Advanced Materials Science & Technology in China A Roadmap to 2050 7030256263, 9787030256263

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Ke Lu Lidong Chen Tianbai He Qing Yan

Advanced Materials Science & Technology in China: A Roadmap to 2050

Chinese Academy of Sciences

Ke Lu Lidong Chen Tianbai He Qing Yan

Advanced Materials Science & Technology in China: A Roadmap to 2050

With 13 figures

Editors Ke Lu

Lidong Chen

Institute of Metal Research, CAS 110016, Shenyang, China E-mail: [email protected]

Shanghai Institute of Ceramics, CAS 200050, Shanghai, China E-mail: [email protected]

Tianbai He

Qing Yan

Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry, CAS 130022, Changchun, China E-mail: [email protected]

Ningbo Institute of Material Technology & Engineering, CAS 315201, Ningbo, China E-mail: [email protected]

ISBN 978-7-03-025626-3 Science Press Beijing ISBN 978-3-642-05317-7 e-ISBN 978-3-642-05318-4 Springer Heidelberg Dordrecht London New York Library of Congress Control Number: 2009937356 © Science Press Beijing and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2010 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilm or in any other way, and storage in data banks. Duplication of this publication or parts thereof is permitted only under the provisions of the German Copyright Law of September 9, 1965, in its current version, and permission for use must always be obtained from Springer-Verlag. Violations are liable to prosecution under the German Copyright Law. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. Cover design: Frido Steinen-Broo, EStudio Calamar, Spain Printed on acid-free paper Springer is a part of Springer Science+Business Media (www.springer.com)

Not for sale outside the Mainland of China (Not for sale in Hong Kong SAR, Macau SAR, and Taiwan, and all countries, except the Mainland of China)

Editor-in-Chief Yongxiang Lu

Editorial Committee Yongxiang Lu

Chunli Bai

Erwei Shi

Xin Fang

Zhigang Li

Xiaoye Cao

Jiaofeng Pan

Research Group on Advanced Materials of the Chinese Academy of Sciences Head:

Ke Lu

Members: Qunji Xue

Lanzhou Institute of Chemical Physics, CAS

Dongliang Jiang

Shanghai Institute of Ceramics, CAS

Ke Lu

Institute of Metal Research, CAS

Lidong Chen

Shanghai Institute of Ceramics, CAS

Xiaolong Chen

Institute of Physics, CAS

Yunfa Chen

Institute of Process Engineering, CAS

Tianbai He

Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry, CAS

Guiju Liu

Bureau of High-Tech. Research and Development, CAS

Xinhou Liu

Technical Institute of Physics and Chemistry, CAS

Long Lv

Shanghai Institute of Organic Chemistry, CAS

Hongjie Luo

Shanghai Institute of Ceramics, CAS

Guanghui Ma

Institute of Process Engineering, CAS

Hui Peng

Bureau of High-Tech. Research and Development, CAS

Ruobing Tan

Institute of Metal Research, CAS

Dong Wu

Institute of Coal Chemistry, CAS

Xianhong Wang

Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry, CAS

Qing Yan

Ningbo Institute of Material Technology & Engineering, CAS

Tong Zhao

Institute of Chemistry, CAS

Roadmap 2050

Members of the Editorial Committee and the Editorial Office

*

Foreword to the Roadmaps 2050

China’s modernization is viewed as a transformative revolution in the human history of modernization. As such, the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) decided to give higher priority to the research on the science and technology (S&T) roadmap for priority areas in China’s modernization process. What is the purpose? And why is it? Is it a must? I think those are substantial and significant questions to start things forward.

Significance of the Research on China’s S&T Roadmap to 2050 We are aware that the National Mid- and Long-term S&T Plan to 2020 has already been formed after two years’ hard work by a panel of over 2000 experts and scholars brought together from all over China, chaired by Premier Wen Jiabao. This clearly shows that China has already had its S&T blueprint to 2020. Then, why did CAS conduct this research on China’s S&T roadmap to 2050? In the summer of 2007 when CAS was working out its future strategic priorities for S&T development, it realized that some issues, such as energy, must be addressed with a long-term view. As a matter of fact, some strategic researches have been conducted, over the last 15 years, on energy, but mainly on how to best use of coal, how to best exploit both domestic and international oil and gas resources, and how to develop nuclear energy in a discreet way. Renewable energy was, of course, included but only as a supplementary energy. It was not yet thought as a supporting leg for future energy development. However, greenhouse gas emissions are becoming a major world concern over

* It is adapted from a speech by President Yongxiang Lu at the rst High-level Workshop on China’s S&T Roadmap for Priority Areas to 2050, organized by the Chinese Academy of Sciences, in October, 2007.

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the years, and how to address the global climate change has been on the agenda. In fact, what is really behind is the concern for energy structure, which makes us realize that fossil energy must be used cleanly and efficiently in order to reduce its impact on the environment. However, fossil energy is, pessimistically speaking, expected to be used up within about 100 years, or optimistically speaking, within about 200 years. Oil and gas resources may be among the first to be exhausted, and then coal resources follow. When this happens, human beings will have to refer to renewable energy as its major energy, while nuclear energy as a supplementary one. Under this situation, governments of the world are taking preparatory efforts in this regard, with Europe taking the lead and the USA shifting to take a more positive attitude, as evidenced in that: while fossil energy has been taken the best use of, renewable energy has been greatly developed, and the R&D of advanced nuclear energy has been reinforced with the objective of being eventually transformed into renewable energy. The process may last 50 to 100 years or so. Hence, many S&T problems may come around. In the field of basic research, for example, research will be conducted by physicists, chemists and biologists on the new generation of photovoltaic cell, dye-sensitized solar cells (DSC), high-efficient photochemical catalysis and storage, and efficient photosynthetic species, or high-efficient photosynthetic species produced by gene engineering which are free from land and water demands compared with food and oil crops, and can be grown on hillside, saline lands and semi-arid places, producing the energy that fits humanity. In the meantime, although the existing energy system is comparatively stable, future energy structure is likely to change into an unstable system. Presumably, dispersive energy system as well as higher-efficient direct current transmission and storage technology will be developed, so will be the safe and reliable control of network, and the capture, storage, transfer and use of CO 2, all of which involve S&T problems in almost all scientific disciplines. Therefore, it is natural that energy problems may bring out both basic and applied research, and may eventually lead to comprehensive structural changes. And this may last for 50 to 100 years or so. Taking the nuclear energy as an example, it usually takes about 20 years or more from its initial plan to key technology breakthroughs, so does the subsequent massive application and commercialization. If we lose the opportunity to make foresighted arrangements, we will be lagging far behind in the future. France has already worked out the roadmap to 2040 and 2050 respectively for the development of the 3rd and 4th generation of nuclear fission reactors, while China has not yet taken any serious actions. Under this circumstance, it is now time for CAS to take the issue seriously, for the sake of national interests, and to start conducting a foresighted research in this regard. This strategic research covers over some dozens of areas with a longterm view. Taking agriculture as an example, our concern used to be limited only to the increased production of high-quality food grains and agricultural by-products. However, in the future, the main concern will definitely be given to the water-saving and ecological agriculture. As China is vast in territory, · viii ·

Advanced Materials Science & Technology in China: A Roadmap to 2050

Population is another problem. It will be most likely that China’s population will not drop to about 1 billion until the end of this century, given that the past mistakes of China’s population policy be rectified. But the subsequent problem of ageing could only be sorted out until the next century. The current population and health policies face many challenges, such as, how to ensure that the 1.3 to 1.5 billion people enjoy fair and basic public healthcare; the necessity to develop advanced and public healthcare and treatment technologies; and the change of research priority to chronic diseases from infectious diseases, as developed countries have already started research in this regard under the increasing social and environmental change. There are many such research problems yet to be sorted out by starting from the basic research, and subsequent policies within the next 50 years are in need to be worked out. Space and oceans provide humanity with important resources for future development. In terms of space research, the well-known Manned Spacecraft Program and China’s Lunar Exploration Program will last for 20 or 25 years. But what will be the whole plan for China’s space technology? What is the objective? Will it just follow the suit of developed countries? It is worth doing serious study in this regard. The present spacecraft is mainly sent into space with chemical fuel propellant rocket. Will this traditional propellant still be used in future deep space exploration? Or other new technologies such as electrical propellant, nuclear energy propellant, and solar sail technologies be developed? We haven’t yet done any strategic research over these issues, not even worked out any plans. The ocean is abundant in mineral resources, oil and gas, natural gas hydrate, biological resources, energy and photo-free biological evolution, which may arise our scientific interests. At present, many countries have worked out new strategic marine plans. Russia, Canada, the USA, Sweden and Norway have centered their contention upon the North Pole, an area of strategic significance. For this, however, we have only limited plans. The national and public security develops with time, and covers both Foreword to the Roadmaps 2050

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diversified technologies in this regard are the appropriate solutions. Animal husbandry has been used by developed countries, such as Japan and Denmark, to make bioreactor and pesticide as well. Plants have been used by Japan to make bioreactors which are safer and cost-effective than that made from animals. Potato, strawberry, tomato and the like have been bred in germfree greenhouses, and value-added products have been made through gene transplantation technology. Agriculture in China must not only address the food demands from its one billions-plus population, but also take into consideration of the value-added agriculture by-products and the high-tech development of agriculture as well. Agriculture in the future is expected to bring out some energies and fuels needed by both industry and man’s livelihood as well. Some developed countries have taken an earlier start to conduct foresighted research in this regard, while we have not yet taken sufficient consideration.

Roadmap 2050

conventional and non-conventional security. Conventional security threats only refer to foreign invasion and warfare, while, the present security threat may come out from any of the natural, man-made, external, interior, ecological, environmental, and the emerging networking (including both real and virtual) factors. The conflicts out of these must be analyzed from the perspective of human civilization, and be sorted out in a scientific manner. Efforts must be made to root out the cause of the threats, while human life must be treasured at any time. In general, it is necessary to conduct this strategic research in view of the future development of China and mankind as well. The past 250 years’ industrialization has resulted in the modernization and better-off life of less than 1 billion people, predominantly in Europe, North America, Japan and Singapore. The next 50 years’ modernization drive will definitely lead to a better-off life for 2–3 billion people, including over 1 billion Chinese, doubling or tripling the economic increase over that of the past 250 years, which will, on the one hand, bring vigor and vitality to the world, and, on the other hand, inevitably challenge the limited resources and eco-environment on the earth. New development mode must be shaped so that everyone on the earth will be able to enjoy fairly the achievements of modern civilization. Achieving this requires us, in the process of China’s modernization, to have a foresighted overview on the future development of world science and human civilization, and on how science and technology could serve the modernization drive. S&T roadmap for priority areas to 2050 must be worked out, and solutions to core science problems and key technology problems must be straightened out, which will eventually provide consultations for the nation’s S&T decision-making.

Possibility of Working out China’s S&T Roadmap to 2050 Some people held the view that science is hard to be predicted as it happens unexpectedly and mainly comes out of scientists’ innovative thinking, while, technology might be predicted but at the maximum of 15 years. In my view, however, S&T foresight in some areas seems feasible. For instance, with the exhaustion of fossil energy, some smart people may think of transforming solar energy into energy-intensive biomass through improved high-efficient solar thinfilm materials and devices, or even developing new substitute. As is driven by huge demands, many investments will go to this emerging area. It is, therefore, able to predict that, in the next 50 years, some breakthroughs will undoubtedly be made in the areas of renewable energy and nuclear energy as well. In terms of solar energy, for example, the improvement of photoelectric conversion efficiency and photothermal conversion efficiency will be the focus. Of course, the concrete technological solutions may be varied, for example, by changing the morphology of the surface of solar cells and through the reflection, the entire spectrum can be absorbed more efficiently; by developing multi-layer functional thin-films for transmission and absorption; or by introducing of nanotechnology and quantum control technology, etc. Quantum control research used to limit mainly to the solution to information functional materials. This is surely too narrow. In the ·x·

Advanced Materials Science & Technology in China: A Roadmap to 2050

In terms of computing science, we must be confident to forecast its future development instead of simply following suit as we used to. This is a possibility rather than wild fancies. Information scientists, physicists and biologists could be engaged in the forward-looking research. In 2007, the Nobel Physics Prize was awarded to the discovery of colossal magneto-resistance, which was, however, made some 20 years ago. Today, this technology has already been applied to hard disk store. Our conclusion made, at this stage, is that: it is possible to make long-term and unconventional S&T predictions, and so is it to work out China’s S&T roadmap in view of long-term strategies, for example, by 2020 as the first step, by 2030 or 2035 as the second step, and by 2050 as the maximum. This possibility may also apply to other areas of research. The point is to emancipate the mind and respect objective laws rather than indulging in wild fancies. We attribute our success today to the guidelines of emancipating the mind and seeking the truth from the facts set by the Third Plenary Session of the 11th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China in 1979. We must break the conventional barriers and find a way of development fitting into China’s reality. The history of science tells us that discoveries and breakthroughs could only be made when you open up your mind, break the conventional barriers, and make foresighted plans. Top-down guidance on research with increased financial support and involvement of a wider range of talented scientists is not in conflict with demand-driven research and free discovery of science as well.

Necessity of CAS Research on China’s S&T Roadmap to 2050 Why does CAS launch this research? As is known, CAS is the nation’s highest academic institution in natural sciences. It targets at making basic, forward-looking and strategic research and playing a leading role in China’s science. As such, how can it achieve this if without a foresighted view on science and technology? From the perspective of CAS, it is obligatory to think, with a global view, about what to do after the 3rd Phase of the Knowledge Innovation Program (KIP). Shall we follow the way as it used to? Or shall we, with a view of national interests, present our in-depth insights into different research disciplines, and make efforts to reform the organizational structure and system, so that the innovation capability of CAS and the nation’s science and technology mission will be raised to a new height? Clearly, the latter is more positive. World science and technology develops at a lightening speed. As global economy grows, we are aware that we will be lagging far behind if without making progress, and will lose the opportunity if without making foresighted plans. S&T innovation requires us to make joint efforts, break the conventional barriers and emancipate the mind. This is also what we need for further development. Foreword to the Roadmaps 2050

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future, this research is expected to be extended to the energy issue or energybased basic research in cutting-edge areas.

