Article preview

Table

Chemicals & Advanced
Materials                       2009       2010     QX-QX 2011

Top U.S. R&D Expenditures              Millions, U.S. $

Dow Chemical                   X,XXX.X     XXX.X      X,XXX.X
DuPont                         X,XXX.X   X,XXX.X      X,XXX.X
XM Co.                         X,XXX.X   X,XXX.X      X,XXX.X
PPG Industries                   XXX.X     XXX.X        XXX.X
Goodyear Tire & Rubber           XXX.X     XXX.X        XXX.X
Honeywell - Advanced             XXX.X     XXX.X        XXX.X
 Materials (e)
ALCOA                             XXXX     XXX.X        XXX.X
Huntsman International LLC       XXX.X     XXX.X        XXX.X
Eastman Chemical Co.             XXX.X     XXX.X        XXX.X
Air Products & Chemicals         XXX.X     XXX.X         XX.X

Source: Battelle/R&D Magazine and Company Information;
(e) = estimated

Full article

The development of new and advanced materials is often the driver for other industries, such as those involving semiconductors, composites, thin films and coatings, medical devices, chemical and environmental processes, energy systems, and biopharmaceutical products. R&D for these materials involves developing new characteristics, properties, processing capabilities, and entirely new chemical families that could create whole new industries.

Added recently to this list of research priorities is the creation of alternative sources or processes to adjust for naturally or artificially diminishing supplies of materials for existing essential products. The case in point is China's recent export limits on rare earth metals for politically motivated reasons--to maintain supplies for local industries and to limit development of competitive non-Chinese manufacturers.

Sole Source Problems

Rare earth metals, such as lanthanum, cerium, praseodymium, neodymium, samarium, europium, terbium, dysprosium, and yttrium are essential materials used in state-of-the-art magnets, batteries, lighting-based phosphors, and for national defense applications. Product developers spent billions of dollars and tens of years on these products whose performance relies on the incorporation of rare earth metals. The majority of these metals are currently mined in China, following the closure of alternative non-Chinese sources over the past XX years due to Chinas significantly lower-cost structures. Several federal R&D programs, mostly at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) have been established to address the component, end-use, economic, and technology innovation stages of rare earth metals. These programs range from basic research to large-scale technology deployment and span the entire innovation pipeline. In FY2010, for example, the DOE's Office of Science and the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) provided $XX million for research on rare earth metals and possible substitutes for magnets. ARPA-E spent another $XX million on next-generation battery technologies that do not require rare earth metals. In the industrial sector, closed non-Chinese rare earth mines are being re-opened; however, the environmental requirements for operating these mines have increased since they closed, making additional R&D and capital expenditures necessary to develop new and improved processing programs.

The European Union (EU) and countries including Japan, South Korea, Australia, and Canada, have instituted active R&D programs associated with rare earth metals sourcing. These programs include substitution research; increased material efficiency programs; use of renewable materials; processes for recycling depleting materials; the study of consumption patterns; in-depth studies of rare earth metallurgy, properties, and basic chemical sciences; and the development of innovative mining processes. For its part, China has further prohibited foreign involvement in rare earth mining, created rare earth production quotas, and placed a moratorium on new rare earth mining permits. China also briefly curtailed all rare earth production to maintain high pricing levels when the mid-2011 economic slowdown reduced demand for the materials.

Nanotech Opportunities

Nanotechnology and its applications continue to pervade all industrial applications, with biomedical applications beginning over the past two years. The Alliance for Nanotechnology in Cancer of the National Cancer Institute (NCI), for example, recently created a public-private industry partnership--Translation of Nanotechnology in Cancer, or TONIC--to promote translational R&D opportunities of nanotechnology-based cancer solutions. An immediate consequence of this effort is the formation of a consortium involving government and pharmaceutical and biotech companies. This consortium will evaluate promising nanotech platforms and facilitate their successful translation from academic research to clinical environment, resulting in safe, timely, effective, and novel diagnoses and treatment options.

