The EIC Accelerator Backed CPI's Plasma Release Liner: Did It Work

Release liners are the peel-off films that protect an adhesive until it is used: on a wound dressing, a patch that holds a sensor to the skin, or a tape in a phone. For silicone adhesives, which are gentler on skin than acrylics, the liner itself usually needs a special coating, and traces of it can transfer onto the adhesive. Coating Plasma Innovation, which trades as CPI, proposed to make that coating with cold plasma at atmospheric pressure: a silicone layer a few nanometres thick, bonded to the film so that almost nothing comes off.

In June 2019 the European Commission selected CPI, then listed in Peynier near Aix-en-Provence, in the 5 June cut-off of the EIC SME Instrument Phase 2, the Horizon 2020 pilot that preceded today's EIC Accelerator, for "Med-Ximofilm: the first ultra-low silicone release liner for medical applications". The Commission's later lists of 2018 to 2020 winners still name it, as grant only, and CPI is the only company listed for the project. Yet the EU's project database, CORDIS, holds no Phase 2 grant agreement for Med-Ximofilm or for CPI. That gap shapes this whole review.

Where CPI Stands Now

CPI is active. It filed its accounts for the year to 30 September 2025 with the commercial court registry, according to a BODACC notice of 15 February 2026, and the French business directory lists it as an active SAS with 10 to 19 staff and no insolvency proceedings. Its president is Plasmalex, a holding registered at the same Fuveau address, which replaced Plasma Invest SAS in that role in 2021, according to BODACC notices of May 2020 and May 2021. Plasmalex describes itself as a privately owned group of CPI, the Belgian vacuum-plasma firm Europlasma and the converting-equipment maker Spoolex; the Swiss parylene coater COAT-X says it joined the group in 2024.

The company still sells the technology it took to the EIC. Its website, rebuilt in mid-2026, leads with release liners, adhesion treatments for difficult plastics such as PEEK, and wettability coatings for membranes. It also shows EU research work: CPI is a partner in two EIC Pathfinder projects, VortexLC, a diabetes-monitoring project led by the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, with €555,200 for CPI from March 2022 to February 2026, and CELLAGRI, a Fraunhofer-led project on cellulose mulch films, with €509,500 for CPI from October 2025 to September 2029.

The Technology: Nanometre Silicone From a Cold Plasma

Conventional silicone release liners are made by coating a film with liquid silicone and curing it. Uncured fragments can migrate into the adhesive. Alternatives for silicone adhesives, such as fluorosilicone liners, cost around €2.75 per square metre and contain pollutant compounds, CPI wrote in its Phase 1 report. CPI instead feeds a siloxane precursor into a cold plasma discharge at atmospheric pressure, which deposits a coating about 0.01 micrometres (10 nanometres) thick in a single pass, with no solvent and no vacuum chamber. For Med-Ximofilm, it switched the plasma gas on its existing XIMOFILM machine from nitrogen to argon to reach a TRL 6 prototype, the report says.

The chemistry is protected. US patent 11,725,123, granted to Coating Plasma Innovation on 15 August 2023 from a French priority filing of 9 February 2018, covers a silicone-based protective film with extractable silicone of at most 100 ng/cm², and preferably below 10 ng/cm². Its PCT application, WO 2019/154976, was published on 15 August 2019, two months after the EIC selection.

What the EIC Award Promised, and What the Record Shows

The only CPI project from the SME Instrument on CORDIS is the Phase 1 feasibility study, XIMOFILM (grant agreement 827338), signed and started on 1 August 2018 and closed on 30 November 2018. The EU paid €50,000 of its €71,429 cost. Its stated aim was a liner with silicone contamination below 10 ng/cm², subsequent adhesion above 90% (against 65% for competitors), a price of €2.0 per square metre, about 30% below competitors, and output of up to 60 m² a minute. The final report says the study identified the technical tasks, end users and budget for a full development, and that "sales forecasts show a profitable business even in a pessimistic scenario". That full development was the Phase 2 project the Commission selected in June 2019.