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The roadmap must be targeted at the national level so that the strategic research reports will form an important part of the national long-term program. CAS may not be able to fulfill all the objectives in the reports. However, it can select what is able to do and make foresighted plans, which will eventually help shape the post-2010 research priorities of CAS and the guidelines for its future reform. Once the long-term roadmap and its objectives are identified, system mechanism, human resources, funding and allocation should be ensured for full implementation. We will make further studies to figure out: What will happen to world innovation system within the next 30 to 50 years? Will universities, research institutions and enterprises still be included in the system? Will research institutes become grid structure? When the cutting-edge research combines basic science and high-tech and the transformative research integrates the cutting-edge research with industrialization, will that be the research trend in some disciplines? What will be the changes for personnel structure, motivation mechanism and upgrading mechanism within the innovation system? Will there be any changes for the input and structure of innovation resources? If we could have a clear mind of all the questions, make foresighted plans and then dare to try out in relevant CAS institutes, we will be able to pave a way for a more competitive and smooth development. Social changes are without limit, so are the development of science and technology, and innovation system and management as well. CAS must keep moving ahead to make foresighted plans not only for science and technology, but also for its organizational structure, human resources, management modes, and resource structures. By doing so, CAS will keep standing at the forefront of science and playing a leading role in the national innovation system, and even, frankly speaking, taking the lead in some research disciplines in the world. This is, in fact, our purpose of conducting the strategic research on China’s S&T roadmap.

Prof. Dr.-Ing. Yongxiang Lu President of the Chinese Academy of Sciences

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Advanced Materials Science & Technology in China: A Roadmap to 2050

CAS is the nation’s think tank for science. Its major responsibility is to provide S&T consultations for the nation’s decision-makings and to take the lead in the nation’s S&T development. In July, 2007, President Yongxiang Lu made the following remarks: “In order to carry out the Scientific Outlook of Development through innovation, further strategic research should be done to lay out a S&T roadmap for the next 20–30 years and key S&T innovation disciplines. And relevant workshops should be organized with the participation of scientists both within CAS and outside to further discuss the research priorities and objectives. We should no longer confine ourselves to the free discovery of science, the quantity and quality of scientific papers, nor should we satisfy ourselves simply with the Principal Investigators system of research. Research should be conducted to address the needs of both the nation and society, in particular, the continued growth of economy and national competitiveness, the development of social harmony, and the sustainability between man and nature. ” According to the Executive Management Committee of CAS in July, 2007, CAS strategic research on S&T roadmap for future development should be conducted to orchestrate the needs of both the nation and society, and target at the three objectives: the growth of economy and national competitiveness, the development of social harmony, and the sustainability between man and nature. In August, 2007, President Yongxiang Lu further put it: “Strategic research requires a forward-looking view over the world, China, and science & technology in 2050. Firstly, in terms of the world in 2050, we should be able to study the perspectives of economy, society, national security, eco-environment, and science & technology, specifically in such scientific disciplines as energy, resources, population, health, information, security, eco-environment, space and oceans. And we should be aware of where the opportunities and challenges lie. Secondly, in terms of China’s economy and society in 2050, we should take into consideration of factors like: objectives, methods, and scientific supports needed for economic structure, social development, energy structure, population and health, eco-environment, national security and innovation capability. Thirdly, in terms of the guidance of Scientific Outlook of Development on science and technology, it emphasizes the people’s interests and development, science and technology, science and economy, science and society, science and eco-

Roadmap 2050

Preface to the Roadmaps 2050

Roadmap 2050

environment, science and culture, innovation and collaborative development. Fourthly, in terms of the supporting role of research in scientific development, this includes how to optimize the economic structure and boost economy, agricultural development, energy structure, resource conservation, recycling economy, knowledge-based society, harmonious coexistence between man and nature, balance of regional development, social harmony, national security, and international cooperation. Based on these, the role of CAS will be further identified.” Subsequently, CAS launched its strategic research on the roadmap for priority areas to 2050, which comes into eighteen categories including: energy, water resources, mineral resources, marine resources, oil and gas, population and health, agriculture, eco-environment, biomass resources, regional development, space, information, advanced manufacturing, advanced materials, nano-science, big science facilities, cross-disciplinary and frontier research, and national and public security. Over 300 CAS experts in science, technology, management and documentation & information, including about 60 CAS members, from over 80 CAS institutes joined this research. Over one year’s hard work, substantial progress has been made in each research group of the scientific disciplines. The strategic demands on priority areas in China’s modernization drive to 2050 have been strengthened out; some core science problems and key technology problems been set forth; a relevant S&T roadmap been worked out based on China’s reality; and eventually the strategic reports on China’s S&T roadmap for eighteen priority areas to 2050 been formed. Under the circumstance, both the Editorial Committee and Writing Group, chaired by President Yongxiang Lu, have finalized the general report. The research reports are to be published in the form of CAS strategic research serial reports, entitled Science and Technology Roadmap to China 2050: Strategic Reports of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. The unique feature of this strategic research is its use of S&T roadmap approach. S&T roadmap differs from the commonly used planning and technology foresight in that it includes science and technology needed for the future, the roadmap to reach the objectives, description of environmental changes, research needs, technology trends, and innovation and technology development. Scientific planning in the form of roadmap will have a clearer scientific objective, form closer links with the market, projects selected be more interactive and systematic, the solutions to the objective be defined, and the plan be more feasible. In addition, by drawing from both the foreign experience on roadmap research and domestic experience on strategic planning, we have formed our own ways of making S&T roadmap in priority areas as follows: (1) Establishment of organization mechanism for strategic research on S&T roadmap for priority areas The Editorial Committee is set up with the head of President Yongxiang Lu and · xiv ·

Advanced Materials Science & Technology in China: A Roadmap to 2050

(2) Setting up principles for the S&T roadmap for priority areas The framework of roadmap research should be targeted at the national level, and divided into three steps as immediate-term (by 2020), mid-term (by 2030) and long-term (by 2050). It should cover the description of job requirements, objectives, specific tasks, research approaches, and highlight core science problems and key technology problems, which must be, in general, directional, strategic and feasible. (3) Selection of expertise for strategic research on the S&T roadmap Scholars in science policy, management, information and documentation, and chief scientists of the middle-aged and the young should be selected to form a special research group. The head of the group should be an outstanding scientist with a strategic vision, strong sense of responsibility and coordinative capability. In order to steer the research direction, chief scientists should be selected as the core members of the group to ensure that the strategic research in priority areas be based on the cutting-edge and frontier research. Information and documentation scholars should be engaged in each research group to guarantee the efficiency and systematization of the research through data collection and analysis. Science policy scholars should focus on the strategic demands and their feasibility. (4) Organization of regular workshops at different levels Workshops should be held as a leverage to identify concrete research steps and ensure its smooth progress. Five workshops have been organized consecutively in the following forms: High-level Workshop on S&T Strategies. Three workshops on S&T strategies have been organized in October, 2007, December, 2007, and June, 2008, respectively, with the participation of research group heads in eighteen priority areas, chief scholars, and relevant top CAS management members. Information has been exchanged, and consensus been reached to ensure research directions. During the workshops, President Yongxiang Lu pinpointed the significance, necessity and possibility of the roadmap research, and commented on the work of each research groups, thus pushing the research forward. Special workshops. The Editorial Committee invited science policy Preface to the Roadmaps 2050

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the involvement of Chunli Bai, Erwei Shi, Xin Fang, Zhigang Li, Xiaoye Cao and Jiaofeng Pan. And the Writing Group was organized to take responsibility of the research and writing of the general report. CAS Bureau of Planning and Strategy, as the executive unit, coordinates the research, selects the scholars, identifies concrete steps and task requirements, sets forth research approaches, and organizes workshops and independent peer reviews of the research, in order to ensure the smooth progress of the strategic research on the S&T roadmap for priority areas.

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scholars to the special workshops to discuss the eight basic and strategic systems for China’s socio-economic development. Perspectives on China’s sciencedriven modernization to 2050 and characteristics and objectives of the eight systems have been outlined, and twenty-two strategic S&T problems affecting the modernization have been figured out. Research group workshops. Each research group was further divided into different research teams based on different disciplines. Group discussions, team discussions and cross-team discussions were organized for further research, occasionally with the involvement of related scholars in special topic discussions. Research group workshops have been held some 70 times. Cross-group workshops. Cross-group and cross-disciplinary workshops were organized, with the initiation by relative research groups and coordination by Bureau of Planning and Strategies, to coordinate the research in relative disciplines. Professional workshops. These workshops were held to have the suggestions and advices of both domestic and international professionals over the development and strategies in related disciplines. (5) Establishment of a peer review mechanism for the roadmap research To ensure the quality of research reports and enhance coordination among different disciplines, a workshop on the peer review of strategic research on the S&T roadmap was organized by CAS Bureau of Planning and Strategy, in November, 2008, bringing together of about 30 peer review experts and 50 research group scholars. The review was made in four different categories, namely, resources and environment, strategic high-technology, bio-science & technology, and basic research. Experts listened to the reports of different research groups, commented on the general structure, what’s new and existing problems, and presented their suggestions and advices. The outcomes were put in the written forms and returned to the research groups for further revisions. (6) Establishment of a sustained mechanism for the roadmap research To cope with the rapid change of world science and technology and national demands, a roadmap is, by nature, in need of sustained study, and should be revised once in every 3–5 years. Therefore, a panel of science policy scholars should be formed to keep a constant watch on the priority areas and key S&T problems for the nation’s long-term benefits and make further study in this regard. And hopefully, more science policy scholars will be trained out of the research process. The serial reports by CAS have their contents firmly based on China’s reality while keeping the future in view. The work is a crystallization of the scholars’ wisdom, written in a careful and scrupulous manner. Herewith, our sincere gratitude goes to all the scholars engaged in the research, consultation · xvi ·

Advanced Materials Science & Technology in China: A Roadmap to 2050

To precisely predict the future is extremely challenging. This strategic research covered a wide range of areas and time, and adopted new research approaches. As such, the serial reports may have its deficiency due to the limit in knowledge and assessment. We, therefore, welcome timely advice and enlightening remarks from a much wider circle of scholars around the world. The publication of the serial reports is a new start instead of the end of the strategic research. With this, we will further our research in this regard, duly release the research results, and have the roadmap revised every five years, in an effort to provide consultations to the state decision-makers in science, and give suggestions to science policy departments, research institutions, enterprises, and universities for their S&T policy-making. Raising the public awareness of science and technology is of great significance for China’s modernization.

Writing Group of the General Report February, 2009

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and review. It is their joint efforts and hard work that help to enable the serial reports to be published for the public within only one year.

“Advanced Materials Science & Technology in China: A Roadmap to 2050” is one of the 18 fields of science and technology development strategic research that initiated by the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Materials form the milestones and the physical basis of civilization. The material science and engineering concerns the development and application of knowledge on material composition, manufacturing and machining, structure and properties, as well as the important factors during application and their interactions. With the development of the society, there are more demands of the variety of materials, higher quality, meeting the demands of all the fields, efficient usage of resources, minimization of environmental pollution etc. It is an urgent mission for the research and development of the material science and engineering. Human social economy and science and technology are blooming in the 21st century. What is the role and prospect of the material science and engineering? Where can people embody the demands of materials during the development and progress of China and human society? What changes may occur recently, and in medium- and long-term? How can the development of the material science and technology cope with and meet the demands of different fields? What is the development trend of material science and technology, and where can people get important breakthroughs? How will the research connotation of materials outspread and change? Which factors will affect the material science and technology? All the questions above are hoped to be answered in the work of “Advanced Materials Science & Technology in China: A Roadmap to 2050”. A commission including academician Ke Lu (chairman), experts of different research fields of material, and experts of management, was organized in Oct. 2007 in order to fulfill the strategic research. The outline of the strategic report was established based on the investigation of development trends of advanced materials domestic and abroad. Twelve aspects were studied individually which include metallic materials, ceramic materials, polymer materials, composite materials, energy materials, bio-medical materials, information materials, construction materials, carbon materials, environmental materials, materials surface engineering, materials analysis and evaluation technology. First manuscript of the strategic research report was finished in the

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spring of 2008 after concentrated discussion based on the individual studies. The work of strategy research of advanced materials was reported in the workshop of all the research fields in Jun. 2008. Afterwards the strategic research report was revised and completed according to the suggestions and comments of leaders and experts. Second draft of the strategic report was accomplished by Oct. 2008. During the studies of the strategy and report writing, many suggestions, supports and helps were offered by experts and leaders of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. During the collection of information and documents, Wuhan Branch of National Science Library of Chinese Academy of Sciences provided large volume of references. During the organization of the meetings, department of science and technology at Institute of Metal Research was responsible for the meeting organization and arrangement. Many thanks go to all of the people mentioned above. Along with the development of society, economy and the advancement of science and technology, material science is still active and coming with more growing point though it has long history. It was hoped to found out the important demands and renovation targets in material fields in the future, and to be beneficial to the research management through this research. However, the subjective understanding was always behind the real world, and the fascination of science is to explore the unknown. There are many branches that belong to the material science and engineering. Therefore, it is impossible for this report to cover all the fields. Meanwhile, it is very difficult to predict the development trend of material science and possible breakthroughs in medium- and longterm, due to the interdisciplinary research and the rapid progress in material science itself. Strategic research is a dynamic study, the draft of this report is inevitable to be imperfect and inaccurate due to the limitation of knowledge and time of our commission. Comments and corrections are welcome.