Continued research investments by more than XX agencies of the U.S. government are led by the DOE ($XXX million), NIH ($XXX million), NSF ($XXX million), DOD ($XXX million), and NIST ($XXX million) accounting for nearly XX% of the total $X.XX billion proposed for FY2012. These investments are spread out over the study of fundamental phenomena and processes (XX%), nanomaterials (XX%), nanoscale devices (XX%), instrumentation research (X%), nanomanufacturing (X%), facilities (X%), environmental (X%), and education (X%).

The National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI) oversees the guidance and monitoring of these investments. In FY2011 and again in the FY2012 budget, the Obama administration identified three signature initiatives as deserving increased R&D funding--nanotechnology for solar energy collection and conversion ($XXX million in R&D funding in FY2012), sustainable nano manufacturing ($XX million), and nanoelectronics for 2020 and beyond ($XX million).

As a small part of the last initiative, the Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC) recently joined with the NSF to announce $XX million in funding for nanoelectronics research. The goal of this research is to discover and develop a new switching mechanism using nanoelectronic innovations as a replacement for the current transistor. Along with XX interdisciplinary research teams at XX participating U.S. universities, the following companies will participate in this program: Global Foundries, IBM, Intel, Micron Technology, and Texas Instruments. These companies assign researchers to interact with the university teams. Such interaction will be instrumental for the Nanoelectronics Research Initiative to reach its goal of demonstrating feasibility in simple circuits during the next five to XX years.

Additional Avenues

The NSF recently expanded its Materials Research Science and Engineering Centers (MRSEC) with the addition of centers at Columbia University (nanoscale composites), the University of Texas at Austin (metal oxides), and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (polymers). These combine with nine existing NSF-sponsored MRSECs that focus on such areas as spintronics, liquid crystals, and programmable assembly of soft matter to foster active materials research collaborations among universities, international collaborators, industry, and national labs. These centers are designed to promote next-generation materials and phenomena for national needs in sustainability and innovation.

These and other research initiatives provide continuing support for strong U.S. materials science innovations. As an indicator of that excellence, the latest Thomson Reuters ranking that identifies the world's top materials scientists lists XX U.S. researchers. The ranking is based on those scientists who achieved the highest citation impact scores for their articles and reviews over the past XX years. U.S. researchers accounted for eight of the top XX materials scientists in this study and XX of the top XX.

Though the U.S. dominates in the criteria of this particular ranking, its overall share of all materials science publications has dropped from XX% in the early 1980s to XX% now, according to Thomson Reuters studies. China has grown from insignificance in 1981 with less than XX papers published, to become the largest single-country producer, overtaking Japan and the U.S., and currently challenging the combined output of the EU-XX group of well-established European research economies.

Chemicals & Advanced
Materials                       2009       2010     QX-QX 2011

Top U.S. R&D Expenditures              Millions, U.S. $

Dow Chemical                   X,XXX.X     XXX.X      X,XXX.X
DuPont                         X,XXX.X   X,XXX.X      X,XXX.X
XM Co.                         X,XXX.X   X,XXX.X      X,XXX.X
PPG Industries                   XXX.X     XXX.X        XXX.X
Goodyear Tire & Rubber           XXX.X     XXX.X        XXX.X
Honeywell - Advanced             XXX.X     XXX.X        XXX.X
 Materials (e)
ALCOA                             XXXX     XXX.X        XXX.X
Huntsman International LLC       XXX.X     XXX.X        XXX.X
Eastman Chemical Co.             XXX.X     XXX.X        XXX.X
Air Products & Chemicals         XXX.X     XXX.X         XX.X

Source: Battelle/R&D Magazine and Company Information;
(e) = estimated

Chemicals & Advanced Materials

          Global        U.S.

2009      $XX.XX       $X.XX
2010      $XX.XX       $X.XX
2011      $XX.XX       $X.XX
2012      $XX.XX       $X.XX

Source: Battelle, R&D Magazine

Note: Table made from bar graph.

Key Materials Technology Development
Areas by 2014

Nanomaterials                XX%
Composites                   XX%
Photovoltaics                XX%
Biomaterials                 XX%
Thin films/coatings          XX%
Energy-efficient processes   XX%
Optical/photonics            XX%
Polymers/plastics            XX%
Ceramics                     XX%
Superconductors              XX%

Source: Battelle, R&D Magazine Survey