The availability of resources needed to develop the next generation of materials is not guaranteed, particularly in the US, which is also facing growing competition from overseas. That is according to a new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, which calls on US government agencies to upgrade or replace key infrastructure as well as develop a national strategy to bring together research teams from academia, government and industry.
Commissioned by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Department of Energy, the report — Frontiers of Materials Research: A Decadal Survey — builds on two previous decadal surveys of the field that were published in 1990 and 2010. The latest report identifies several areas that are “critical” to the field, including computational materials science and engineering as well as digital manufacturing and materials for quantum information science. It also finds that bringing together computational methods with materials characterization and synthesis is accelerating the discovery of designer materials and their use in products.
To read more, click here.