CARBON WATERS SAS

Their core work

Carbon Waters SAS is a French deeptech SME based in Pessac that specializes in water-based graphene dispersions for surface protection and anti-corrosion applications. Their core technology is a high-quality graphene formulation that can be suspended in water and applied as a protective coating on industrial surfaces. Through their participation in the NewSkin Innovation Action, they have extended this core product into a broader family of nano-enabled surface treatments — including low-friction, permeable, and durable coatings — targeting industrial manufacturing at continuous and mass-production scale. They sit at the intersection of advanced materials chemistry and industrial coating processes, bridging graphene science with practical manufacturing uptake.

What they specialise in

How they've shifted over time

Carbon Waters entered H2020 with a tightly scoped SME feasibility study around a single product: high-quality graphene dispersed in water for anti-corrosion use. By 2020, they had joined a large Innovation Action (NewSkin) that expanded their scope to a full family of nano-enabled surface treatments — including membranes, low-friction coatings, and permeable protective layers for industrial processes. The absence of keywords on the early project versus the rich keyword set on NewSkin reflects a genuine maturation: from a materials startup with one product to a surface nanotechnology contributor operating within a pan-European industrial ecosystem.

Carbon Waters is moving from single-product graphene chemistry toward broader industrial surface nanotechnology, with an emphasis on manufacturing scalability — making them increasingly relevant to companies that need to coat, protect, or functionalize surfaces at production scale.

How they like to work

Carbon Waters has operated on both sides of consortium dynamics: leading their own SME Phase 1 feasibility study (GRAPHENE WATER) and joining a large multi-partner Innovation Action as a specialist contributor (NewSkin). Their participation in NewSkin brought them into contact with 37 partners across 12 countries — a remarkably broad network for a company with only two projects — indicating they are comfortable operating within large, complex consortia while contributing a focused technology asset. For future partners, this suggests a company that brings a specific proprietary input rather than general research bandwidth.

Through just two projects, Carbon Waters has accumulated 37 consortium partners across 12 countries — a disproportionately wide network for an early-stage SME, almost certainly driven by NewSkin's large pan-European Innovation Action structure. Their geographic reach is solidly European with no indication of a single-country focus.

What sets them apart

Carbon Waters occupies a narrow but commercially valuable niche: water-dispersible graphene specifically engineered for anti-corrosion and industrial surface protection — a segment where most graphene producers still struggle with processability and scale. Their NewSkin participation validated their technology within an Open Innovation Test Bed built for industrial uptake, giving them a credibility stamp beyond the lab. For consortium builders working on surface engineering, corrosion prevention, or nano-material manufacturing, they offer a rare combination: proprietary graphene chemistry plus demonstrated exposure to mass-production process requirements.

Highlights from their portfolio

• GRAPHENE WATER
  Carbon Waters coordinated this SME Instrument Phase 1 project — meaning they owned the concept, wrote the proposal, and drove the feasibility case for their graphene-in-water product, signalling genuine technological IP at the company's core.
• NewSkin
  This large Innovation Action (2020–2024) embedded Carbon Waters in a 37-partner, 12-country consortium focused on scaling advanced surface nano-technologies to industrial production, substantially broadening both their network and their application scope.