What happened to Phase 2 is not public. A search of CORDIS for CPI, its former name, its address, the acronym and the topic of release liners returns XIMOFILM and the two Pathfinder projects, and no Phase 2 grant. Signed Horizon 2020 grants are published there, so the record does not show that a Med-Ximofilm grant agreement was ever signed, and no amount, start date or report exists. The business data service CB Insights lists a "Grant - II" from the EIC Accelerator dated 5 June 2019, the cut-off date, but no amount. CPI's website says only that Ximofilm was "developed with support from the EU Horizon 2020 research programme".

The product itself did reach the market in some form. In a news item posted in July 2026, CPI announced that its Ximofilm liner is "now available for medical-grade release applications". Its release liner page says the liner is made in a Class 1000 cleanroom on a 2,000 mm machine called Bluemach and lists acrylic and silicone adhesives as compatible. The same site's FAQ says Ximofilm "has been validated with acrylic pressure-sensitive adhesives", which leaves the silicone-adhesive case, the whole point of the medical version, without a stated validation. The Plasmalex page names customers only by sector: PU casting, film wrapping and transfer printing. No medical device maker, dressing producer or certification has been named.

1. Medical-grade liner on the marketPartlyAnnounced by CPI in 2026; no independent confirmation.
2. Compatibility with silicone adhesivesPartlyProduct page says yes; FAQ cites acrylic validation only.
3. Silicone contamination below 10 ng/cm²UnverifiedCompany cites "certified" lab tests, not published.
4. €2.0 per m², 30% below rivalsUnverifiedNo price is published.
5. Named medical customersNot achievedNone announced by CPI or a third party.
6. Phase 2 project recordMissingNo grant agreement or report on CORDIS.

The Money

CPI has made losses in every year for which accounts are public. Its revenue was €249,534 in the financial year to September 2019, the first after it moved its year end from June to September, and peaked at €1,675,202 a year later; it then fell to €142,090 in 2022 and recovered to €608,681 in 2025. The net loss stayed between €1.05 million and €1.85 million each year, and reached €1,567,716 in 2025, according to the filed accounts in the INPI ratios dataset and the state company search. The losses from 2019 to 2025 add up to €10,244,649.

The same dataset puts CPI's equity ratio at minus 29.8% in 2024 and minus 88.1% in 2025: on the filed balance sheets, liabilities exceeded assets. The registered share capital has been cut and raised again several times. BODACC notices show it at €2,220,780 in June 2017, €820,000 in January 2018, €2,000,000 in December 2018, €3,110,000 in September 2021, €1,685 in February 2022 and €685,000 in March 2024. No outside funding round has been announced; who put in the money is not stated in the notices.

1. Jan 2018
   Capital cut to €820,000From €2,220,780 in June 2017
2. Dec 2018
   Raised to €2,000,000After the Phase 1 study
3. Jun 2020
   Two notices: €150,000 and €2,000,000Published the same day
4. Sep 2021
   Raised to €3,110,000Plasmalex now president
5. Feb 2022
   Cut to €1,685Down from €3,110,000
6. Mar 2024
   Raised to €685,000Latest capital noticelatest

CPI is not among the roughly 315 companies in the EIC Fund portfolio, which is consistent with a grant-only award. The Commission's June 2019 list gives its town as Peynier, although CPI had moved its registered office to Fuveau in September 2018, according to the BODACC notice of the transfer.

Why Europe Should Care

Medical adhesives and wearables depend on liners that do not contaminate what they protect. CPI's own pitch is that conventional liners rely on silicone, which can migrate, or on fluorinated PFAS chemistry, which faces regulatory phase-outs. The EU is moving to restrict fluorinated PFAS chemicals as a group: ECHA's risk assessment committee adopted its opinion backing a universal PFAS restriction on 3 March 2026, and the socio-economic committee agreed a draft opinion on 11 March 2026, with the Commission to draft the final rule afterwards, according to LexisNexis and Linklaters. CPI now markets Ximofilm as a PFAS-free option made in France with a dry, solvent-free process. Whether that makes CPI a supplier of scale depends on customers it has not named.

The Verdict

Credit is due for the technology: CPI turned a 2018 feasibility study into a patented coating that it says runs at industrial scale, and it keeps winning places in EU research consortia. What cannot be checked is whether the EIC money for Med-Ximofilm was ever paid, and how much of the medical promise has been tested by a buyer. CPI and Plasmalex were not asked for comment for this article, which is based on public records and published statements linked throughout.