Grand Challenges in Translational Materials Research
Grand Challenges in Translational Materials Research
复制标题
转化材料研究的巨大挑战
作者：
K. Kordas
现代社会的技术进步是由材料合成、设计和应用方面的创新发现和部署推动的。因此，能够彻底改变人类文明发展的“翻译材料”研究起着至关重要的作用。因此，一个关键的推力，应该面向开发新颖，创新和实用的解决方案，以应对挑战（Hayden, 2014）。对更小、更好、更强、更轻、更耐用和更高效的工具和设备的持续需求，往往具有复杂的功能，这需要一种新的方法来使用先进的材料和设计。虽然材料研究是一个相当广泛的科学和技术领域，包括从生物技术到电子学和信息技术的各个学科，但使转化材料研究特别重要的是思考和回答一个问题的方式：我们如何将进步转化为商业化？显然，这不是科学家在研究新课题时首先考虑的问题。也许在发现的时候，还没有技术将理论应用于实践，或者将实验室实验扩大到试点或工业生产。然而，伟大的发明和发现将会找到方法，这就是我们应该在材料前沿的转化材料科学部分做出贡献。历史上，最重要的人造材料是用于建筑、运输、武器和服装等领域的材料，玻璃、陶瓷及其复合材料、金属合金和天然纤维材料等材料的制造受到了很大的重视。后来，在20世纪，物理学、化学和生物学的革命性成果导致了现代材料科学的诞生，并让我们建立了一些工业，没有这些工业，我们就无法想象我们今天的生活。这种发展为食品和制药工业以及电子和信息技术提供了正确的推动力，发挥了关键作用。后两者的迅速发展是前所未有的，因为第一个晶体管是在1947年制造的，而今天半导体行业的年总收入超过3000亿美元，为各种电器提供零部件。
Technological progress in our modern society is driven by discovery and deployment of innovation in materials synthesis, design, and application. As such, research related to “Translational Materials,” which are capable of revolutionizing the growth of our civilization play pivotal roles. A key thrust, therefore, should be geared toward the development of novel, innovative, and practical solutions that tackle challenges (Hayden, 2014). The continuous demand for having smaller, better, stronger, lighter, more durable, and efficient tools and devices often with complex functionalities requires a novel approach to advanced materials and design. While materials research is a rather broad field of science and technology, encompassing various disciplines ranging from biotechnology to electronics, and information technology, what makes translational materials research particularly important is the way of thinking and answering a question: How can we translate advances and move ahead toward commercialization? Obviously, it is not the first question what a scientist considers when working on a new topic. Maybe at the time of discovery, there is no technology yet to implement the theory in practice or to scale up a laboratory experiment to a pilot or industrial production. However, great inventions and discoveries shall and will find the way and this is what we ought to contribute to in our Translational Materials Science section of Frontiers in Materials. Historically, the most important man-made materials were those used in construction, transportation, weapons and clothing, etc., putting much weight on the manufacturing of materials such as glasses, ceramics and their composites, metal alloys, and fibrous materials of natural origin. Later, in the twentieth century, the revolutionary results in physics, chemistry, and biology led to the birth of modern materials science, and let us build industries without which we cannot imagine our life as we know it today. Such development has played a key role by providing right impetus to food and pharmaceutical industries, as well as to electronics and information technology. The extremely rapid development of these latter two is unprecedented considering that the first transistor was made in 1947, and the semiconductor industry today has total annual revenue of more than 300 billion USD1 supplying components and parts for all kinds of electrical appliances.