Research Group on Advanced Materials of the Chinese Academy of Sciences Oct. 2008

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Abstract  ĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂ 1

1

An Overview on Material Science and Engineering ĂĂĂĂĂĂ 5 1.1 Materials ClassicationĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂ 5 1.2 Basic Notions and Elements in Material Science and Engineering ĂĂĂ 6 1.3 The Roles of Materials Technology in Human SocietyĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂ 6 1.4 Milestones in MSE DevelopmentĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂ 8

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Analysis and Exposition Regarding Advanced Materials in the National ProgramĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂ 10

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The Status Quo of Material Science in ChinaĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂ 14 3.1 Basic Domestic SituationĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂ 14 3.2 Development Status of Some Kinds of MaterialsĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂ 16

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Demands Analysis of China’s Economic and Social Development on Advanced Materials ĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂ 31 4.1 Forecast of the Basic Trends in China’s Social and Economic Development ĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂ 31 4.2 The Overall Demand for MaterialsĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂ 31 4.3 The Demand Analysis and Development Status of Advanced Materials in Some Key AreasĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂ 33

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Contents

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Development Targets and Possible Breakthroughs from Now to 2050 ĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂ 60 5.1 Developing Trends Concerning Demands on Advanced Materials ĂĂĂ 60 5.2 Developing Trends Concerning Advanced Materials ĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂ 64 5.3 The Development of Content of Materials Research ĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂ 67 5.4 Core Technology ProblemsĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂ 68 5.5 Overall Development Goals of Advanced Materials in ChinaĂĂĂĂĂĂ 75 5.6 Emphasized Development Goals and Breakthroughs of Key Technologies ĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂ 76

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Roadmap of DevelopmentĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂ 114

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Policy SuggestionsĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂ 118

References ĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂ 119

Epilogue ĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂĂ 120

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Advanced Materials Science & Technology in China: A Roadmap to 2050

Materials form the milestones and the physical basis of civilization. There are many kinds of materials. With the development of society, material science and engineering has an urgent research and development mission due to the requirements of increasing materials variety and quality, meeting the different demands, efficient use of resources, minimizing the environment pollution, etc. Human civilization is labeled by materials: Old Stone Age, New Stone Age, Bronze Age, Iron Age, and Silicon Age(or Electronic Age), which indicates the great impact of materials and related techniques on the development of human society. Nowadays, materials technology is the physical base and forerunner of the transportation, energy & power, resources & environment, electronic information, agriculture and construction, aviation, national defense and military, and many important national projects. There are three mainstays in modern society: materials, energy and information. The need of social economic development on materials is wide and urgent. Demand of new materials is increasing due to the development of national core industry and high-tech. industry. Development of structural materials for energy equipments, energy storage and conversion materials is required to face the challenge of energy problem. Improvement of environment and realization of the harmonious development of human being and nature makes new demands on environmental friendly materials and environment control materials. New materials and production technology are demanded by the exhausted resources, and also the recycling of the materials is very important. Healthcare requires biomedical materials, which include medical apparatus, medical implant materials, drug control release materials and new materials for early diagnosis. Variety and high performance of the information materials are also desired. Higher and rigorous demands are to be satisfied in many key projects in the field of aeronautic and astronautic, as well as high performance weapon systems. The major trends on the demand of advanced materials are listed here in the future. The demand of variety and kinds of materials will keep increasing; materials quality, reliability and cost will be focused; demand of energy materials, bio-medical materials, and environmental materials are urgent; more functions are required besides the pursuing of higher performance; less dependent on resources and less pollution and destruction of the environment are desired. At present, the overall level of materials production and scientific research

Roadmap 2050

Abstract

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is relatively low in China and can not satisfy the demands of the economy and of social development; there exists a big disparity compared with the developed countries. Further, an independent system of materials research has not yet formed in China. China is already a large consumer of materials, and the productivity of conventional materials enhances very quickly. The output of most of the raw materials has already occupied the first place globally. However, many raw materials of high quality such as steel, aluminum, copper, cement, rubber, resin and glass still rely on import. All the traditional materials in China are now facing the problems of increasing quality, lowering cost, reducing energy consumption and upgrading, etc. Most of the new materials are imitating and only a small percent is original and possesses intellectual property rights. Material science and engineering is a discipline that concerns the materials composition, manufacture & process, structure, property and materials service behavior. Today, the major trend of the development of material science and engineering includes: research and development of nanomaterials and nanomicrostructure is listed at the top of the research strategy of materials science. Materials technology concerning about information technology, biotechnology and energy technology is developed very fast, and attracts more attention. The research of optimizing materials properties by complexification or integration of different materials emerged one after another. Characterization and measurement of microstructure, new mechanisms and technology of super precision assembly and machining become a powerful motivation for the exploration of material science. More attention is paid to computational materials. Nowadays development of economic society is facing the challenges of energy, resources, and environment. Ample attention should be given to the life cycle costs during research and application of materials, i. e. the materials should possess high performance and also should be easy for manufacturing and machining, at the same time, less dependence on resources and energy, and less pollution or destruction of environment. Therefore, the life cycle costs and control technology of the materials are the most important tasks with universality, urgency and long term view. These will also be the most important scientific problems that affect the development and modernization of our country. At present and in the future, in focusing on the whole life-cycle cost and cost-control, there are some core technology problems: (1) The prediction, design and control of usage behavior of materials: by clear understanding of relationship between structure and performance, accurate forecasts are carried out on material performance, leading to the realization of precise process-control and design; (2) Efficient recycling of material; (3) Integration of structure and function in materials; (4) Analysis and testing technique of materials. Around 2050, a complete innovation system of materials science and technology will be established in China. The whole life-cycle, cost and cost-controlling will be the most important factors guiding the research & ·2·

Advanced Materials Science & Technology in China: A Roadmap to 2050

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development and application of materials. Fundamental research, capability of new processing and equipment development will be the first class in the world. Fulfill the strategy transition from large materials country to strong materials country. The development of advanced materials can fully meet the requirement of high-technology, renewable energy sources, life & health and environmental protection. Development of the advanced materials can support and lead development of economy society. To fulfill the targets listed above, breakthroughs of material science and technology in the future may include: (1) Development of computational materials science makes it possible to systematically and accurately understand the relationship between microstructure and properties, which makes it possible for performance prediction and materials design, and to control accurately the production process. (2) Various new materials such as new energy, information, biology materials, nanomaterials, and biomimetic materials, are studied and applied. Meanwhile, the properties of the traditional materials are improved. (3) The integration of materials structure and function will be realized. Smart materials and high intelligent multi-structure composite materials will be developed. (4) Energy-efficient will be realized in production of high quality raw materials. Green preparation of materials and low-cost, high-efficiency recycling technology will be widely used. (5) Continuous near-net-shape manufacturing technology, integration of apparatus technology, intelligent controllable processing will also be widely brought into operation. (6) Service behavior including property evolution and mechanisms under extreme conditions will be understood clearly. Failure process of materials and structural device could be estimated accurately. Process of the whole life cycle could be evaluated and the damage of materials could be monitored and repaired. (7) With the development of science and technology, in-situ measurement and characterization of large volume could be realized. (8) Materials data will be improved and systematization. The whole life-cycle, cost and cost-controlling will be considered during manufacturing, design and choice of materials. A perfect materials system with Chinese feature will be established.

1.1 Materials Classification Materials are substances which possess definite structures, compositions, and properties after processing, and are applicable in consideration of their functions. The methods of material classification are numerous and vary with different scientific contexts. Materials can be categorized as structural materials which find their applications on account of mechanical and properties such as strength and ductility, and as functional materials that are applicable in terms of sonic, optical, electric, magnetic, and thermal properties. Materials can also be sorted into metallic, polymer, organic or inorganic materials on the basis of chemical composition. They can also be grouped into bulk, film, porous, particle, and fiber materials, etc. on account of the state of the material. Alternatively, materials can be classified into semiconductor, magnetic, conducting, insulating, photo permeable, super hard, high-temperature and high-strength materials in accordance with their physical properties, or categorized into energy, biomedical, environmentally-friendly, information, construction, and aerospace materials in view of their area of application. Materials can also be grouped as conventional and new materials in consideration of their stage of development. The conventional materials, such as steel, glass, cement, and concrete and so on, have been used for a long history, and techniques of materials processing are mature, yet fueled by industrial and technical motivations, material processing, quality control, and improvement of material properties are still under development. The conventional materials are named as fundamental materials due to their pivotal role in the development of the national economy. In contrast, new materials are typified by their new fabrication techniques and superior properties and by the still-developing nature in frontier researches connected to these materials.

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An Overview on Material Science and Engineering

Roadmap 2050

1.2 Basic Notions and Elements in Material Science and Engineering The discipline of material science and engineering (MSE) involves investigating the relationships that exist between chemical makeup, fabrication and processing, and microstructure and properties and material applications. The encyclopedia of material science and engineering highlights composition and structure, fabrication and processing, properties, and utilization as the four tetrahedral elements of material science and engineering. Nonetheless, some scholars propose that composition and structure are nonequivalent among the four basic elements, and thus the so-called five basic elements appeared in MSE, namely, chemical makeup, synthesis and processing, structure, property, and function.

1.3 The Roles of Materials Technology in Human Society 1.3.1 The Roles of Material Techniques in Advancing Society Materials are powerful tools in understanding and remolding Mother Nature, which have formed the basis of our civilization since the emergence of humankind. From an archaeological point of view, human civilization is labeled by materials: Old Stone Age (around 8,000 B.C.), New Stone Age (6,000–3,000 B.C.), Bronze Age, Iron Age, and Silicon Age, which indicates the great impact of materials and related techniques on the development of human society. As early as 2.5 million years ago, humans started to use stones as tools, marking the commencement of the Old Stone Age. About 10,000 years ago, the realization of stone processing into exquisite utensils and appliances designated the New Stone Age, during which clay forming was invented as a technique to produce porcelain by burning solidification. Meanwhile, fur was used to cover the human body; in particular, silk was used as a material to make clothes in China about 8,000 years ago. The application of these materials laid a material foundation for human civilization. In the New Stone Age, minerals were discovered in the quest for new stone materials, and metals such as copper and tin were extracted in the processing of earthenware articles. The process initiated the techniques of copper metallurgy, accounting for bronze implementation that marked the beginning of metal application in the Bronze Age and which became a milestone in the evolution of human civilization. Iron began to be implemented about 5,000 years ago. In the twelfth century B.C., for example, ironware was used in the east coast of the Mediterranean, and humanity entered the Iron Age. Owing to the low cost and simple metallurgical techniques that brought about heavy exploitation of iron ·6·

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minerals, the resulting ironware was widely implemented as a substitute for copperware. Thereafter application of iron tools such as the plow and hoe in 8th century B.C. lifted the productivity of human society onto a new level. The invention of the steam engine in 18th century and electric motor th in 19 century brought about another leap in developing new materials and expanding production scales. For instance, the appearance of the Bessemer converter and Martin furnace in 1856 and 1864 respectively significantly enhanced the global amount of steel production from 60 thousand tons in 1850 to 28 million tons in 1900. The progress further stimulated the development of the manufacturing and transportation industry, and resulted in a transformation from the agricultural and handicraft society into the industrial society. The invention of electronic transistors in 1906 gave rise to the emergence of radio technology and electronic computers; semiconductor transistors in 1948 brought about miniaturization and enhanced reliability and lifetime as well as other benefits such as low cost and energy conservation. The emergence of the integrated circuit, which originated from the development of silicon-based semiconductor materials, resulted in a leap in the development of electronic equipment such as computers. Laser materials, high-performance magnetic materials, and light-guiding fibers have brought about another revolution in civilization, and transformed human society from industrial society to information and knowledge society. In the 1920s, the identification of the long-chain structure of polymers instigated the age of chemically synthesized polymer materials. The raw materials for production of polymer materials has undergone evolution starting from a plant- and coal-based to an oil-based chemical industry. With the scale of contemporary plastic production the plastics industry has become a counterpart of the steel industry. The application of synthetic rubber has lead to a world on wheels, synthetic fiber transformed fashion, and synthetic resin resulted in a popular material - plastics - in our daily life. Today, composite materials contribute half of the structural weight of the new civil aircraft, Boeing 787, its matrix and reinforcement (carbon fiber) all belong to polymer materials. Polymer materials with photoelectric functions are suitable for fabricating ultra-thin semiconductor devices with low cost and good flexibility in large scales, which promotes a new industry concerning energy conservation, environmental protection, fashion, and a new economical information industry. Plastic conduits play a key role in interposed therapy, which emerged in 1970s and became equally important as internal medicine and surgery. Polymer membrane can be used for exploiting water resources and for treatment of waste water, and therefore relieves the shortage of water resources and decreases the degree of water pollution and the rainfall imbalance. Chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and membranes for agricultural uses are three main farm-oriented chemicals, of which the latter are made from polymers. Polymers also play an important role in energy applications such as solid state lighting, solar energy batteries, fuel cells, and wind power generation.

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Polymers have been symbols of modern civilization, and will develop both the economy and the harmonious development of human kind and Mother Nature. Owing to the indispensable role of materials in the development of our society, energy, information and materials are believed to be the mainstays of civilization in 21st century where materials are the basis of energy and information. In summary, in the age-old course of human history, new materials are creating and reshaping our lives. Each discovery and application of a new material enhances our power of dominating and remolding nature, and thereby significantly enhancing productivity and promoting the development of human society. From the appearance of humans until now in the 21st century, material science and technology have been developing and enhancing civilization. Materials form the milestones and the physical basis of civilization, and also increase the productivity of human society.

1.3.2 The Role of Materials in Advancing High-technology Material technologies form important components, material bases and precursors of modern high-tech. and its development. The invention of high-strength alloys, high-temperature materials, and non-metal materials created a boom in the aviation and auto industry, as did glass fiber for fiber communication, and the industrialized production of semiconductors in computer and information technologies. Today, the international competition in high-tech fields can be attributed largely to the research and development of new material technologies. Material technologies and modern science and technologies are mutually beneficial and dependent on each other. The rapid development of hightech. needs the support of new materials, while the development of precise measurement technology, electronic microscopy, and high-speed computing technology with giant storage capacity also provides powerful tools for material scientists.

1.4 Milestones in MSE Development In September 2006, JOM, sponsored by American Mineral, Metal and Material Society (TMS), which is an international organization covering all fields of MSE ranging from mineral technology and metal manufacturing to materials research on fundamentals and applications, initiated the appraisal on “Greatest Material Moments” in MSE. The Greatest Material Moments are described as the following: the events that have advanced our understanding of material science, opened up a new era for material utilization and greatly impacted the economy. From Feb 26 to Mar 1, 2007, TMS held its annual meeting in Orlando, Florida. The meeting included 4200 material scientists and engineers from 68 countries, and announced 50 and 10 greatest material moments elected by JOM. ·8·

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The top 10 moments in the time sequence are: 1) In 5000 B.C.(estimated), the discovery of extraction of liquid copper and molten metals from malachite and azurites and the techniques of casting them into different shapes introduces extractive metallurgy – the means of unlocking the Earth’s mineralogical treasures. 2) In 3500 B.C., Egyptians smelt iron (presumably as a byproduct of copper refining) for the first time, using small amounts mostly for ornamental or ceremonial purposes, uncovering the first manufacturing secret of what will become the world’s dominant metallurgical material. 3) In 2200 B.C., people of northwestern Iran invent glass, introducing the second great nonmetallic engineering material. 4) In 300 B.C., metal workers in south India developed crucible steel making, producing “wootz” steel which becomes famous as “Damascus” sword steel hundreds of years later, inspiring artisans, blacksmiths, and metallurgists for many generations to come. 5) In 1668, Anton van Leeuwenhoek devised an optical microscope capable of magnification of 200 times and greater, which enabled study of the natural world and its structures that are invisible for the unaided eyes. 6) In 1755, John Smeaton invented concrete that turned out to be the main construction material of the modern age. 7) In 1856, Henry Bessemer patented a bottom-blown acid process, which brought about the age of cheap, large tonnage steel, thereby enabling massive progress in transportation, building construction and general industrialization. 8) In 1864, Dmitri Mendeleev formulated the Periodic Table of Elements, providing the ubiquitous reference tool for material scientists and engineers. 9) In 1912, Max von Laue discovered the diffraction of X-ray by single crystals, which created a means to characterize crystal structures and inspired W. H. Bragg and W. L. Bragg in developing the theory of diffraction by crystals, providing insight into the effects of crystal structure on material properties. 10) In 1948, the invention of the transistor by J. Bardeen, W. H. Brattain and W. Shockley laid the foundation for all modern electronics, microchip and computer technology. The “Greatest Material Moments” reflected the fact that three aspects contribute to progress in material science and technology: discoveries of new materials, inventions of processing techniques and other advances in relation to science and technology.

