Materials technology and the materials industry: A critical transition

Abstract

World events are rapidly restructuring our materials industry. Transitions in research and development, education, the organization of corporations, and world economics affect our personal and professional lives. Evidence of change and the forces that produce it are omnipresent. The strategies for the materials industry to prosper in the new world order are not obvious. The sources of funding that have been the traditional basis for the advancement of materials are now in question. Small independent companies, which once had active materials development programs, find it difficult to undertake such efforts in the present economic climate. The way in which corporations and countries compete in the world is the foremost challenge that our industry faces in the 1990s. Partnerships between U.S. industry and national laboratories are finally becoming a reality and have the potential to make progress in our industry more rapid. Even partnerships between U.S. companies and institutions in the former Soviet Union are being realized! If we are able to restructure the way we fund and do research, the opportunities to advance materials science and engineering are endless. On the horizon is theEngineered Materials Age, in which we will be able to put together, in some instances atom-by-atom, materials that are lighter, stronger, more conductive, more resilient, and smarter and some that have “memories.”