Faster: Accelerating the Transition from Materials Discovery to Commercial Deployment

King, Alexander

Faster: Accelerating the Transition from Materials Discovery to Commercial Deployment

File

IS_J_9985.pdf (242.73 KB)

Date

2018-12-07

Authors

King, Alexander

Authors

Person

King, Alexander

Professor Emeritus

Organizational Units

Organizational Unit

Ames National Laboratory

Ames National Laboratory is a government-owned, contractor-operated national laboratory of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), operated by and located on the campus of Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa.

For more than 70 years, the Ames National Laboratory has successfully partnered with Iowa State University, and is unique among the 17 DOE laboratories in that it is physically located on the campus of a major research university. Many of the scientists and administrators at the Laboratory also hold faculty positions at the University and the Laboratory has access to both undergraduate and graduate student talent.

Organizational Unit

Materials Science and Engineering

Materials engineers create new materials and improve existing materials. Everything is limited by the materials that are used to produce it. Materials engineers understand the relationship between the properties of a material and its internal structure — from the macro level down to the atomic level. The better the materials, the better the end result — it’s as simple as that.

Department

Ames National LaboratoryMaterials Science and Engineering

Abstract

The Challenge

According to popular wisdom, it takes 20 years or more to commercialize a material after its discovery in the lab, and this is used to justify all sorts of research efforts to speed up the process. The twenty-year rule was probably first introduced by Tom Eagar, in a paper in MIT’s Technology Review [1] that cites nine examples of 20-year gaps between discovery and commercialization, over a time period from the mid-nineteenth to the late twentieth century. Others have added to the list.