchers to explore the commercial opportunity.

Our priority is to ensure that the outputs from NPL research can reach their full potential by being adopted by UK industry and the wider world. Our IP covers the full range of our science and engineering expertise and is recognised by copyright, patents, trademarks, trade secrets and confidential information.

Please contact us today to discuss the opportunities in more detail or read on to find out about the patented technologies and know-how which NPL is seeking to commercialise.

Contact us

Thin film characterisation
Quantum power meter
Atomic interferometry
Microresonator
Atomic magnetometer
Breast scanner
Digital image correlation
Thermology Health
Continuous maser
Sonoreactor
Synthetic peptide

Innovation webinars: ideas which can change the world

UK public sector organisations are leading and enabling a new generation of radical innovations. The expertise found within science laboratories is driving ground-breaking research and development and delivering these game-changing ideas into the hands of the customers. NPL hosted three webinars demonstrating the parallels between real-life applications and the global issues facing society. They highlighted how collaboration between the public and private sector can accelerate the development of new technologies to keep us all healthy, reduce pollution, explore space and more. 

NPL has a long history of innovation and commercialising technology

Since its establishment in 1900, NPL has been delivering innovations to improve prosperity and quality of life for those living in the UK. In the late 1960’s NPL invented packet switching, a key ingredient of the internet, and this was then further developed into general computing and ultimately quantum computing. The Kibble balance, formerly the watt balance and renamed after Bryan Kibble who worked at NPL, was developed in the 1970s. It compares electrical and mechanical forces, which allows the kilogram to be realised in terms of quantum electrical units.

More recently, NPL has been involved in metrology and characterisation of graphene to facilitate the commercialisation of graphene. The world’s first room temperature maser, which produces monochromatic electromagnetic radiation in the microwave range, was invented at NPL and is used in atomic clocks.  We have developed a way of using existing optical fibres in our communications infrastructure to detect seismic activity – an innovative use of existing technology. NPL has also worked in collaboration with companies and universities to support innovations as diverse as graphene-based sensors to radiation treatment for medical equipment.

Work with us

Our research and measurement solutions support innovation and product development. We work with companies to deliver business advantage and commercial success.
Contact our Customer Services team on +44 20 8943 7070