A Cambridge Spinout's Microscope Watches Ions Flow Inside a Battery

For a battery researcher, understanding why a promising new material fails is a slow, destructive process. You build a cell, cycle it, then take it apart to analyze the damage. It is a post-mortem, not a live diagnosis. Illumion, a spinout from the University of Cambridge, is selling a front-row seat to the failure instead.

The company’s first product, the illumionONE, is a benchtop microscope that uses a technique called charge photometry. It shines a specific wavelength of light (530 nm) onto an operating battery cell and measures subtle changes in how that light scatters off individual electrode particles. This allows scientists to watch, in real time, as lithium or sodium ions flow in and out of materials, revealing localized stress, phase transitions, and the exact moment a particle begins to degrade [illumion.io]. The system includes an integrated potentiostat to control the electrochemical cycling, synchronizing the electrical data with the visual feed [azom.com, September 10 2024].

The technical wedge

Charge photometry is not a new imaging modality like electron microscopy. It is an application of optical interference reflection imaging, tuned for electrochemistry. The commercial wedge is accessibility and speed. Traditional methods for observing battery dynamics, like synchrotron X-ray imaging, require booking time at a national facility. Illumion’s system is a compact, plug-and-play instrument meant for a lab bench, promising to turn a process that could take weeks into one that takes hours [chemistryworld.com, February 17 2025].

The early data is illustrative. Researchers using the technology observed that lithium ions entering a graphite anode do not flow smoothly, but in sudden, localized jumps described as microscopic 'avalanches' [linkedin.com/in/yuan-quan-0961b6175]. For next-generation sodium-ion batteries, the system has visualized dynamic phase transitions within single cathode crystals [illumion.io]. This granularity is the value proposition: reducing the trial-and-error guesswork in a field where new battery material development can span a decade [PERPLEXITY SONAR PRO BRIEF].

From lab bench to production line

Illumion’s roadmap follows a classic deep-tech commercial path. The illumionONE, launched in September 2024, targets academic and industrial research labs [azom.com, September 10 2024]. The company shipped its first device to a research institute in Germany in December of that year [chemistryworld.com, February 17 2025]. The next product, illumionX, is in development for industrial battery manufacturing teams, aimed at quality control and accelerating development cycles [thecaptable.co.uk].

The funding history shows investors betting on that transition. The company has raised approximately £5.6 million (about $7.1 million) across a pre-seed and two seed rounds. The most recent £1.7 million round in October 2026 was co-led by Foresight Group and ZEISS Ventures, the corporate venture arm of the optics giant [Cambridge Enterprise, October 2026]. ZEISS’s participation is a strategic signal, suggesting a pathway to industrial-scale optics and manufacturing partnerships.

Round	Date	Amount	Lead Investor(s)
Pre-seed	Before Mar 2025	£650,000	Not fully specified [Cambridge Angels, March 2025]
Seed	Nov 2024	£2.1 million	Foresight’s Ventures team [Cambridge Enterprise, September 2026]
Seed	Oct 2026	£1.7 million	Foresight Group & ZEISS Ventures [Cambridge Enterprise, October 2026]

The academic engine

The company is a direct product of Cambridge’s research ecosystem. The founding team is a blend of commercial and academic heavyweights.

• Dr. Christoph Schnedermann (CEO). A postdoctoral researcher who helped found the company and leads its commercial operations [PERPLEXITY SONAR PRO BRIEF].
• Dr. Alice Merryweather (Head of R&D). Founded the company near the end of her PhD and leads its scientific development [PERPLEXITY SONAR PRO BRIEF].
• Professor Dame Clare Grey (Academic Co-founder). A pioneer in applying nuclear magnetic resonance to battery research and a professor in Cambridge’s Yusuf Hamied Department of Chemistry [energy.cam.ac.uk, May 2 2024].
• Professor Akshay Rao (Academic Co-founder). A professor of physics at the Cavendish Laboratory whose group focuses on tools for the energy transition [csap.cam.ac.uk].

