Advanced materials — building blocks for tomorrow
Greenhouse gases are being emitted at a rapidly growing rate. Gases include carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons, and sulfur hexafluoride. Many of these gases come from the manufacturing industry in the creation of raw materials for the goods we use today. Materials range from a simple plastic cup to textiles to steel beams, and each material is responsible for greenhouse gas emissions at all points of its life cycle.
Material science today is focused on innovating the materials we use on a daily basis to come up with more sustainable, low cost materials. There are shifts happening to green materials at the raw material and manufacturing stage, to their applications and end-of-life impact. To understand the rationale behind materials innovation, one must dive into the life cycle of the products in question.
Advanced materials at the beginning of the life cycle
Switching to alternate technologies like sodium batteries or cobalt free batteries helps eliminate the need for certain materials such as lithium or cobalt that are found only in a select few places in the world and are available in very limited quantities. Advanced materials innovations are especially important for hard-to-abate industries like steel and cement, where the materials produced are essential in large quantities but the manufacturing processes are hard to decarbonize.
Advanced materials for the use stage
There are certain products where there are significant emissions associated with their use, such as buildings, infrastructure, vehicles, and textiles. With buildings and infrastructure, the emissions are due to the design of the construction that leads to energy inefficiency, water wastage, or heat losses. Thus, there is a need to innovate the design of the end product such that the emissions associated with its operation are minimized.
Advanced materials for the end of life stage
On the other hand, materials such as plastic pose the largest threat to environmental and human health at the end of their life, and need to be made biodegradable. Raw materials may be replaced with bio-based materials such as in textiles and packaging, to create a product that is bio-degradable at the end of its life cycle. Similarly, batteries are extremely hard to recycle once they are unfit for use, and materials innovation helps to minimize the pollution caused by improper disposal.
As the demand for materials increases with growing economies, there are many opportunities to build scalable ventures in advanced materials. Advanced materials are the need of the hour across industries such as built environment, energy, mobility, fashion, packaging and manufacturing. Depending on the stage of life cycle chosen, advanced materials can make a deep impact on the pollution and emissions caused by products.
Landscape of materials innovation
A majority of materials innovation is housed in research institutes. The focus at these institutes is to develop more new materials, instead of developing solutions to enter the market. Furthermore, R&D is limited to researchers that usually lack the capacity to turn these innovations into profitable businesses. This environment leads to groundbreaking innovations that do not get applied or reach consumers.
The biggest challenge that advanced materials face is developing industrial capacity to produce these materials on a large scale and the push to enter the market. Identifying the first customers of these products involves B2B marketing capacity, and venture studios like NOW can help bridge this gap for materials innovation startups.
NOW has narrowed down to several areas of focus for deep tech solutions that can disrupt the market. Connecting with the right solutions is crucial in filling the identified gaps in the market, and creating a deep climate impact.
