The Boeing 787 Dreamliner elicits awe, envy, and the question “How did they do that?” It is 20 percent more fuel efficient than previous comparable airliners, its cabin is more spacious, and its windows dim with the touch of a button. Fully explaining how it was done is complex, but the first part is simple: it’s all about advanced materials. A body and wings made from a carbon fiber composite confer enhanced fuel efficiency, for example, while the windows incorporate an electrochromic gel.
Most people don’t realize that it can take 20 years or more for a newly discovered material to be incorporated into commercial products. Lithium-ion batteries were proposed in the mid-1970s but were not broadly adopted until the late 1990s. Superconductors, solar photovoltaics, and solid-state lighting emerged over similar time frames. That is far too long given the role advanced materials could play in addressing many of the nation’s most urgent needs (see “High-Speed Materials Discovery,” TR10).
Once a new material is discovered, the current best practice for tailoring it to the market is a long sequence of steps involving many repeated experiments. Each step serves a different purpose, such as property optimization or process scaling. Engineers have to grapple with and ultimately control dozens of electrical, chemical, and mechanical properties. Predictive software models could complement and in some cases replace this time-consuming experimentation, but such tools are lacking. To make matters worse, an overly proprietary and fragmented community inhibits a culture of sharing knowledge, data, and tools. As a result, good inventions lie dormant, and development cycles remain linear and slow.
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