Researchers seek to speed up discovery and development of new materials

Advances in materials science were reported at an international conference in Boston. A director of FAPESP was one of the coordinators of the event.

By Elton Alisson

Agência FAPESP – A group of more than 6,200 researchers and graduate students in physics, chemistry, engineering, mathematics and biology, among other fields, from several countries, including Brazil, met between November 30 and December 5 in Boston (USA) to discuss the latest advances in materials science and engineering.

They attended the MRS Fall Meeting held by the Materials Research Society (MRS), a U.S.-based international organization of more than 16,000 researchers in materials science from 80 countries.

The annual meeting’s technical program included 52 symposia on five themes: biomaterials, nanomaterials, electronics and photonics, energy and sustainability, and theory and modeling.

José Arana Varela, CEO of FAPESP and a full professor at São Paulo State University (UNESP), Araraquara campus, was one of the 2014 MRS Fall Meeting Chairs, alongside Husam Alshareef, from King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (Saudi Arabia); Amit Goyal, from Oak Ridge National Laboratory (USA); Gerardo Morell, from Universidad de Puerto Rico; and In Kyeong Yoo, from the Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology (South Korea).

“The meeting featured more than 6,000 presentations, with over 3,300 oral presentations and nearly 3,000 poster presentations,” Varela said. Several of the presentations were made by researchers and graduate students from the Center for Research and Development of Functional Materials (CDFM), one of the Research, Innovation and Dissemination Centers (RIDCs) supported by FAPESP.

Among the leading scientists in attendance was Hiroshi Amano, a professor at Nagoya University (Japan) and a 2014 Nobel Laureate in Physics for his research on light-emitting diodes (LEDs).

Amano led a tutorial for undergraduate and graduate students on materials and devices for optoelectronics (the study and application of electronic devices that source, detect and control light).

The plenary session that opened the meeting was led by Hyuk Chang, the director of the Materials Research Center at the Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology and Senior Vice President of the South Korean technology company.

In his presentation, Chang noted that materials discovered in recent decades have led to the development of a variety of electronic devices, including LCD displays and cell phones with rechargeable batteries using lithium oxide or organic electrolytes.

In the present era of digital and information technology, however, innovation in electronic materials is falling behind the device revolution, Chang said.

In his opinion, it is therefore necessary to synchronize the process of developing technologies to produce new materials with advances in electronic devices, while stepping up the search for materials that meet today’s technological requirements, such as organic semiconductors, inorganic nanomaterials, and optical film materials for display devices.

Varela explained, “The idea behind inviting Hyuk Chang to deliver the plenary address was to discuss the strategies adopted by major players in the electronics industry to create or innovate in devices and other products.”

Materials Genome Initiative

The Materials Genome Initiative (MGI) was launched by the United States government in 2012 with the aim of doubling the speed at which new advanced materials are discovered, developed and manufactured.

Details of the MGI, funded by the Departments of Energy and Defense, the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), were presented during the event by representatives of the institutions involved at a roundtable session entitled “Symposium X.”

“We brought representatives of the MGI to the event in order to discuss its goals with the materials science and engineering research community,” Varela said.

Inspired by the Human Genome Project, which helped to speed up the effort to identify and decipher the basic building blocks of the human genetic code, the MGI funds the development of computational tools, software, new methods for material characterization and open standards and databases that will make the process of discovering and developing advanced materials faster, less expensive, and more predictable.

The U.S. government has so far invested over $250 million in the MGI, funding new R&D centers and centers of excellence in innovation to develop advanced materials in emerging fields, such as biomaterials, organic photovoltaic materials, advanced ceramics, and novel polymer and metal alloys for structural applications.

The initiative supports projects involving more than 500 scientists in universities, research institutions, companies and national laboratories across the United States, according to the MGI representatives who attended the meeting.

According to Varela, “One of the initiative’s goals is to foster the integration of researchers who do experimental work with the theoretical scientists who perform simulations with materials and engineers in business organizations so that they can work on the same project in real time. This should speed up the development of new materials and technologies. The idea is for all the players to work together.” He added, “Of course, many of the projects may not come to fruition, but even so, they will contribute to advances in materials science and engineering by increasing our knowledge in the field.”

According to expert estimates, the time lag between the discovery of advanced materials and their use in commercial products can be 20 years or more when research is conducted in a non-integrated manner. For example, the lithium ion batteries now ubiquitous in laptops and many other portable electronic devices were first proposed in the mid-1970s but did not become widely used until the late 1990s.