THE WORLD’S THINNEST SEPARATION TECHNOLOGY

Divea engineers tunable pores in an atom-thin layer of graphene to enable the next era of molecular refining, at a fraction of the cost.

«We are the only group in the world capable of tuning molecular scale pores in an atom-thin layer. And thus, our mission is to expand Humanity’s technological tree by developing value-added products to society.»

Karl Khalil

Founder & CEO, Divea

Industrial separation, the act of isolating a target molecule or ion from a complex mixture, is one of the most energy-hungry operations in the global economy. It sits behind everything from capturing CO₂ at a cement plant to extracting the lithium that powers batteries. Historically, each of these challenges has demanded its own bespoke, often bulky and inefficient technology.

At Switzerland Innovation Park Network West EPFL – Campus Energypolis, Divea is changing that with a graphene-membrane platform built on technology developed at EPFL. Its membranes are a single atom thick and patterned with precisely engineered pores. By tuning the size and chemistry of those pores, the same core membrane can be configured for very different jobs. It can filter gases such as CO₂, or tell apart ions as chemically similar as lithium and magnesium, achieving gas permeance an order of magnitude above commercial membranes and selectivities far beyond conventional filtration.

This versatility is the breakthrough: one manufacturing process, many applications. Divea has already validated the technology under real industrial conditions, running carbon-capture demonstrators at Swiss industrial sites and completing paid feasibility programmes with global partners. Carbon capture is the company's first market, with lithium extraction and battery-metal recycling set to follow on the very same production line.

Supported by the deep-tech ecosystem at Campus Energypolis, Divea is now scaling from prototype towards continuous, roll-to-roll manufacturing. In doing so, it shows how a single Swiss materials-science innovation can tackle several of Europe's hardest industrial challenges at once, cutting emissions, securing critical raw materials, and strengthening domestic supply chains

Picture of Divea’s graphene membrane

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