The European Union's (EU) Circular Economy Action Plan was adopted in March 2020 with the aim of reducing dependence on natural resources and promoting sustainable development and growth. It is also one of the main elements of the European Green Deal Action Plan, through which the EU aims to achieve climate neutrality by 2050. It is based on the assumption that up to 80 percent of a product’s environmental impact is determined during the design phase.

The goal of the European research infrastructure project ReMade@ARI is to advance the development of innovative, sustainable materials for key components in a wide range of sectors, including electronics, batteries, vehicles, construction, packaging, plastics, textiles and food, at an unprecedented level. To meet the challenge of designing new materials that are both competitively functional and highly recyclable, the potential of more than 50 analytical research infrastructures of the European ARIE network will be harnessed. ReMade@ARI will start on September 1, 2022 under the leadership of Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR).

An illustrative example: In the supermarket, fruits and vegetables are often packaged in plastics to extend their shelf life. In future, bio-based materials derived from wood could provide a sustainable alternative. This is where ReMade@ARI comes into play: research leading to the development of sophisticated new materials crucially relies on access to the world-class European research infrastructures, which joined forces in ReMade@ARI. 

The ReMade@ARI platform will be the central hub for all sectors and research areas in which new materials for a circular economy will be developed.

“We provide scientists who are working on the design of new recyclable materials with analytical tools that enable them to explore the properties and the structure of their material in smallest details up to atomic resolution. This requires the exploitation of the most diverse analytical methods, involving appropriate combinations of photons, electrons, neutrons, ions, positrons and the highest magnetic fields,” says Dr. Stefan Facsko, the project’s scientific coordinator. “Any scientist in academic or industrial research working on new recyclable materials should get in touch with us.”

"Scientists of the Laboratory for Ion Beam Interactions will use ion beam analysis methods to provide services for characterization of new materials, including determination of composition, depth distribution of elements, elemental and molecular mapping, etc. The services will be available to scientists and entrepreneurs involved in the development of new materials for the circular economy,'' emphasised Dr. sc. Zdravko Siketić of the Laboratory for Ion Beam Interactions.

The project, which began in early September, will link more than 50 research facilities across Europe, including the IRB Tandem Accelerator System, the largest and most complex experimental facility in Croatia.

The ReMade@ARI platform will provide scientists and entrepreneurs working on the development of new environmentally friendly materials with a central platform for the analysis of materials, their properties and structure at the atomic level and is expected to have a strong impact on the development of the circular economy within the EU.

More than 40 partners of the ARIE consortium are involved in the project. They form analysis and research institutions that provide instruments and deliver services to European researchers to achieve the goals of the Horizon Europe program. The consortium brings together more than 40,000 researchers from science and industry.