This foundation provides deep technical credibility but also frames the central commercial challenge: bridging the gap between a powerful research tool and a must-have for industrial quality assurance.

The scale-up challenge

The technical breakdown is compelling. A 330 nm lateral resolution at 530 nm wavelength provides single-particle insight without destroying the sample [iopscience.iop.org]. The system’s material-agnostic nature means it works with lithium-ion, sodium-ion, and future chemistries [azom.com, September 10 2024]. For a research scientist optimizing a cathode, this is a significant upgrade in observational capability.

The sober assessment begins with the move to the factory floor. Industrial battery manufacturing values speed, reliability, and cost above all. IllumionX must translate the rich, nuanced data from the illumionONE into simple, actionable pass/fail signals for a production line operator. It must also prove it can operate at the throughput and robustness required in a factory environment, a different engineering problem than building a precise lab instrument.

Furthermore, the sales motion changes dramatically. Selling a £100,000-plus instrument to a university lab involves a well-understood procurement cycle. Selling an integrated quality-control system to a gigafactory involves competing with entrenched incumbents on total cost of ownership and integration complexity. The company’s headcount growth from 5 employees at the end of 2024 to 11 a year later, and an estimated 13 currently, shows it is building the team for this push [Endole, retrieved 2026] [linkedin.com, retrieved 2026]. The cash position of £750.8k at the end of 2025 was bolstered by the late 2026 round, buying runway for this development [Endole, retrieved 2026].

The next twelve months will be about proving the industrial thesis. Key milestones will be placing illumionONE systems in more industrial R&D labs and unveiling concrete specifications for the illumionX platform. Success will be measured not by published papers, but by purchase orders from battery manufacturers who are willing to bet that seeing ions move in real time will save them millions in scrap and accelerated time-to-market.

Sources

1. [illumion.io, retrieved 2026] Transforming Energy Storage With Light | https://illumion.io/
2. [azom.com, September 10 2024] illumionONE Launch at #Faraday2024 | https://www.azom.com/news.aspx?newsID=63530
3. [chemistryworld.com, February 17 2025] Illumion's Benchtop Charge Photometer | https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/start-up-spots-battery-failures-before-they-happen/4019610.article
4. [linkedin.com/in/yuan-quan-0961b6175, retrieved 2026] Post on Lithium Ion 'Avalanches' | https://www.linkedin.com/in/yuan-quan-0961b6175
5. [PERPLEXITY SONAR PRO BRIEF, retrieved 2026] Illumion Company Brief
6. [Cambridge Enterprise, October 2026] Illumion raises £1.7m | https://www.enterprise.cam.ac.uk/news/illumion-raises-1-7m-to-bring-next-generation-battery-imaging-technology-to-market
7. [thecaptable.co.uk, retrieved 2026] IllumionX Description | https://thecaptable.co.uk
8. [Cambridge Angels, March 2025] Interview with Christoph Schnedermann | https://www.cambridgeangels.com/portfolio-interviews-1/illuminating-the-future-of-battery-technology-an-interview-with-christoph-schnedermann-of-illumion
9. [Cambridge Enterprise, September 2026] Illumion closes £2.1 million Seed round | https://www.enterprise.cam.ac.uk/news/illumion-closes-2-1-million-seed-round-to-further-develop-their-cutting-edge-battery-technology/
10. [energy.cam.ac.uk, May 2 2024] Clare Grey Elected to NAS | https://www.energy.cam.ac.uk/news/start-success-newnham-research-fellow
11. [csap.cam.ac.uk, retrieved 2026] Akshay Rao Research Focus | https://www.csap.cam.ac.uk/network/akshay-rao/
12. [iopscience.iop.org, retrieved 2026] illumionONE Technical Specifications | https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/2515-7655/ad9b7c
13. [Endole, retrieved 2026] Illumion Financial and Employee Data | https://suite.endole.co.uk/insight/company/14625939-illumion-ltd
14. [linkedin.com, retrieved 2026] Illumion LinkedIn Page | https://linkedin.com/company/illumion