Materials Science

“New materials create fundamentally new human capabilities. And yet…new materials-enabled human capabilities have been rare in the past 50 years.” The core challenge lies in our inability to reliably design and manufacture materials that meet specific engineering requirements–and to do so at an industrial scale and reasonable cost.  Identifying promising new materials is hampered by the slow pace of exploration. The integration of machine learning, physics-based property prediction, and self-driving laboratories could dramatically accelerate this process. A significant opportunity lies in modeling the vast, unexplored space of potential materials in silico.

Crystallization is crucial for determining molecular structure, yet many molecules resist forming crystals. Improved computational models of crystal growth are needed to guide experimental efforts.

While many promising materials have been discovered in the lab, current synthesis methods are often too expensive to produce these materials in sufficient quantities. Some examples of novel materials that would be highly enabling include:  • Low activation, thermally conductive materials that are resistant to radiation damage are needed to enable fusion reactors (the first wall material is currently a limitation), spacecraft, etc. • Materials that emit at the transparency window of the atmosphere (that were easy to apply like paint) to drastically diminish solar earth heating (example) • Hyper-efficient thermoelectrics that could directly turn heat into electricity.  • Materials that autonomously heal to improve our infrastructure and prevent system failures due to material defects. • Materials that have the insulating properties and high melting points of ceramics but the formability and ductility of metals for jet engines and atmospheric reentry vehicles.

The cost of materials is often dominated by the cost to obtain their constituent elements. What presents commercially as the “critical minerals problem” masks a larger scientific bottleneck on how we acquire, concentrate, and substitute chemical elements.