Towards Materials Sustainability through Materials Stewardship

Towards Materials Sustainability through Materials Stewardship

Materials sustainability requires a concerted change in philosophy across the entire materials lifecycle, orienting around the theme of materials stewardship. In this paper, we address the opportunities for improved materials conservation through dematerialization, durability, design for second life, and diversion of waste streams through industrial symbiosis.

Towards systems materials engineering.

Materials science has evolved over the past decades so that there is now an increasing need for efforts from the various subfields of materials science and engineering to come together to solve grand challenges. Such issues were discussed at a symposium on energy at the Collège de France1 that involved both the socio-economical stakes as well as the technological challenges. Indeed, nowhere has...

Towards ultra-stiff materials: Surface effects on nanoporous materials

Molecular materials – towards quantum properties

Both artificial as well as natural atoms have been proposed as quantum objects in the realisation of quantum information schemes. As a result of their confinement, electrons in both natural atoms and in quantum dots, so-called artificial atoms, are characterized by the formation of discrete energy levels. Similarly, in the case of a Josephson junction, Cooper pairs are confined in the potential...

Biomimetics: materials fabrication through biology.

M multicellular organisms produce hard tissues such as bones, teeth, shells, skeletal units, and spicules (1). These hard tissues are biocomposites and incorporate both structural macromolecules (lipids, proteins, and polysaccharides) and minerals of, perhaps, 60 different kinds, including hydroxyapatite, calcium carbonate, and silica. A number of single-celled organisms (bacteria and algae) al...