Materials Technology Workgroup
Group co-leaders: Prof. Rüdiger IDEN, BASF, Dr. Paul-Joel DERIAN, Rhodia
Contact: franco.speroni@eu.rhodia.com
The discovery of new materials with tailored properties and the ability to process them are both significant rate-limiting steps to new business development in many industry sectors. The demands of tomorrow’s technology translate directly into increasingly rigorous demands on the chemicals and materials involved: their intrinsic properties, their cost, their processing and fabrication, and their ability to be recycled or reused efficiently.
Converging with the various demand for increased performance are a group of new technologies and approaches that offer more rapid new materials discovery, better characterisation, more direct molecular-level control of their properties and more reliable design and simulation.
There is also a need for enhanced identification of opportunities, in close co-operation with partner industries down the chemicals value chain, and to co-ordinate and enhance public-private research to ensure strategic research programmes are in place that avoid fragmentation and duplication of effort.
This meeting and merging of market demand and innovative technology development will create many opportunities for new enterprises in the materials sector including new high technology leaders. Moreover, innovation in this area will drive many innovative, high-value applications in larger downstream industries.