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Analysis and Exposition Regarding Advanced Materials in the National Program

The following is an analysis and exposition regarding advanced materials in National Program for Medium- to Long-term Scientific and Technological Development (2006–2020): Concerning “Basic Raw Materials” stated in “Key Fields and Themes of High Priority: Manufacturing Industry”, emphasis will be laid on directions aimed at high-performance composite materials, manufacturing techniques for large- and ultra-scale component production, high-performance engineered plastics, light and high-strength metals, inorganic non-metal structural materials, high-purity materials, rare earth materials, petroleum industry, fine chemical industry, catalysis, materials for separations, materials of light spinning and weaving and green materials with environmentally-friendly and healthy functions that will meet the requirements of the national economy. In “Key Fields and Themes of High Priority: Population and Health” relating to medical apparatus and biomedical materials, the research prominence will be placed on new treatment and conventional diagnostic apparatus, digital medical technology, personal medical engineering technology and apparatuses, nanosystems for biological medicine release, new biomedical materials for substituting human organs. In “Frontier Technologies”, the development of new materials are featured by combining structural merits with functional properties, “intelligentizing” of functional materials, integrating devices and components, and green development of material fabrication and applications. To make a breakthrough in material design, evaluation, characterization and advanced processing techniques, it is stated that the development of nanomaterials and devices should be based on research into nanoscience. The development of new materials such as superconductors, intelligent materials, energy materials, materials with special functions, super structural materials and new generation photoelectric information materials are also the key themes of research. It is also exposited the key research directions in the fields of intelligent materials and structure techniques, superconducting techniques, and efficient energy

2 Analysis and Exposition Regarding Advanced Materials in the National Program

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materials and technologies. For intelligent materials and structural techniques, the priority has been given to research on fabrication and processing of intelligent materials, design of intelligent structures and their fabrication techniques, controlling key mechanisms and failure control techniques . The key themes of research into high temperature superconductors include new and high-temperature superconductors and their fabrication, superconducting cables, superconducting motors, efficient superconducting electric devices, and sensitive probing devices such as superconducting biomedical devices, superconducting wave filters, superconducting detection devices with no harm, and scanning magnetic microscopy. Key research themes in efficient energy materials and their key technologies (e.g. fabrication) were placed on research into solar energy cell materials, fuel cells materials, high-capacity hydrogen storage materials, efficient secondary battery materials, super-capacitor materials and efficient systems for energy conversion and storage. In the section of “National Mission-Oriented Fundamental Research”, it is stressed that fundamental research should make efforts to gain new principles and techniques for material design and synthesis, and to solidify the scientific basis of manufacturing under extreme conditions. Research priorities of material design and fabrication are set to the themes such as physical bases of material modification, phase transition and microstructure controlling mechanisms, strengthening and toughing principles in composite materials, physical chemistry of new materials, artificial engineering and micro-machining, physical insights of multifunctional integration, new effects and material designs, new principles of material synthesis, new materials and structures, new principles of material characterization, interplays of materials in service with the environment, function evolution, failure mechanisms, and principles of lifetime prediction. For manufacture under extreme surroundings, the themes of fundamental research concern interplay mechanisms of matter and energy at in-depth levels, transport properties of high-density energy and matter at microscopic levels, accurate presentation and measurement of microstructure, structure shaping and property forming, size effects in system integration and interfacial science, certainty of steady motion of complex manufacturing systems, and the uniqueness principle in manufacturing. Concerning advanced materials, the following is stated in the section of “Strategic High-Tech. and its Industrialization” in the national program. The program stressed that key materials and devices are the precursors and material basis of modern high-tech. development. Nanotechnologies and microsystems have been new features in high-tech. and its worldwide industrialization. The primary objective of the development of high-tech. new materials in China around 2020 involves (1) the strategic transition from the country being one in need of new materials to one that may dominate materials manufacture and design; and (2) the changeover from follow-up tracing to innovative research in order to establish innovation systems of material science and technology, to enhance the capacity of processing, design and important

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facility manufacturing, and to meet the requirements of national economy, security, and sustainable and high-Tech. development. In the section of “Trends of International High-Tech. Development”, it was stated that common characteristics in all nations are promoting high-tech. industries, where developing advanced materials and related high-tech. research is the precursor. New materials not only form the basis and precursors of other hightech., but constitute a grant industry themselves. R&D of functional materials, high-performance structural composites materials, biomimetic materials and biomaterials, and environmentally-friendly materials facing information science and technology and new energy have been the key areas of focus. Superhomogeneity, nanoclusters, thin films, structure and properties of interfaces and surfaces will still be the hot topics in research of material science and technology. The research on advanced materials and its related high-tech. are devoted to the functionalities of material regeneration and degradation, material fabrication, materials behaviors in service, and environmentally-friendly disposal of materials waste. In the situation of worldwide rapid development of science and technology, the primary areas for the development of new materials featured the following aspects: firstly, the development of material science and technology will break the barriers and boundaries between inorganic and organic materials, abiotic and biotic materials. Secondly, new achievements, techniques, tools and approaches from material science as well as information technology will be incorporated into research areas of materials designing and simulation, simulation and control of synthesis processes, and structure and shape measurements. It is expected that material structures and properties can be precisely designed and accurately predicted and that processes can be strictly controlled and realized. In the section of “National Strategic Demands and Status Analysis”, it stated that considering national security, key materials and devices are the precursors and the material basis of modern high-tech., which poses a challenge for the development of strategic high-tech. At present, large transport aircraft have been included in the national plan. The requirements point to aircraft body materials such as high-strength aluminum alloys, engine materials such as superalloys, intermetallics and functional materials, which therefore pose a new task for the development of new materials and technology. The development of new materials may strengthen sustainable resource utilization and environmental protection, and achieve harmonious development involving humans and nature. The research on key materials and high-tech. in devices provides technical approaches and materials foundations for the process of advancing science and technology and sustainable development. The development of foundation and mainstay industries urgently requires an increasing variety of foundation materials and improvement in their quality and functions. Where foundation materials in China are facing issues concerning quality and cost, upgrading of materials is the solution. · 12 ·

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In the section of “Key Themes of Strategic High-tech. Development”, four primary research areas of key materials and devices are defined as structural super-materials, new generation functional materials, environmentally-friendly materials, and biomedical materials. Main themes of structural super-materials are: (1) Advanced composite materials and high-performance engineering plastics, (2) High-performance metallic materials and intermetallic materials, (3) High-performance ceramics and ceramic matrix composites and (4) Intelligent materials and structures. Main themes of the research on new generation functional materials and devices include: (1) Key functional information materials and devices, such as micro- and nano-electronic materials and devices, photoelectric materials and devices and semiconductor lighting, (2) Strategic energy materials, (3) Special functional materials. Main research interests in environmentally-friendly materials include: (1) Ecological construction materials, (2) Modern plastic materials for agricultural and industrial applications, (3) Evaluation techniques of environmental coordination of materials. Primary research themes in biomedical materials include: (1) Tissue and organ repair and substitution, (2) Controlled release of pharmaceuticals and targeting materials. In the section of “Key Themes of Strategic High-Tech. Development”, strategic prioritized research areas of key materials and devices are: (1) Highperformance structural materials for aviation and aerospace applications, such as high-performance composite materials, light alloys (aluminum, magnesium, and titanium), high-temperature alloys for advanced thruster systems, highperformance steels, bulk amorphous materials and nanocrystalline materials, high-temperature ceramics and high-performance coatings; (2) Micro- and nano-electronic materials and devices including 12–18 inch single-crystal silicon and epitaxy materials, nanoscale device design of integrated circuits, and chip manufacturing techniques; (3) Photo-electronic materials and devices, such as single-crystal GaAs and InP with large diameters and from which microstructures, devices and circuits are constructed, high-temperature and wide-gap (third generation) semiconductor materials and devices, white light illumination materials and devices; (4) Material-ecology coordinating techniques.

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The Status Quo of Material Science in China

3.1 Basic Domestic Situation Materials are the basis of the economic development of society and a powerful facilitator of sustainable development. At present, the overall level of materials production and scientific research is relatively low in China and can not satisfy the demands of the economy and of social development; there exists a big disparity compared with the developed countries. Further, an independent system of materials research has not yet formed in China. China is already a large consumer of materials, and the productivity of conventional materials enhances very quickly. However, numerous fundamental raw materials still rely on import. Currently, conventional materials in China are facing several general issues such as improving the quality, reducing the cost and the energy consumption, and upgrading of new generations. The output of steels in China is the number one all over the world. The supply and demand of common steels are in balance, while some kinds of steels are superfluous. However, the amount of high quality steels in China that reach the international standard is less than 20%. In order to meet the requirement of the national construction business, more than 30 million tons of high quality steels (equals to 10% of the domestic output) need to be imported every year. China also has the largest cement production in the world, but high-grade cement only accounts for 17% of the overall output. The consumption of coal by cement production accounts for 25% of the national coal yield, at the same time, the cement production brings massive dust pollution. In China, the main construction materials are solid bricks, and above 95% of new houses are built using high energy-consuming construction methods. This situation may still continue for a long time. In the polymer materials field, special polymer materials have a long way to go to catch up the advanced overseas level; both the quality and quantity of engineering plastics can not satisfy the domestic demands. The gap between demand and supply could still be very large in the next 10 years of this century. On the other hand, through the development achieved during these recent

3 The Status Quo of Material Science in China

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years, we have made certain progress in some fields of conventional materials. For example, the high-performance ultra fine grain steel has already been trialproduced in a small scale, and some new biodegradable plastics have already been produced in a large scale. The Chinese government attaches great importance to new materials research and gives strong support in national plans. The number of overall programs and the investment in the area of materials research accounts for around 15%–30% of the total assigned to scientific research. At present, China funds science and technology in the materials field primarily through the National Natural Sciences Foundation, 973 Program, 863 Program and pillar programs. China’s research strength of materials is quite strong, and it only has a small disparity with the world level. The latest statistics showed that the number of scientific publications on materials in China is in the second place internationally only after the U.S. According to incomplete statistics, in China, there are more than 300 institutes and more than 100,000 people engaged with new materials research, and there are more than 200 universities with a school or specialty of materials science and engineering. The graduate students in China outnumber those in the U.S. More than 19 of the 220 national key laboratories which have advanced facilities are the new materials research bases. However, most of the institutes and laboratories are aiming at a special research direction or a special demand. The interaction between different disciplines is lacking, and original ideas, concepts and theories are deficient. Materials research advances quickly in China, but the gap between production and research is still large. The development of new materials industries is mainly promoted by the government. In the 1960s and 1970s (even till 1980s), the development of new materials was mainly focused on the demands of national defense, and the requirements in aeronautics and astronautics. In the 1990s, the automobile, electrical appliances, and information industries occupied important shares in national economy, and the development of new materials started to aim at the civil market, resulting in the gradual formation of a new materials industry. At present, there are about 1000 companies, nearly 500 institutes and universities, and more than 400,000 people engaged in the research and production of new materials in China. The new materials industry exhibits rapid growth. For example, the yearly average growth of the lithium ion battery industry has surpassed 140% since 2000, and it will be stabilized at more than 30% in the next several years. The output of photovoltaic materials in China has listed in the top ten in the word, and it will become top five in the next 2–3 years. In 2003, the output of magnetic material Nd-Fe-B reached 9500 tons, which accounted 50.1% of the total global output. Experts forecast that by 2010, the output and the production value of the rareearth permanent-magnet materials could amount to 54,000 tons (3.1 billion U.S. dollars), and the yearly average increase will reach 60%, greatly surpassing the world yearly average rate of 23% . Generally speaking, the industrialization level of new material is not

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high in China, and the main drawbacks are listed as follows: most of materials development is concerned with the imitation and reproduction of existing materials, while the original new materials which possess international patents with independent intellectual property rights are few; the universal products are in surplus, while the products with high performance and high added value are relatively few; the quality and output of certain high-tech key materials cannot be completely self-sufficient; the application development level, the achievement conversion rate and the degree of scale in production are low; equipment for synthesis and processing is lacking; the utilization ratio of resources and energy is low, the mineral raw materials consumed by unit gross national product is 2–4 times of that in developed countries, and the utilization factor of secondary resources is only 1/4–1/3 of the word advanced level; the development of recycling technologies and the level of the re-usable scrap resources are low; the environment questions are still prominent.

