Shaping a Sustainable Future: The Convergence of Materials Science, Critical Minerals and Technological Innovation

The National Academy of Engineering recognized the Grand Challenges in engineering for the 21^st century in 2008. These challenges encompass tasks such as ensuring access to economical solar energy, managing the nitrogen cycle, engineering the tools of scientific discovery, and other obstacles that must be overcome for humans to continue advancing. More than half of these challenges will necessitate the development and use of novel advanced materials. The question at hand is the origin of these novel elements.

Surprisingly, many everyday items have their origins in were stumbled upon by coincidence. Products like playdough, stainless steel, rubber tires, superconductors, and superglue stand as a testament to this phenomenon in engineering materials, where their defining characteristics were uncovered almost by accident. Take into account artificial sweeteners such as saccharin. In 1878, Constantin Fahlberg was diligently conducting research on coal-tar compounds. After accidentally spilling chemicals on his hands, he proceeds to find it excessively sweet. After a span of ninety years, the artificial sweetener aspartame was discovered using the same method. James Schlatter inadvertently exposed his hands to a chemical substance and subsequently chose to orally moisten his fingers in order to separate two adhered pages of a book. This incident exemplifies yet another instance of the accidental discovery of new materials for future applications.

On the other hand, critical minerals and advanced materials are very useful for many applications to support advanced technologies now and future. These innovations would provide new materials for the development of eco-friendly advanced technologies which are necessary to enhance the living standard and economic developments in the future.

How materials are discovered today?

Now, even when materials have not been discovered serendipitously. The processes and procedures for making new materials and their discoveries are needed more explored due to the complex process, composition and to achieve as products need more days to analyze the impact and their functions. Thomas Edison did not actually invent the light bulb, but he was the first person to produce it long-lasting and economical. In 1878 year, he was trying to develop a light bulb filament material that would stay lit for more than a few hours. During a two-year tour de force he tests over 6,000 different plant fibers before eventually stumbling across a carbonized bamboo that stays lit for 1,200 hours.

Presently, the Edisonian method of trial-and-error, albeit somewhat directed by fundamental design principles, remains the predominant strategy for the discovery of new materials. This approach, characterized by its reliance on extensive trial and error complemented by high-volume testing, is the mainstay of our current methodology. However, it's increasingly clear that this method falls short of what is needed. Given the formidable engineering challenges we face in critical areas such as clean energy, carbon sequestration, and medical discovery, this traditional approach appears insufficient and inadequate for addressing the complex demands of these fields.

In order to address these challenges of feeding around 8 billion individuals with the aid of contemporary fertilizers, the US Government initiated the Materials Genome Initiative in 2011 year. This initiative set a highly ambitious target including to developing and deploy new materials at twice the speed and at a fraction of the cost. Initially, the Materials Genome Initiative primarily focused on increasing the number of simulated experiments while reducing physical ones, as simulations are generally faster and less expensive. This strategy made significant progress, but it also encountered certain inherent limitations. One major issue is the time-intensive nature of calculating new material's properties, even with the most advanced supercomputers. Completing these calculations for just one property of a single compound can require more than a week of continuous computing.

Since the stone age, humanity has pursued harder materials. This is where materials informatics steps in. With support from the National Science Foundation, the Sparks Lab from the University of Utah embarked on using machine learning to identify new super-hard materials. Any candidate material must possess qualities like incompressibility and rigidity. While there were slow but reasonably accurate calculations of these properties for about 5,000 compounds, the challenge lay in the hundreds of thousands of other compounds with unknown properties. After building and validating their model, they could predict properties for any chemical composition. They tested over 100,000 compounds, including many previously incalculable due to rare earth elements or disordered structures. Impressively, these predictions were made in just 30 seconds on a standard laptop.

The success in this case illustrates the effectiveness of the applied approach. Within a span of just over six months, the team progressed from a basic understanding of super-hard materials to the discovery and confirmation of two of the hardest materials known. This achievement reflects the core goal of the Materials Genome Initiative, which is to accelerate the discovery of materials in a more efficient and cost-effective manner. The breakthrough was not due to exceptional chemistry skills but rather the strategic direction of the research.

Sustainable materials for the future

It is so important to note that almost all human activities contribute to greenhouse gas emissions driving global warming. A large portion of these emissions stems from industrial processes that subtly permeate every facet of our lives. Consider our home refrigeration and other heating and cooling systems account for about 6% of total emissions. Agriculture, crucial for food production, contributes around 18%. Electricity generation is also responsible for approximately about 27%. Stepping outside, the transportation sectors including cars, planes, trains and also other activities also give rise to around 16%. Furthermore, the production of everyday items results in substantial emissions and triggers to increasing global warming. The creation of materials such as concrete, steel, plastic, glass, and aluminum is responsible to contributed around 31% of greenhouse gas emissions and damaging the environment.

Existing technologies for example carbon dioxide capture, green energies and renewable energies and other efforts from government policies and private still lack to cover the sustainable world but their adoption is limited due to a lack of economic incentives. The costs associated with transporting and storing captured CO₂ are prohibitive. However, one company has innovated a solution by integrating captured CO₂ into the concrete itself, achieving permanent storage. Materials informatics has already proven successful in various domains, with impressive breakthroughs emerging regularly.

Consider a hypothetical situation: envision a chemical that was previously thought to be unachievable. In the movie 'Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home', the concept of 'transparent aluminum', a metal that can be seen through, was portrayed as purely fictional. Currently, there exist substances such as indium tin oxide, which maintains transparency while also functioning as a conductor of electricity like a metal. Additionally, there is aluminum oxynitride, which exhibits both the strength and stiffness of a metal while remaining completely transparent to ultraviolet, visible, and infrared light.

The integration of machine learning in the search for new materials with specific characteristics marks a significant advancement over previous methods. This shift is as transformative for humanity as the discovery of bronze, iron, steel, or silicon. As the exploration of the information age continues, the emerging field of materials informatics is beginning to reveal its vast potential. This approach, termed 'rational serendipity,' is reshaping the landscape of materials discovery.