Overview
From semiconductors in computer chips to plastics in everyday objects, materials are everywhere. Knowing how to synthesize and process them, as well as understanding their structure and properties, has helped shape the world around us. Materials science contributes to the development of stronger, lighter materials that improve devices as varied as battery electrodes, medical implants, automobiles, and spacecraft.
Broadly speaking, materials science and engineering research focuses on four major activities: (1) studying the structure of materials to understand how they are composed and organized from atomic to macroscopic scales, (2) verifying the properties of materials, such as their conductivity, strength, and elasticity, (3) analyzing and benchmarking how materials perform in specific situations, and (4) assessing how materials can be fabricated and manufactured.
KEY DEVELOPMENTS
- Flexible electronics involves the creation of electrical devices that can bend, stretch, and deform without compromising their performance. Such electronics can be used as wearable, skin-like devices. For instance, a “smart bandage” with integrated sensors to monitor wound conditions and provide electrical stimulation can reduce the time needed to heal chronic wounds by 25 percent.
- Additive manufacturing, or 3-D printing, is one of the most promising advances in materials processing over the past fifteen years. The technology comes in different forms. For instance, a method known as continuous liquid interface production uses directed ultraviolet light to form structures from a polymer resin.
- Nanotechnology studies how properties of nanoscale materials—including their electronic, optical, magnetic, thermal, and mechanical properties— differ from the same materials in bulk form.
- Batteries can be improved through better materials that are safer, longerlasting, and more cost-effective than current materials. Obstacles to progress remain in achieving higher energy storage levels and faster charging speeds— as well as reducing manufacturing costs—while ensuring safety and reliability.
- Electrocatalysis uses catalysts to speed up electrochemical reactions critical for water splitting, fuel cells, and carbon dioxide (CO₂) recycling. Nanomaterials are ideal electrocatalysts because of their large surface area per unit mass. Water splitting, which separates water into oxygen and hydrogen, enables hydrogen energy storage, while CO₂ electrocatalysis converts CO₂ into valuable fuels and chemicals.
- Electrochemistry examines relationships between electrical energy and chemical reactions. Electrochemical devices can generate electrical energy through a spontaneous chemical reaction (such as that which occurs in a battery) or use electrical energy to drive a chemical reaction (e.g., electrocatalysis to produce hydrogen). One electrochemistry application is the detection of biological molecules through electrical signals generated by a reaction between a biological component, such as an enzyme or antibody, and the molecule being detected. Highly sensitive, portable, and inexpensive, such sensors are ideal for medical diagnostics, environmental monitoring, and pathogen detection.
- Machine learning (ML) can address a fundamental challenge of materials science as a discipline: reviewing the vast number of materials and possible material combinations, as well as reducing the time and cost involved in their synthesis and characterization—which are the general processes through which materials’ structure and properties are ascertained through spectroscopic, microscopic, and other methods.
ML can leverage experimental and computational data on the properties of materials to identify patterns in existing data and make generalized predictions about new materials. ML results provide a time-saving starting point for further exploration, although laboratory work is still needed to validate ML informed solutions. Another application of the approach involves examining scientific literature to uncover hidden relationships that could reveal latent knowledge about materials and point to new research directions.