3.2 Development Status of Some Kinds of Materials 3.2.1 Metallic Materials Metallic materials have extensive applications. In recent years, the research level of metallic materials in the related institutes and universities enhanced step by step; the technology level and development ability in the key industries including steel metallurgy, nonferrous metallurgy, and metallic materials processing has advanced quickly. At the same time, the introduction, improvement and independent research and development of many types of large equipment including heavy hydraulic press, large rolling mills, large smelting equipment, and large precision machine tools has promoted the technological progress of metallic materials. In recent years, the important progress obtained in the metallic materials research may be outlined as follows: the research of strength-toughness mechanisms in structural materials has advanced metallic engineering materials towards higher quality and lower cost; innovations were obtained continuously in the basic research of metallic materials, and the basic research gradually matched the fast developing market; breakthroughs in the characteristics of nano-scale metals were obtained during the overlapping research of nano science and technology, information, biology and energy; the combination of computation and understanding of the physical environment has brought about advances in materials design. The status quo of research and production of the main metallic materials will be elaborated as follows: In the area of steel, the production and consumption amount is very large in China, but the energy consumption of steel production is also high, the labor productivity is low, the quality stability is unsatisfied, and the market · 16 ·

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competitiveness is weak. Specially some steel products which are high valueadded and crucial to the national economy still rely on import. China’s steel industry still has much work to do in reducing material consumption, developing short flow, enhancing finished product ratio, exploring new alloy steel systems and improving material performance. Nevertheless breakthroughs in the development of high performance steel products have been obtained over these years. For example, through the 973 Program (National Basic Research Program of China), the formation mechanism and control technologies of fine and ultra-fine grain steels based on deformation induced ferrite transformation have been established, and small scale industrialized trial-production of the fine grain steels has been realized. The output of raw aluminum in China is already the largest internationally, but China is far from having a strong aluminum industry. Aluminum consumption per capita in China is only half of the world level. The research and production of high-performance aluminum alloys in China was based on the tracking of the overseas technologies, and high-performance aluminum alloys depend heavily on imports. In order to escape the constraint of massive electricity consumption, energy saving production techniques and methods that can improve the material utilization ratio should be developed in the aluminum industry. Nickel is an important strategic resource, and nickel alloys can be applied in numerous fields such as aviation, the chemical industry, electrical devices and medical instruments. Although nickel resources are quite rich in China, it is predicted that the nickel supply will be in heavy shortage in the next years, and over 50% of Ni will depend on import. On the exploration of nickelbase superalloys, development of the third and fourth generations of single crystal superalloys has been started based on the success of the first and second generations of single-crystal superalloys. China is rich in magnesium resources. The reserves, output and export of magnesium are in the first place globally. However, it is hard to form lowcost, large-scale production due to the magnesium producing areas being geographically dispersed. The main mode of magnesium production is raw material export, which lacks fine processing and high value-added products. As a result of bad machining performance and lively chemical properties, pure magnesium is hard to be applied directly. Therefore, there is much work on the development of magnesium alloys still to be done. In the 1950s, magnesium alloys were used as the outer covering of airplanes and as the shell of deceleration engine case. The development and industrialization of magnesium, to which the 973 Program and 863 Program (National High-Tech. Research and Development Program) pay much attention, was set up as a major project in the key technology research and development program of the “Tenth Five-Year Plan”. As one of four main titanium industrial countries, China has built a relatively mature titanium industrial system. The titanium resources in China

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are the number one all over the world, but the annual output of sponge titanium only accounts for 3% of the global production (8×104 tons). Theoretically with the GDP growth, the development speed of titanium should be higher than steel, copper and aluminum. However, currently the situation is just the opposite in China. In the aspect of production technologies, we made great quiet progress on precision casting technologies, superplastic forming, diffusion bonding technologies and laser forming technologies. China has developed more than 50 kinds of titanium alloys, more than 20 kinds of which were included in the national standards, and nearly 20 kinds of which possessed intellectual property rights. Above 85% of the titanium alloys are used in fields other than aviation, and 13% are used in the aeronautics and astronautics field. The products include forgings, rod, pipe and board. At present, China is concentrating on the development of high temperature titanium alloys, structural titanium alloys, corrosion resistant titanium alloys and functional titanium alloys. For example, the properties of Chinese Ti-60 correspond to American Ti-1100 alloy and British IMI834. However, at higher temperatures, the surface oxidation and creep of solid-solution strengthening titanium alloys are serious, and the development direction is towards Ti-Al-Nb based O phase alloys, TiAl-base intermetallic alloys, as well as ceramic particles and fiber reinforced composites. During the “Tenth Five-Year Plan”, China has made important progress on understanding the essential physical effects of phase transition and simple alloying metals in the titanium alloys. Copper is one kind of non-ferrous metal, which has a very close relationship with humankind and has been widely used in the electric industry, light industry, machinery manufacturing, construction industry, defense industry and other fields. The consumption of copper is only inferior to that of aluminum in non-ferrous metals. China is the largest consumer of copper and copper alloys. However, in recent years, the supply gap of refined copper is up to 1/3 (approximately 1.2×106 tons). In the aspect of high-precision processing technologies, China has developed the processing technologies and the products of ultra-thin copper tape (less than 0.05mm thick) used for automobile water tank, thin electrolytic copper foils (3–35μm thick and 1500mm wide), ultrathin electrolytic copper foils (6–9μm thick), and copper alloy pipes used in airconditioner units; in the aspect of special copper alloys, China has developed wear-resistant gear wheel materials used in the automobile industry, special brass elastic materials, memory copper alloys, the Cu-Mn-base damping materials, and the copper utilized in art and coinage. China has also made breakthroughs in high performance copper alloys research. For example, the tensile strength of pure copper with nanometer sized twins reaches 1068MPa, which is 10 times that of ordinary pure copper. From the beginning of the 1960s, China started to develop a variety of noble metals, and gradually formed a relatively complete product line. The noble metals were applied in the electronics, information, automobile, energy, chemical, defense and other industries. Some products such as alloy · 18 ·

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thread for the electronics industry, noble metal solder for special purposes, thick-film conductor paste, and catalytic materials for ammonia oxidation, have been among the ranks of the advanced international level. In China, the manufacturing and processing industries of noble metals have both adopted a variety of related foreign advanced technologies and also innovated independently. The state of the noble metals industry can satisfy the market demands of China. China has established production lines of rare earth mining and separation, the production and sales of which accounted for about 70% all over the world, and has become the global largest rare earth producer and exporter. Besides world -leading and innovative research on separation flow and rare earth permanent-magnet materials, high-tech products including the permanent-magnet material NdFeB, color television luminous powder and hydrogen storage battery (Ni-MH), have realized industrial production. In recent years, China’s output of rare earth mineral production, which accounts for about 80% of the global yield, has been increasing continuously, and the production and consumption of the rare earth materials are listed in the first place all over the world. However, China’s rare earth industry still has shortcomings such as low utilization rate of resources and lack of deep processing capacity. The consumption of metallic materials is an indicator of the level of national strength. The per capita steel consumption in China has just reached the average level of world’s per capita steel production, but the per capita consumption of non-ferrous metals is still very low. The overall level of metallic materials production and research in China is not high, and can not adapt to the demands of growth in the national economy with a more rapid pace and with higher quality. China has large disparities with the developed countries in metallic materials: first of all, the level of materials performance depends on the raw materials industry, manufacturing and processing technologies, design and control, and many other factors. Generally speaking, the level of materials application is in proportion to the degree of a country’s industrialization. Second, in advanced countries, the integration of products and applications can promote the materials development and provide a better platform to verify the new materials. Third, compared with the developed countries, the materials systematization level is low in China. For example, the United States, Russia and Britain have relatively independent materials research systems and can each exploit new materials based on individual initiative. Fourth, the level of management and decision-making is low in the materials field in China. Report on Development Strategies of Disciplines (2006) published by the Committee of National Natural Science Foundation of China pointed out the following basic scientific questions in metallic materials field, which should be focused on in the near future: microstructure and properties of materials in equilibrium and metastable state during manufacturing and processing; strengthening and toughening mechanisms and the evolution of properties

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under the service conditions; the effects of electricity, magnetism, light, heat, chemistry, in special circumstances; the structure and properties of materials in exceptional circumstances (low-dimensional scale, pressure, temperature, etc.); the corresponding theories and methods for computational materials science.

3.2.2 Inorganic Nonmetallic Materials Inorganic nonmetallic materials include a number of academic disciplines, cover many kinds of materials and can be applied in many fields including the national economy, national defense and social needs. Inorganic nonmetallic materials include structural ceramics, functional ceramics, artificial crystals, semiconductor materials and carbon materials. The research and industry status of each kind of inorganic nonmetallic materials are discussed respectively as follows: Structural ceramics including carbide (SiC, B4C, WC, TiC, etc.), nitrides (Si3N4, BN, TiN, etc.), borides (BC, BN, etc.), oxides (Al2O3, ZrO2, mullite, etc.). The high-performance structural ceramics, due to high temperature resistance, wear resistance, corrosion resistance and other characteristics, can play an important role in saving energy, saving noble metal resources and environmental protection. At present, the products which have achieved industrialization in China are ceramic heat exchanger, ceramic roller, transparent ceramic for high pressure sodium lamp and honeycomb ceramic for automobile exhaust purifier. Over the past 20 years, the research focus of structural ceramics was the key practical technical issues such as the solution to poor reproducibility of manufacturing and instability of performance. China made a number of breakthroughs: 1) The development of quality and control technologies in the manufacturing of ceramic powders improved the processing reproducibility significantly. The requirements for ceramic powders are high-purity, ultrafine, homogeneous, and non-reunion. Developing according to the above requirements, the synthesis methods including chemical method, laser method, hydrothermal method, chemical gas phase method, and their characterization techniques, promoted the quality of the powders and laid the foundation for the forming technology. 2) The new forming process improved the quality of biscuit formation. Based on the traditional dry-pressed molding, isostatic molding, and slurrycasting, the new plastic molding technologies such as tape casting, rolling molding, injection molding, extrusion molding clearly enhanced the quality of the biscuit. Colloidal forming processes effectively solved the molding problems of ceramic components which are low-cost, high performance, and have complex net size. 3) New sintering technologies effectively enhanced the properties and stability of the ceramics. The new sintering technologies include hot press sintering, hot isostatic press sintering, gas pressure sintering, microwave sintering, self-propagating high-temperature synthesis and plasma discharge · 20 ·

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sintering. 4) Strengthening and toughing methods of structural ceramics became diversified. The methods include whisker toughening, particle dispersion strengthening and phase transformation toughening. 5) New ceramic materials, for example nano-materials, superplastic ceramic materials, low expansion coefficient materials, and defect tolerant materials developed rapidly. In particular, the emergence of nano-ceramics is expected to lead to changes of ceramics technologies, ceramic materials, ceramics performance and applications. 6) Structural ceramics became functional. For example, high thermal conductivity nitride ceramics and high-performance porous ceramics developed quickly. 7) New progress in fundamental research into structural ceramics has been made. It was obtained by new understanding in phase equilibrium, reaction thermodynamics and kinetics, colloid chemistry, surface and interface science, sintering mechanisms and toughening mechanisms. 8) Progress has been achieved in practical applications of the structural ceramics. Advanced ceramics are being used in many areas such as cutting tools, wear parts, grinding balls, bearings, high temperature jets and engine parts, in which metals were used formerly. Functional ceramics are a kind of ceramic materials, in which detecting, transforming, coupling, transporting, and storing information such as electricity, magnetism, light, heat, force, chemistry and biology, are the main characteristics. Functional ceramics mainly include ferroelectric, piezoelectric, dielectric, semiconductor, superconducting and magnetic ceramics. There are nearly a hundred functional ceramic production enterprises, research institutes and design institutes, which focus primarily on research and development of electronic ceramics. China has formed a large-scale, independent integrated industrial production system. Annual production of electronic ceramic materials includes about 100,000 m2 of ceramic substrate, 400 tons of wafer porcelain capacitor materials, 120 tons of multi-layer ceramic capacitor materials, 350 tons of ceramic thermistor materials, 220 tons of ceramic varistor materials, and 500 tons of piezoelectric frequency component ceramics. The total of all types of ceramic materials only meets about 60% of the domestic demand, while product quality disparity with foreign countries still exist. Mounting ceramics has the biggest share which is about 1/4 or more in the functional ceramics market. In recent years, the engineering of mounting ceramics has made great progress in development of ceramic substrate and packaging materials in China. For example, through introduction of advanced molding technology to the research and production of the ceramic substrate, China has successfully developed a new non-toxic tape casting system of slurry and a new aqueous gel-casting technology, which are beneficial to the environment and can reduce cost effectively. In the low-end products of ceramic substrate, China has built a large industrial scale. But in the high-end products,

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both scale and the quality have a large disparity with overseas advanced level. Base metalization was the fastest-growing technology in the piece type multilayer porcelain capacitor (MLCC) field. At present, base metals have been applied in almost all of the overseas large capacity MLCC. Although the related research in China started late, in recent years, China has made important breakthroughs in the high quality anti-reduction ceramics and the related manufacturing technologies. Under the support by 863 Program, 973 Program, and National Natural Science Foundation projects, China has made certain progress in microwave ceramics. China has certain advantages in low loss of the high dielectric constant microwave ceramics, the new system of low dielectric constant dielectric ceramics and low temperature sintered microwave ceramics, but the scale of industrialization and the technology level still have a large disparity with the international advanced level. China has a high reputation in the international superconductivity field, due to the excellent works on research and development of NbTi, and Nb 3Sn low temperature superconducting materials. China is also close to the international advanced level in some aspects including Y-base and Bi-base high temperature superconducting materials, MgB2 new superconducting materials, Bi-base silver cable, quantum interference devices, big area two-sided high temperature superconducting thin films and Y-base single domain bulk materials. In the aspect of fundamental research, China has some international influence on new material development, material structure characterization, magnetic flux dynamics, and new practical forming technologies. In the artificial crystal field, the international leading position of China in the research of nonlinear optics crystal is accepted. Besides the famous Chinese brand crystal BBO, LBO, in recent years, China also has developed a series of ultraviolet second-harmonic generation crystals, for example KBBF and SBBO. In addition, through prism coupling, grating coupling, and wave guide coupling technologies, Chinese scientists developed the neodymium ion laser sixth-harmonic generation (177.3mm) device with the KBBF crystal. The device has been used in the photoelectron spectrometer which can reach ultra-high resolution (0.26meV). With the photoelectron spectrometer, the superconductivity electronic state was first directly observed in the world. China has also made significant progress in laser crystals, and has now become the biggest Nd:YVO4 crystals export country. China had obtained important international influence in scintillation crystal field. The high-quality NaI, CsI (Tl), PbWO4, Bi4Ge3O12 developed by China had been applied in major overseas projects and medical equipment. However, China fell behind American and European countries in the research of new generation scintillation crystals. Crystal growth and film manufacturing of SiC are at the technology separation stage between PVT and CVD in China, and the overall level has a big disparity with foreign advanced level. Some scientific research directions of long-wave infrared optical materials have already approached or achieved the international advanced level in China, but the whole level still has a big disparity with the · 22 ·

