Works In Progress’ Post

Works In Progress reposted this

View profile for Carlos Stelling, graphic

International Business Development Manager at Meyer Seals Group®-The SEALutions company® | Supply Chain Management/Logistics, Business & Economics | All views expressed are my own

"I’m writing these words using plastic keys, on a composite wood desk, looking at a Gorilla Glass screen. The screen is linked to a machined-aluminum computer, inside of which doped silicon switches on and off a billion times per second. One hundred and fifty years ago, not a single one of these materials existed. Materials are not charismatic technologies like cars or computers. Yet they enable almost every one of humanity’s technical achievements". Thought-provoking yet long article on the many challenges faced by scientists, engineers and manufacturing/operations specialists when attempting to scale-up the production of innovative materials. The information or details mentioned help to better understand the scope of such challenges and why such endeavors often fail or do not reach their ultimate goal. Getting materials out of the lab by Benjamin Reinhardt (X: @Ben_Reinhardt) Works In Progress "Most of a material’s downstream users demand some level of certification. The engineers and lawyers at companies using a material require different levels of rigor based in large part on performance demands and the consequences of failure: military aircraft have more stringent requirements than decorative fence posts. Higher-margin applications almost always require more certifications (and thus much more cost and time to do the testing). This creates a tension for both large companies and start-ups commercializing new materials." "The search for a cost-effective use case leaves many new materials in a chicken-and-egg situation: entrepreneurs and companies can’t justify the expense of scaling because there isn’t an obviously valuable application – but that application can’t emerge without a cost-effective material that can be experimented with." "The drive to focus on new discoveries over improving old ones’ capacity to scale, combined with the difficulty of mimicking real-world conditions in a lab, creates initial experiments that bear little resemblance to how people use a material in the real world." "To some extent, new materials are a victim of the success of material sciences. Companies and researchers have spent more than 100 years systematically working to discover, optimize, and scale new materials. Today’s materials and processes are much harder to surpass than those of the early twentieth century." "Wright’s law – the consistent decreasing production cost of a technol­ogy with the number of units built – requires time to work its magic. But new materials are expensive. Even if the material could eventually unlock amazing applications when its cost crosses a certain threshold, will it survive long enough to get there if there isn’t demand at a high price point?" "One reason for optimism is that new materials might already be on the horizon. There is a shockingly consistent timescale for materials to become useful beyond their initial niches."

Getting materials out of the lab - Works in Progress

Getting materials out of the lab - Works in Progress

worksinprogress.co

To view or add a comment, sign in

Explore topics