AMMTO sponsors several American-Made Prizes as part of our efforts to promote advanced materials and manufacturing technologies. These initiatives encourage the nation’s brightest minds to bring forward their groundbreaking ideas, translating them into practical solutions for energy and manufacturing challenges.
By participating in American-Made Prizes, energy researchers and entrepreneurs can connect with each other and national labs through the American-Made Network. Through these partnerships, the American-Made Prizes provide access to an unparalleled ecosystem of innovators, entrepreneurs, and inventors dedicated to advancing American manufacturing and clean energy solutions.
Microbattery Design Prize
The $1.1 million Microbattery Design Prize focuses on innovative small-capacity battery design projects to improve performance, safety, and recyclability. Microbatteries provide the power source for small devices such as wearable medical devices, implantable biosensors, and hearing aids, enabling miniaturized technologies to perform effectively. Microelectronics like these continue to transform society, but emerging applications for these tiny technologies requires new, smaller battery designs to meet demand.
The Microbattery Design Prize aims to address existing gaps in the microelectronics and energy storage supply chains, thereby bolstering U.S. manufacturing competitiveness abroad and fortifying domestic end-to-end supply chains for these technologies.
The CABLE Conductor Manufacturing Prize
The $4.8 million Conductivity-enhanced materials for Affordable, Breakthrough Leapfrog Electric and thermal applications (CABLE) Conductor Manufacturing Prize invites researchers to develop and manufacture breakthrough conductivity-enhanced materials. Enhancing the conductivity of transmission and distribution cables and devices connected to the grid can enhance grid resilience and performance, helping it to accommodate rapid electrification of the economy.
Electronics Scrap Recycling Advancement Prize
The Electronics Scrap Recycling Advancement Prize will award up to $4 million to competitors to substantially increase the production and use of critical materials recovered from electronic scrap—or e-scrap (which includes mobile phones, home appliances, medical or office equipment, an anything else powered by electricity), which represents the fastest growing waste stream globally, with e-scrap generation expected to double 2014 levels by 2030. This three-phase prize encourages innovations that enhance the recovery of critical materials along the recycling value chain from end-of-life products to reintroduction. Innovation is also needed to facilitate the integration of the separation technologies into the recycling value chain.
The Geothermal Manufacturing Prize
The Geothermal Manufacturing Prize incentivizes innovators to discover advances that address manufacturing challenges fundamental to operating in harsh geothermal environments. This competition emphasizes additive manufacturing for tool design, fabrication, and functionality improvements in geothermal applications.
Re-X Before Recycling Prize
The Re-X Before Recycling Prize offers up to $4.5 million in total cash prizes and $1.1 million in national laboratory analysis consultation and technical assistance. This three-phase competition is designed to develop innovative ways to extend the lifetimes of products or parts via re-using, repairing, refurbishing, remanufacturing, or repurposing (“Re-X”) before recycling. By stimulating innovation and private investment in circular economy approaches, the innovations developed through this prize will reduce life cycle energy and emissions, strengthen circular supply chains for emerging clean energy technologies, and decrease the demand for virgin materials.