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overseas advanced level, and only corresponds to the level at the beginning of 1990s in US. In recent years, China has also made big progress in the mature traditional Ge, thermo-compression ZnS and GaAs, CVD ZnS and ZnSe, but these materials can not carry out large scale production as a result of equipment limits. China has just made the initial progress in development of new materials such as GaP and diamond. After the development of several decades, China has made remarkable progress in the discipline and research of carbon materials, and has satisfied the demands of the national economy and national security. Especially, carbon fiber research and production which has been paid much attention in recent years and has made visible progress. The research of carbon materials relates to raw materials, carbon fibers, activated adsorption carbon materials, carbon-base composite materials, energy storage carbon materials, nanometer carbon materials and many other fields. China accumulated much progress in the research and application of carbon materials, and has occupied the corresponding status in the world. In the traditional inorganic nonmetallic materials field, the annual output of cement increases year by year in China. In 2004, the annual output had surpassed 970,000,000 tons which accounted for more than 50% of the world cement total amount. Besides six big series of general cement, China has developed 60 kinds of special cement, and has occupied an important position in the international special cement field. In the C3A3S-C4AF-CaSO4 system, China developed high-performance sulphoaluminate cement and aluminoferrite cement; in the phosphorus system, China developed the L-phase -CA-CxP phosphoaluminate cement; in the traditional C3S-C2S-C3AC4AF system, through changing the relative content of each mineral, China developed the dam cement, high belite cement with about 50% of C2S, and road cement with good wear-resisting performance. Moreover, China has invented arlitt-sulphoaluminate cement which belong to C3S-C2S-C4A3S-C4AF system. Now, China is the world’s number one plate glass production country, the yield of which accounts for 30% of the world output. China is also one of the countries which invented float plate glass production technology. In 2004, China’s plate glass ultimate output was 300,580,000 weigh boxes, 84% of which were produced by the float method. By the end of 2004, the number of float plate glass production lines was 123, which accounted for 39.7% of the world. Although the technology of float glass has made great progress in China, there is still a wide gap compared with the international advanced level, especially in the aspect of development of new float technologies, in which China’s investment is insufficient. In the 1970s, China began to produce double glazing glass at Shenyang glass factory; in the middle of 1980s, the double glazing glass production entered into a new stage after the first automatic production line was imported in Shenzhen; now, China has set up 200 double glazing glass production lines, more than 70 of which are imported and the year output of which is 12,000,000 m2. In the late 1990s, China’s self-sufficiency rate of

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refractory materials had reached 95%. In 2004, China’s output of refractory materials was about 18,670,000 tons, which was the first all over the world. Currently the carbon bonding products including MgO-C, Al2O3-C, Al2O3SiC-C, and the non-oxide-oxide composite products, for example Si3N4-SiC. They not only satisfy the domestic demands, but also occupy almost the whole international market. Report on Development Strategies of Disciplines (2006) published by the Committee of National Natural Science Foundation of China pointed out the development strategy of inorganic nonmetallic materials discipline as follows: In the future research and development work, China should especially strengthen interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary overlapping research, improve the synthesis and manufacturing, characterization and estimation, design and property prediction of materials in balance, pay special attention to green manufacturing technologies and scientific questions related to environmental harmony in the traditional inorganic nonmetallic material field, and attach importance to the development of independent innovation equipment used in materials manufacturing and characterization.

3.2.3 Polymer Materials The Chinese polymer materials industry is facing fierce competition from two fronts: the oil production countries with resource and raw material advantages, and the developed countries with a technological edge. The commodity polymers industry overall still lags behind that of the developed countries, although some products can compete in the international market in terms of product quality. In the polyolefins market, while some products are oversupplied, others are in shortage, therefore even though the production and consumption both rank 2nd globally, China is still the biggest polyolefin importer. China produces almost all types of engineering plastics, yet in limited scales and in some products with inferior quality. The country has a synthetic rubber industry that can produce seven types of rubber of over one million tons in total. In 2004, China’s rubber production, at 1.478 million tons, was about 12.4% of the global volume, which still could not meet the domestic demand. The annual rubber import is around 1 million tons. China is the biggest producer, importer, and user of synthetic fibers in the world. In 2004, the country consumed 14.25 million tons of synthetic fibers, which was 41% of the global production of the year. In the area of specialty polymer materials, PEEK and PPS have been commercialized in addition to fluoropolymers, polysulfones, and polyimides, and all these high-performance materials are finding applications in various civil markets in addition to the traditional aerospace and military sectors. The specialty synthetic rubber industry suffers from a number of issues, including small production scales, unstable product quality, incomplete product lines, lacking of processing and application development, and outdated processing equipment and technologies. China has developed many high-performance · 24 ·

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fibers, but most of them have not been commercialized. In the past decade efforts have been focused on the R&D of carbon fibers, aramids, UHMWPE fibers, hollow fibers for separation, and PBO fibers. Currently the annual production of UHMWPE fibers has exceeded 1 thousand tons, and the commercial production of PMIA fibers is approaching 1 thousand tons per year. Both polyarylsulfone and PBO fibers are being developed. Some hallow fiber products for separation applications have been commercialized. In recent years, domestic demand for organic paint and coatings has grown rapidly. In 2003, while the global production of paint and coatings was around 26 million tons, China produced 2.5 million tons and ranked 2nd in the world. Compared to the global production growth at 2%–3% annually, the annual growth for China has been much faster at 12%–20%. With the ever expanding consumption of paint and coatings, its negative impact to the natural environment has become a serious issue. In 2002 alone in China, the emission of organic solvents used in paint and coatings was 800 thousand tons according to incomplete analysis, which not only represented a huge 3 billion RMB waste of resources, but also caused tremendous environmental damage. This was in addition to the severe losses due to human poisoning and fire hazards in handling, transportation, and storage of the paint and coatings materials. Hence the pressure to develop non-toxic and clean paint and coatings is mounting. Over the past two decades, China’s adhesive industry has grown rapidly. The country’s total adhesive production was merely 100 thousand tons in the early 1980s, and doubled in the mid 1980s. According to a report by the China National Adhesive Industry Association, in 2003 the total production of synthetic adhesives exceeded 3.35 million tons, a 16% increase over the previous year. The adhesive industry can now supply a full range of products to basically meet the economy development needs. However, the technology level is still relatively low: leading producers are rare, product lines limited, product quality often poor, and raw materials supply lacking. While the low-end products are oversupplied and the producers running at partial capacity, the high valueadded fine products heavily depend on imports. In the area of organic polymeric functional materials, Chinese scientists are leading in some fronts of fundamental research on optoelectronic polymers, but our commercial technologies still lag behind. The country enjoys a cost advantage in organic thin film solar cell materials and technology, is a world leader in certain key organic photovoltaic materials, and has built advanced small-scale prototype solar power stations. Chinese scientists have studied indepth typical conducting polymers, such as polyacetylene, polythiophene, polypyrrole, polyaniline, and made significant advances in terms of design, synthesis, and characterization of new molecules, optical, electrical, and magnetic properties, structure-property relationships, doping and conduction mechanism study, as well as technology application, which are well-recognized in the international scientific community. In recent years, a series of excellent work by Chinese scientists on self-assembled conducting polymer nanomaterials

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attracted extensive attention from researchers around the world. In the area of organic nonlinear optical materials, interesting results have been obtained on new chromophores, thermal stability, photo-oxidative stability, photorefractive polymers, new optical limiting complexes, two-photon micro-processing, and two-photon fluorescence. In photographic polymers, progress is made in development-free vapor photolithography, chemicalenhanced photoresists, ultra-thin films based on diazo polymer assembly, surface modification via photo-grafting, photo-crosslinking of polyolefins, hyperbranched photographic resins, organic-inorganic hybrid photographic materials, light-cured water-based paints, light-cured powder paints, and charge-transfer complex photo-initiators. The research and development for near 50 years in polymeric separationmembrane materials has put China in the leading position in some areas, and promoted the progress in the membrane industry. Electrodialysis, antidialysis, ultrafiltration, microfiltration, nitrogen and hydrogen separation, and oxygen enrichment technologies have been commercialized, and the membrane industry is currently a 1 billion RMB plus business. Still China falls behind the developed countries in separation membrane materials technology in the following aspects: polymer raw materials used for membrane fabrication are lacking, separation membrane product lines are limited and incomplete and with inferior performance, more technologies remain in the laboratory level, many high performance membranes depend on import, and integration of multiple functions such as separation, catalysis, conduction, and molecular recognition is still rare. In the field of bio-medical polymers, with the support from MOST, NSFC and other state funding sources, Chinese scientists are working in almost all the active research directions, in tune with colleagues around the world, and have made significant advances in callus induction, bio-recognition and blood purification materials, anticoagulant biomaterial surfaces and controlled release of bio-active molecules. Relevant researches are conducted in close to 100 institutions. While the country leads in certain areas, it trails behind overall with a rather large gap. With environmental protection becoming a more prominent issue, governments and private companies are investing heavily in biodegradable polymer materials. Over the past 20 years China has seen tremendous growth in research on biodegradable polymers. The variety of bio-medical and environmentally-friendly polymers researched and developed in the country is not much less than the foreign counterpart, but few were invented by Chinese scientists. China in particular is far behind the advanced countries in biodegradable polymers based on renewable resources. In the lab-scale synthetic technology China is in the same league as the advanced countries; however, significant gap exists in the areas such as new methodologies and reaction theories on the synthesis of biodegradable polymers, and thermal processing, biodegradability and degradation mechanism of biodegradable polymers. · 26 ·

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3.2.4 Composite Materials In the 1960s, in order to satisfy the materials demands from the advanced techniques such as aeronautics and astronautics, people successively developed and produced composite materials strengthened by high performance fibers (for example carbon, boron, silicon carbide and aramid fiber ), which were defined as advanced composite materials. Depending on the type of matrix used, the advanced composite materials are divided into polymer matrix composite materials, metal matrix composite materials and ceramic matrix composite materials, the long-term application temperature of which are 250–350°C, 350– 3 The Status Quo of Material Science in China

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Production of a few materials has been scaled up, including poly(lactic acid), poly(glycolic acid), polyhydroxyvalerate, and carbon dioxide-based polyesters. Most commercial polymer materials are not degradable in the natural environment, and the polymer wastes of large and ever growing quantities have become a big part of urban solid wastes, the recycle and utilization of which is an urgent issue. Unlike other technological issues, the recycle of polymer wastes depends on not only technology progress and laws and regulations but also the environmental and resources conservation awareness of community members. In 2000 the renewable resources industry in Europe, America, and Japan is a 600 billion dollar business, and around 25%–30% of their polymer wastes are recycled or utilized, mainly by recovering either the energy or the material. The energy can be recovered by waste incineration, which has the advantages of large processing capacity, low cost, and high efficiency, with the downside of emitting hazardous gases in the process. In China waste incineration technology has a short history and is at small scales, where the heat recovered is yet to be utilized for electricity generation or household heating. The material recovery is achieved mechanically or chemically. The mechanical recovery mainly generates low-grade products. By chemically breaking the bonds in the polymer molecules, chemicals and raw materials could be produced which can bring more profits pending new technology breakthroughs. Current catalytic cracking processes can only yield complex mixtures that are used as low-grade oil products. Polymer materials have found applications in other fields: in some oil fields polymers are used for processing and recovery of waste water and solid wastes, and polymers are also used for water saving and conservation in farming of high value-added produce, but because of the high costs they are not yet used on a large scale for ordinary crops. Overall China lags behind the developed countries by a rather big distance in polymer materials science and technology, with few original and pioneering work and most being follow-ups. On the other hand, the country’s economy and society are growing continuously at a high pace, which leads to ever growing demands for polymer materials, and the country is investing more in the R&D of polymer materials. Thus polymer research and production are thriving everywhere in China.

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1200°C and above 1200°C respectively. Since the “Sixth Five-Year Plan”, China had started research on advanced composite materials systemically, completely, and designedly, focusing on fields such as national defense, aeronautics and astronautics. After more than 20 years of endeavor, although some progress has been made under the support of a variety of national science and technology plans, as a whole, many aspects of domestic composite materials, such as property, quality, specification, price and supply ability, can not meet the application needs by a long way. Because the design and development of advanced composite materials are controlled by import, an independent materials system could not be built for a long time in China. Meanwhile, the lag is obvious in the aspect of the composite materials’ fabrication technologies, especially development of low cost automated craft equipments. After joining WTO, especially under the new situation that the special fiber supply is tight in the international market, the applied technologies of civil composite materials in China faces serious challenges from intellectual property rights. 1) In the reinforcing materials aspect, the large-scale domestic production capacity of key species has not been formed. The products are inconsistent, while product maturity and quality stability are irregular. To a certain extent these causes make reinforcing materials (especially fibers) a development bottleneck of advanced composite materials. China has basically realized stable production of T300 carbon fibers, and has made breakthroughs in the key technologies relating to T700 high strength carbon fibers (above 4.9GPa). At present, China is tackling key technologies of T800 carbon fibers with high strength and middle modulus (modulus is above 270GPa). The production of high-performance silicon carbide fibers, which had already been carried out commercially overseas, is still at the laboratory research stage in China. High-performance silicon nitride fiber, which had been produced in a small scale, overseas, is still non-existent in China. As a result of foreign embargo, continuous alumina-base fibers still can not be produced in China, and the properties of high purity quartz fibers are poor compared with foreign advanced level. China has done research in different degrees on the high-performance organic fibers that exist overseas, but only in a few cases has realized industrial production. Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) as a mesoscopic material developed with the rise of nanotechnologies, are getting closer and closer to a practical stage. The hybrid technology between the CNTs and the traditional reinforced fibers in the composite materials is just at the beginning of blossom in both China and foreign countries. 2) Polymer matrix composite materials, regardless of the degree of technological maturity or the scale of applications, are the most important type of advanced composite materials currently. In recent years, with technological progress, the diversified development trend of polymer matrix composite · 28 ·

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materials is very obvious. The polymer matrix composite materials have become typical military and civilian materials with strong market demands. The future development of China’s civil aviation industry will influence the advanced composite materials enormously and also make new demands on low cost technology. Different to metal matrix and ceramic matrix composite materials, the main properties (except for thermal resistant temperature) of the polymer matrix composite materials depend on the reinforcement much more. Once the amount of matrix polymer satisfies the demands of structure formation , then generally the less is used the better, usually lower than 50%. Moreover, the development of the polymer matrix composite materials has been restrained by there being no independent production capacity of special fibers for a long time in China, so that the successful development of new generation polymer matrix composite materials depends on breakthroughs in the special fiber field. But in the long run, the world’s existing fiber reinforcements have basically achieved their property limits and the development cycle of the new special fibers is very long, therefore it is important to continue with enhancement and improvement of the polymer matrix so as to match the fiber reinforcements better. On the other hand, what will determine the international competitiveness of China’s composite materials industry, is the development and mature application of low-cost industrialized equipment and technology including automatic placement technologies (including ATL, Automated Tape-Laying and AFP, Automatic Fiber-Placement), and polymer transfer molding (RTM) technologies. 3) Metal matrix composite materials have developed as an extension of metallic materials in China. The work on structure and interface of the metal matrix composite materials in China has now become close to the overseas advanced level. Reinforcements such as boron fibers, silicon carbide fibers and silicon carbide whiskers, which are used in metal matrix composite materials, have reached the international advanced level. Aluminum alloys (e. g. B/Al, SiC/ Al) strengthened by the continuous fibers have approached the American level of development, and aluminum alloys strengthened by whiskers and particles have been applied in practice. The range of laminated metal composite materials available in China has become quite complete in. At present, the widely used laminated metal composite materials are titanium-steel composite plates used in the chemical industry, and aluminum-copper bimetal composite used in the electric power industry. The main lag of metal matrix composite materials compared with the developed countries is as follows: the manufacturing craft is not mature, and the material properties are unstable, as well as the resulting high cost and deficient supply. 4) In the ceramic matrix composite materials field, silicon carbide is an example of one kind of new heat-resistant structural material. Carbide matrix composite materials can serve below 1650°C with a long lifetime, at 2200°C with a finite lifetime and at 3000°C with an instantaneous lifetime. Carbide

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matrix composite materials also are a new generation of high performance braking materials after the carbon/carbon compound materials, and have entered the application stage overseas. China has established the manufacturing technologies and the equipment systems for silicon carbide ceramics matrix composite materials with independent intellectual property rights, and has carried out the systematic fundamental research in environmental performance simulation, damage mechanisms, property characterization and design optimization , and has made encouraging progress. The disparity of China on the silicon carbide ceramic-base composite materials with the developed countries is the lack of suitable ceramic fiber enhancements and the advanced ceramic precursors, as well as integrated materials and structure design relating to application and inspection. Although the beginning of research on nitride matrix composite materials manufacturing technologies is late, China has established some basic principals. In the area of nitride matrix composite materials, China’s disparity with advanced countries is mainly in ceramic precursor research. In addition, the application bottlenecks also include a lack of high performance nitride fibers used as reinforcements, and the industrial technologies for manufacturing giant components. Generally speaking, as a result of dependence on import, the advanced composite materials have not built an independent materials system for a long time. Meanwhile, it is obvious that China’s shortage is lacking the advanced composite materials manufacturing technologies, especially lowcost automation processing technologies. The property, quality, specifications, price and supply of domestic composite materials far from being able to meet the demands of national defense, aviation, astronautics and so on. Since China joined the WTO, especially under the situation that the special fiber supply is ever tighter in the international market, the application of technologies in civil composite materials fields have been facing serious challenges from the intellectual property rights.

