Micronal was originally engineered by BASF for gypsum board and plaster and has been used in commercial buildings for two decades, according to Alexium. It joined Alexium's portfolio through the December 2025 acquisition of Microtek Laboratories and is now manufactured in the United States.

Alongside the market introduction, Alexium is opening a co-development program for phase change material-based thermal energy storage aimed at cooling ride-through and peak-load challenges in data centers.

Alexium says its microencapsulated materials can be incorporated into wallboard, plaster, aerated concrete, ceiling cassettes and architectural coatings. Each microcapsule contains a proprietary core within a cross-linked shell. When temperatures rise above the selected melt point, the core melts and absorbs heat. As the space cools, the material re-solidifies and releases that stored heat.

The company gives the example of a 15 mm gypsum board containing 3 kg/m² of Micronal. According to Alexium, the board stores approximately 330 kJ/m² at its switching point, comparable to the heat-storage capacity of roughly 9 cm of concrete, while using standard furring and screws.

Alexium also reports testing the capsules through 10,000 thermal cycles, which it describes as equivalent to approximately 30 years of daily use, with no notable performance change. These are company-reported material and test claims, rather than a guarantee of whole-facility cooling performance.

The materials provide a finite buffer: they store heat rather than remove it. Their role is to slow a room's temperature rise and recharge after cooling returns. Alexium says they are intended to work alongside chilled-water storage and uninterruptible power supply-backed fans and pumps, not replace those systems.

In support spaces such as electrical, UPS, battery and telecommunications rooms, network operations centers and offices, Alexium proposes board and plaster with switching points of 23-26 °C. The aim is to moderate daily temperature peaks and help maintain a narrower temperature range during an outage.

For data hall walls and ceilings, the company proposes selecting a grade above the normal cold-aisle temperature. Its example is a 26-28 °C switching point for a 24 °C setpoint. In that configuration, the material is intended to remain charged during normal operation and absorb heat if cooling is lost, adding time for mechanical cooling to restart.

Prefabricated, modular and edge facilities are a third target. Alexium says phase change material-loaded panels can add heat-storage capacity to lightweight construction without the mass associated with a comparable concrete structure.

Alexium is inviting developers, mechanical, electrical and plumbing engineering firms, cooling and thermal-storage equipment manufacturers, and board and ceiling manufacturers into the program. Its materials can be formulated into slurries, plates and cassettes with customized melt points for active thermal storage. The broader portfolio spans melt points from 6 to 43 °C.

"Alexium’s suite of PCMs are designed to meet these challenges and now vertically integrated for global manufacturing & distribution. We're putting it in front of the developers, engineers and manufacturers who are building the data center & AI campuses of the next decade," said Billy Blackburn, Alexium CEO and managing director.

Randall Lane, Alexium chief operating officer, said the microencapsulation platform allows the company to tune melt points to individual rooms and storage applications, including a 26 °C grade for a data hall envelope or a custom grade for a chilled-water loop.

"That's the conversation we want to have with engineers and OEMs now, while these facilities are still on the drawing board," Lane said.

Technical data, test references and data center application briefs are available from Alexium. Through Microtek Laboratories, the company supplies microencapsulated phase change materials, formulated coatings and related technologies for building products and other markets.

The initiative creates a potential application for microencapsulation and thermal additives in architectural coatings, while highlighting the need to distinguish material heat-storage capacity from verified building-system performance.