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4.1 Forecast of the Basic Trends in China’s Social and Economic Development By 2050, China’s overall strength will enter into the ranks of the world's top 3 powers; the per capita GDP level will enter into the top 30 globally. Poverty will be eradicated basically in the whole China. The total population will reach 1.5 billions, and the elderly population peak will appear. The national average educational length will be more than 14 years (averagely enhance 1.5 years every ten years). The contribution of science and technology will be more than 70% in the whole national economy, and the overall level of science and technology enters the ranks of the top 5 countries. China will have independence and a leading voice in the world science and technology front, and become the main fundamental research center internationally. The national defense science and technology will basically satisfy the demands of independent development and informationization construction of modern weapon equipment, and China will establish a high-tech. modern army. China will build a sustainable energy system, and renewable energy will become one of the leading energy sources. China will basically complete the change from carbon-based energy to hydrogen-based energy sources. The eco-environmental quality will surpass the world average level, and the ecological environment degradation speed will keep zero growth. The limit of national development bottlenecks including population, food, energy, resources, ecology, environment, and social justice, will be overcome effectively.

4.2 The Overall Demand for Materials Materials technology in support of transportation, energy power, resources and environment, electronic information, agriculture and construction, aerospace,

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national defense and national key projects play a material basic and leading role. The development of new high-performance materials can not only effectively enhance and transform the existing technology of traditional industries, but also promote the formation of new industries and national economic growth point, and directly serve the national defense and the modernization of weapons and equipment. China’s economic and social development of the overall demand for advanced materials can be summarized as follows: 1) The development of domestic pillar industries and high-tech industries has an increasing demand for new materials; the rapid development of pillar industries, such as machinery manufacturing, electronic information manufacturing industry, chemical engineering industry, automobile industry, transportation, construction industry, etc., has put forward higher requirements for the materials in terms of quality, performance, etc. Machinery manufacturing has a large demand for different kinds of materials, such as connector forgings in nuclear power equipment and evaporator tubes, high welding performance steel in large-scale hydroelectric power equipment, wear-resistant materials in large-scale mining equipment, heat-resistant and corrosion resistant materials in large-scale petrochemical equipment, functional materials in a variety of scientific instrumentation, large-scale forging processing technology, machinery and equipment using self-healing and re-manufacturing using self-healing materials and technology. The new materials needed for Electronic information manufacturing include semiconductor materials, laser crystals, nonlinear optical crystals, optical fiber materials, magnetic materials, electronic ceramics and electronic chemical engineering materials. The demands of the chemical engineering industry for new materials include membrane materials, catalyst materials, and nano-powder materials. The automotive industry is in need of new materials including ultra-light auto body steel, advanced aluminum alloys, magnesium alloys, titanium alloys, engineering plastics and composite materials. New materials required in the construction industry include ecobuilding materials and energy-saving building materials. 2) The protection of national security and reunification of the motherland not only need high-performance weapons and equipment, but also bring forward higher and more stringent requirements for new materials and prompt the development of structural materials towards increased performance limits, bizarre performance, comprehensive performance, structure and multifunctional integration, and resistance to harsh environments and extreme conditions. At the same time, the development of China’s civilian aerospace and aviation industry has been raising new demands for materials research, including light-weight, high-strength, high temperature corrosion resistant and structural-functional integrative high-performance structural materials, as well as the new generation of functional materials and devices. 3) To deal with energy problems and challenges, one needs to improve energy efficiency and develop new energy sources, and hence the requirement for structural materials used in energy equipment and energy storage and · 32 ·

Advanced Materials Science & Technology in China: A Roadmap to 2050

4.3 The Demand Analysis and Development Status of Advanced Materials in Some Key Areas 4.3.1 The Field of Energy Demands analysis With the rapid growth of China’s energy demands, the increasingly serious supply and demand issue and environmental problems have become a bottleneck constraining economic and social development. The establishment of adequate, clean, economic, and secure sustainable development energy structure, and scientifically efficient use and exploitation of energy are one of the core strategic issues facing our country by 2050. Energy materials are related 4 Demands Analysis of China’s Economic and Social Development on Advanced Materials

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conversion materials is urgent. 4) As environmental issues are of growing international concern, strengthening environmental protection and achieving harmonious development between man and nature constantly make new demands for new technologies of materials manufacture, environmentally friendly materials and air purification materials. 5) Continued depletion of natural resources asks for the development of new materials and preparation processing technology, as well as materials recycling and recycling technologies. 6) China will soon celebrate its elderly population peak, and new biomedical materials are further required to improve the population health. In addition to medical device materials, it is also needed to develop human implant materials, drug controlled-release materials, and early diagnostic techniques using new materials. 7) As the modern high-tech material base and pilot, the overall progress and sustainable development of science and technology have made new demands for materials. China has carried out a series of major projects (such as the lunar exploration program, large aircraft, etc.), technologically supported and guaranteed by advanced materials. 8) Information technology, biotechnology, and new materials have been recognized as the three most important high-tech. fields in 21st century. Therefore, the research and development of new materials will play an important role in enhancing the competitiveness of our country in the future world’s technological and economic competition. The strategic goal of China’s material development is to achieve strategic change from a large consumer of materials to a leader in materials development, basically complete an innovation system of material science and technology, and fully meet the demand for materials from national economy, national security, and social sustainable development and high-tech. industries.

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to energy conversion and storage, energy saving and new energy technology, and have a key supportive role in optimizing energy infrastructure, improving energy efficiency, developing new energy and solving environmental pollution. In 2005, among China’s total energy consumption coal accounts for 68.9%, oil accounts for 21.0%, natural gas accounts for 2.9%, and hydroelectric power accounts for 7.2%. The production ratios are 76.4% coal, 12.6% oil, 3.3% natural gas, and 7.7% hydroelectric. Coal production and consumption is much higher than oil, and natural gas and nuclear power consumption is lower than the world average. With the sustainable advancement of energy saving technologies and the rapid development of non-carbon, low carbon, and renewable energy technologies, China’s energy consumption structure will be optimized progressively in the future, but by 2050 fossil fuels will remain dominant. As the coal industry is the main energy technology, the priority is to improve the combustion efficiency, reduce pollution, and achieve efficient use of clean energy. Ultra-supercritical power generation technology (USC), integrated gasification combined cycle technology (IGCC) and coal production technology have become the development priorities and inevitable trend in the coal industry, wherein a breakthrough of some key materials is urgently needed. The heat-resistant steel used in USC relies mainly on imports, and the heat-resistant structural materials in the unit are predominantly heat-resistant ferritic steel and oxidation- and heat-resistant austenitic steel. The former is mainly used in pipes, rotors and cylinders ; the latter is mainly used in boilers, superheaters, reheaters and main steam pipe. Pressurized transport in the coalbed gasifier is one type of furnace adopting third-generation IGCC technology and has a stringent demand for high-temperature oxygen separation materials, high temperature heat exchanger materials, high temperature gas purification materials and, high temperature wear-resistant lining materials. The gas turbine power generation industry in China is inefficient and polluting and is thirsty for the development of high temperature, low-density, low-cost, long-life, high reliability blade materials,such as directionally solidified and single crystal superalloys. The theoretical reserves of hydropower resources in China ranks first in the world and the total amount for economic utilization is 4.02 × 109 kW·h, which covers only 20% of the extent of the development and utilization and is mainly located in the southwest region. By 2020, the utilization amount of hydropower in China is expected to reach more than 65%, which has an enormous demand for materials, such as good welding performance highstrength steel plate used in large-scale water and electricity equipment, materials forming technology for large turbine units and high-performance, long-life structural materials and cements suitable for the aquatic environment. Clean energy includes hydrogen energy, solar energy, wind energy, nuclear power, biomass, geothermal energy, and oceanic tidal energy. Hydrogen energy technology is a hot issues in many countries, but in order to achieve the commercial application of hydrogen energy, it is necessary to build a complete · 34 ·

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chain, including hydrogen preparation, storage, transport and use. For the preparation of hydrogen, the photolysis of water technology is an attractive prospect, but still the catalyst is of low efficiency; the membrane separation technology is characterized by small systems and relatively low cost but the low hydrogen permeability through the separation membrane and poor high temperature stability need to be resolved; biological, solar and wind power technology are still in the developing stage, but biological technology is one of the most promising methods from the medium and long-term perspectives. Hydrogen storage in China is mainly concentrated on the research and development of hydrogen storage materials, such as metal hydride, carbon nanotubes and Mg/Ti alloys, which are well documented, but the development of integrated low-cost systems with high hydrogen storage density and absorption/release rate is still required. The fuel cell is an important component of hydrogen energy utilization and the development of low-cost, highly efficient fuel cell technology has always been an important direction for the study of international hydrogen energy and battery, and also one of the prerequisites for the development of electric vehicles. According to the United States’ expectation, around 2010 the price of the fuel cell will be competitive with that of the internal combustion engine, and after 2020, fuel cell vehicles will account for 25% of the automotive market. China has achieved the commercial application of proton membrane fuel cells. In order to enhance their competitiveness, it is necessary to resolve the relatively low energy conversion efficiency, short life, high cost and poor reliability and to promote the formation of core technology in the diaphragm material and catalyst carrier. The solid oxide fuel cell has an independent power generation efficiency up to 50%. When combined with gas turbine to compose a composite system, its power generation efficiency can reach as high as 70%–80%, however, only if a major breakthrough is made in terms of low-resistivity solid electrolyte, high stability and high catalytic activity catalyst, oxidation-resistant low expansion and high conductivity joint plate and highly heat-resistant recycling sealing material will it be possible to access its commercial applications. Overall, the gap between China’s R&D on biomass hydrogen, and proton exchange membrane fuel cell and the international criteria is narrowing, but there is still a long way to go in the aspect of solar hydrogen, solid oxide fuel cells, direct methanol fuel cell, hydrogen energy infrastructure and hydrogen energy standards. The energy from solar radiation on the Earth’s surface is one million times the energy generated by human beings and it is an inexhaustible supply of clean energy, but it has a low density (about 1kW/m2) and is affected strongly by climate. Via solar energy, the realization of light-heat conversion, lightelectricity conversion and light-chemical energy conversion is the fastest growing and most focused research field in recent years. Early in 2008, the United States brought forward a “Solar Grand Plan”, which described a perspective that before 2050 the amount of solar power will be up to 3000GW·h, accounting for 69% of the country’s power. China’s richest regions for solar energy is in the

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north-west desert, where with the long duration of sunshine (2600–3400 h/a) and a large quantity of radiation (6.3 × 109 J/m2), the total amount of annual solar radiation is about 9.8 × 1021 J, which is equivalent to 3.3 × 1013 tons of standard coal and is very suitable for the development of a photovoltaic power plant. However, at present, the overall size of the solar photovoltaic industry in China is very small, less than 1% of that in the world. At present, the main restricting factor is cost, but the exact cause is all-round, including the lack of core techniques and matching technology for polysilicon production (such as the purification technology to improve the yield of silicon and the use of byproducts technology), high production costs, serious pollution, slow localized production of silicon processing equipment, key equipment mostly depending on imports and low photoelectric conversion efficiency. In addition, attention should be paid to the following issues: as improving the methods of Siemens AG, we should also accelerate the development of new preparation technology of polysilicon, or else once the foreign countries take the lead in the application of low-cost new technology, the domestic industry of silicon raw materials will be passive; the minimum size of our existing commercial battery equipment can only be processed into 180μm, and if silicon raw materials hang on high prices, silicon thinning is imperative that the existing production line will face a great challenge; silicon thin-film batteries have become the focus of international competition, and China should bring forward an overall arrangement and take precautions. On the other hand, China has proposed to build a solar thermal power plant of 1000MW level by 2025, with a total installed capacity of 1 × 109 kW. However, there are a number of problems related to the materials of solar thermal power generation, such as inadequate heat-resistant capacity of hightemperature heat-absorbing material, low conversion efficiency; insufficient heat storage capacity of mediate/high-temperature heat storage material, high costs; low medium thermal conductivity of heat transfer materials, poor physical and chemical stability; the lack of self-cleaning ability for sunlight reflection materials, less variety of materials against high temperature solar transmittance and high cost. Theoretically speaking, the exploitation of 1% of the wind energy on the planet would be able to meet the energy demand around the world. China is abundant in wind power resource, mainly concentrated on the ThreeNorth (north, northeast, northwest) and along the coast. On the mainland, by evaluating the wind speed at places 10 meters higher from the ground, the wind energy reserves are approximately 32.26 × 109 kW, of which if 1/10 is exploited, the economic development capacity will be 2.53 × 109 kW, those on the sea having 3 times this value and with much better quality, amounting to 3,000–3,500 h/a. At present, the construction of wind power equipment is emerging, and the National Development and Reform Commission has proposed new wind power development goals that by 2020 China’s installed capacity will reach 3,000 kW. Nowadays, the leading model of international wind power market has reached 2–3MW, while the United States also has begun the R&D of wind turbines with · 36 ·

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the capacity of 7MW. A MW-class model in China is on a developing stage and the entire core technology of large-capacity wind turbine has not been mastered, as well as materials development, such as the lack of high-performance blade material, especially the large sized (> 120 meters), wear resistance and corrosion resistance, low-cost, light-weight composite materials with high-strength and high-toughness. At the same time, because wind power and photovoltaic power supply is not continuous, it is necessary to solve the wind and solar energy storage problem before we can achieve a stable and continuous wind and solar energy. The use of advanced energy storage battery is an effective way to fulfill that. Lithium-ion battery has a charge-discharge conversion rate up to 90%. The lithium-ion batteries produced by Japan’s Sanyo Electric, Sony, and Panasonic companies occupy about 70% of world market share. According to the survey, by 2012 the product of global lithium-ion battery market will be about 2.7 billion, increasing 24% than 2007. China’s Li-ion battery industry is at a highspeed growth, but because it is still dependent on the United States and Japan for membrane materials, there is much work that needs to be done regarding the improvement of battery energy density and safety, the development of new electrode materials, the development of preparation technology for generating thinner, lighter materials and the reduction of manufacturing costs. In addition, sodium sulfur batteries and the vanadium redox flow battery are considered the most competitive high-power energy storage batteries. Of these the former requires the development of large-scale manufacturing technology for producing high-performance β-alumina ceramic tube, and the latter requires the development of high-performance, low-cost, and long-life electrode materials, bipolar plate material, membrane material, as well as the electrolyte. Supercapacitors are a kind of energy storage devices between the capacitor and battery, similar to capacitor but having characteristics of quick charging and discharging, but also having the same storage mechanism as electrochemical batteries. Supercapacitors can not only be used in combination with the fuel cells and photovoltaic systems, but can be applied as direct power. At present, China has successfully developed lithium-ion batteries-super capacitor hybrid cars, showing a promising prospect, but more in-depth work still needs to be carried out regarding materials preparation, structural design, and performance optimization. Nuclear energy has always been a development and scientific research focus of each country. Among the current nuclear power equipment, housing materials and high temperature alloy tubes all have been realized by local production. In order to reduce the proportion of thermal power and the dependence on raw materials for electricity, China has increased the proportion of nuclear power and enhanced the development goals in this year, which is expected to achieve a share of nuclear power up to 5% by 2020. The further development of nuclear power puts more emphasis on materials including liquid sodium corrosion control in fast neutron breeder reactor, neutron radiation resistant, high temperature resistant, and anti-hydrogen embrittlement

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materials in nuclear fission devices. Biomass energy includes energy crops, agricultural wastes, agro-forestry processing residues, animal manure, and urban organic refuse. Biomass energy is a kind of renewable energy that may be the most feasible and realistic method to conquer the energy crisis, particularly for some large agricultural countries like China, whose development of biomass energy may be an important means to resolve the poor state of the farmers. Biomass energy is a kind of green energy, such as ethanol-fuel, whose CO2 emissions are only about 1/10 of petrol if taking the CO2 absorption into account during the growth process of plants. Bio-energy can be considered as an inexhaustible energy and is an “indirect” solar energy under the help of plants. Therefore, it has attracted strong attention in most developed countries, like the “Sunshine Plan” in Japan, the “Green Energy Projects” in India, and the “Bio-energy and Bio-diesel Power Generation Plan” in the European Union countries. Especially the development of bioenergy was included in the national strategic plan in the United States. In 1999, The President of the United States issued an command named as “Mandamus on the Development of Bio-based Products and Bio-energy”, where it was proposed that “the biomass energy in 2010 should be increased by 3 times that in 2000, and by 10 fold increase in 2020, while in 2050, 50% of the total energy consumption should be bio-based energy”. The leading biomass energy product that works as a replacement of fossil fuels is liquid biomass energy, viz. the sugar or starch-based ethanol. At present, 1 ton of ethanol production will consume 3 tons of food, so it is not feasible in China by using food as bio-energy raw materials in such a food-deficient country. To this end, the only way to resolve bio-energy raw material problem is developing carbohydrate crops such as sweet sorghum, which have the characteristics of fast-growing, high-yield, diseaseresistance and high sugar content (17%–21%). According to this data, 4–6 tons of ethanol can be transformed from one hectare of sweet sorghum. The average annual production of sweet potato (with about 20% starch) is 20–25 tones/ha, 7 tons of sweet potatoes can produce 1 ton of ethanol. In addition to potatoes, cassava, sugar cane, and rape all are ideal raw materials for biomass energy. Bio-diesel is made from oil crops or animal fats. Dimethyl ether is a clean alternative for diesel fuel, whose raw material is methanol. Regardless of ethanol or bio-diesel, the prime cost is mainly from the raw materials, which account for about 70% of the whole price. It should be noted that current technology can not use straw or stalk waste as raw materials to produce liquid fuel, only grains, potatoes, sugar and oil crops as raw materials. The development of biomass energy technology is a broad field for scientific research and discovery, that is, how to use cellulose to produce oil, in other word, how to use catalyst (lipase) to synthesize bio-diesel at atmospheric pressure and room temperature. The demand for materials on biomass energy technology includes inorganic membranes, new catalytic materials, and high temperature/high pressure equipment manufacturers. Energy conservation is one of the most important measures to improve · 38 ·

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the energy efficiency of the world. Nowadays, the energy utilization rate is less than 20% in the world, while in China it is only 9%. The development of energysaving technologies and materials is essential. Typically energy-saving materials include thermal insulation/heat preservation materials, high efficient lighting, catalytic combustion, high-strength lightweight materials, and the related materials used for metallurgy, construction, electricity and other industry energy-saving technology. In the first 20 years of the 21st century, the construction industry in China is at the height of power and splendor. The new constructed housing area is around 1.6–2.0 billion m2, which exceeds the sum of gross floor area in all the developed countries. However, more than 95% of the architectures still are high energy-consuming buildings; the heating energy consumption of unit floor area is more than 3 times higher than that of the new buildings in the developed countries. According to the objective of Chinese Ministry of Construction, the energy efficiency of urban construction should be increase 50% up to 2010, and the building energy conservation should reach 351 million tons of standard coal by the year 2020. It is very difficult to achieve this goal, since the promotion and R&D are inadequate for the energy-saving materials, such as the thermal insulation wall-material, low heat emission window materials and some smart construction materials. On the other hand, the combination of solar PV systems with construction has great market potential. In 1990, a “1000 Solar Roofs” was launched in Germany for the first time. In 1997, the United States launched a “Million Solar Roofs”, it is expected that one million roofs will be installed with 3025MW PV systems by 2010 and power generation cost will be decreased to 6 cents/(kW·h). Though there are a lot of solar photovoltaic cells manufacturers in China, the integration of PV system with construction has just started. The urgent issues need to be addressed involving low investment, weak research and development skill on key technologies and imperfect technical standards. In 2006, the lighting in China accounted for about 12% of the total electricity generation, wherein the urban road public lighting was about 30% of the entire lighting. Statistics show that the energy consumption of semiconductor lighting (LED) with an efficiency of 150 lm/W is only about 10% of the incandescent lamp with the same brightness. Therefore, the development and utilization of LED light source are imperative for the energy saving and environmental protection. According to forecasts released by Philips Electronics, the future annual growth rate of the global LED lighting equipment will be more than 30%, and it will reach 1.5 billion euros by 2010. Unfortunately, it is still impossible to prepare high-power white LED products in China; some of the key technologies, such as heat emission in lamps and the optical efficiency, and some core equipment such as MOCVD have to be improved rapidly; and the production design and material development urgently need to form their own intellectual property rights. China’s automobile industry has formed a more integrated industrial scale and has played an essential role in the national economy. It is estimated

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that approximately 40% oil is consumed in transportation. The lightweightpredominant advanced automotive materials technology has become a key measure to meet the requirements of energy-saving, safety, and environmental protection, including the ultra-light automotive used high strength steel, advanced aluminum alloys, magnesium alloys, titanium alloys, engineering plastics and composite materials. The focus of future work is to develop lowcost aluminum alloys and magnesium alloy casting processes, to improve its application performance, such as high temperature strength and corrosion resistance, and to form a rational industrial chain. Combustion is the main form of energy utilization, on which power generation, heating, and vehicles must rely. According to the European Union issued Roadmap for Nanomaterials in 2015: Energy in 2006, all power plants using fossil fuel can only convert about 35% potential to electrical energy. By virtue of catalytic material and technology, it is usually the major initiatives to improve combustion efficiency taken by European countries and the United States, including the development of combustion catalyst, heat-resistant coatings and new burner, which has been widely used in industrial burners, automotive engines and family stoves. China’s catalytic combustion has been applied in the boiler industry, but it is still necessary to strengthen the development of new catalysts, as well as the design of the burner. In 2006, China’s seven major national industrial energy consumption industries, namely iron and steel, chemicals, building materials, petrochemicals, non-ferrous metals, textiles, and electronics, accounted for 72% of the total energy consumption. The use of energy-saving materials to improve the energy efficiency in these backbone traditional industries is of strategic importance. The research and applications of high-temperature superconductor materials, energy conversion materials, amorphous alloy materials, permanent magnet materials, catalytic materials, and new building and separating materials have great space for development. Current status of development At present, “coal” is the main part of China’s energy policy, and this pattern will not change in the near future. The annual growth rate of electricity demand in China is around 6.6%–7.0%, while coal-fired electricity accounts for about 81% of the total power generation capacity. The fact is that the majority of coal-fired generating units in China are still operate in a sub-critical state leads to a low efficiency of electricity generation and results in a mass of energy waste and environmental pollution. For example, the coal-fired electricity generating capacity reached 80 million kilowatts in 2005, but the number of 600,000 kW-class super-critical units is only 28. China has the capacity to design and manufacture conventional supercritical electricity generating units, but the state-of-the-art of these units still lags behind that of developed countries by about 30 years. One of the bottlenecks restricting the properties of electricity generating units is the heat-resistant structural materials in the boiler, which can not be sourced nationally. At present, some key materials in · 40 ·

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supercritical boilers and even in sub-critical boilers rely mainly on imported materials. The production level of boiler materials is still unable to compete with those made by the leading boiler manufacturers in the world, such as FoxWheeler and Babcock & Wilcox in the United States, Alstom in France and others. In fact, high-capacity thermal power units were manufactured during the 60s of the last century and the vapor pressure was increased from 8.83MPa to 16.70MPa within 40 years, however, the steam temperature could not be higher than 538oC, due to the poor performance of heat-resistant steel in boiler constraints. In recent years, P91 steel was introduced in China as the main material for steam piping and high-temperature reheat steam pipe. On the other hand, technicians in China performed poorly developing a simplified version of successful high-performance steels from foreign countries, for example T91 steel was trial-manufactured in China for nearly 10 years, but importation of this steel is still needed for engineering applications. The reason is that Chinese technicians did not master the core techniques of material manufacture, such as smelting, molding, heat treatment and the key processes of corrosion. It is expected that 60 supercritical units with an output power of 600,000 kilowatts and 10 thousand megawatts ultra-supercritical units will be produced by 2010. There is a huge requirement for heat-resistant structural steel. The extent of hydroelectric power development in China will reach 65% by 2020. According to the plan, the number of mixed-flow hydroelectric generation units with a stand-alone capacity of 70–80 kilowatt will be around 150, the number of the pumped-storage units with stand-alone capacity of 30–40 thousand megawatts will be 150 units, and the number of large-scale flow units with stand-alone capacity of 3–6 kilowatts will increase to 150 units by 2020. However, two material issues still exist in the manufacturing of large-scale hydraulic turbine generating units: first, the forming of a large-scale casting; second, the domestic production of high strength steel. Nowadays, new molding processes for large castings are being explored, and the manufacturing of highstrength steel for turbine engine utilization in China has been solved, e.g., tearresistant thick layered plate Z15 with a thickness of 290 mm can be produced by Wuhan Steel Co. The general thick steel plates made in China can meet the requirements for turbine engine application. From the perspective of gas turbines for power generation, however, there are some disadvantages like low efficiency, lack of the high-temperature hotend materials and high manufacturing costs. Chinese factories can not produce the hot-end turbine blades for heavy-duty industrial gas turbines and all of the blades have to be imported from foreign countries. Moreover, it is very difficult to buy the advanced manufacture technology from abroad. In recent years, the fabrication of turbine blades, manufacturing techniques and coatings have made a series of breakthroughs. Domestically produced compressor blades have achieved initial success, and forging and machining of the trials have been successfully finished. In “the Tenth Five-Year” period, wind power generation in China received

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great attention. It was planned to build batches of MW-class wind power generators during the “Eleventh Five-Year” period. Now the work has been progressing ahead of schedule. Wind power blades as long as 38 meters for 2 megawatts power generators were fabricated successfully. In the last 3 years, the installed capacity of wind power generators has been increased more than 100% per year. The national total installed capacities of wind power per year in China were 126.6, 259.9 and 6.05 thousand megawatts over 2005–2007. It is expected that the installed capacity of wind power generators will exceed 10 thousand megawatts, implying that China will be the one of the biggest wind powder markets after the European Union, the United States and India. The core technology for the wind power generation devices is the manufacture of largecapacity (>600 kW) generators. The largest stand-alone capacity of generators in the world reached 5 megawatts, whose fan blade was 124 meters long and made from carbon fiber composite resin material. The length of fan blades made in China can not exceed 50 meters, and the materials used are glass fiber reinforced plastic. The materials for fan blades have to be improved urgently. Moreover, gear and bearing life must be seriously considered. Nuclear energy as a safe, clean energy is an important development direction to solve the energy crisis. China joined the international experimental thermonuclear fusion reactor plans in 2004, which planned to build the first full superconducting tokamak—National Science and Engineering EAST tokamak, which was operated successfully. In the development of fusion reactor materials there has been a recent breakthrough in carbon-based first-wall materials. Recently, the Chinese Government signed a memorandum on the transfer of nuclear power manufacturing technology with the United States Government, and selected the U.S. Westinghouse Company as a priority partner to introduce third nuclear generation technology. Relying on the construction of four nuclear power generating units, the design and manufacture of nuclear power technology will be mastered progressively by the companies in China. At the same time, a number of improved second-generation nuclear power plants will be built. The difficulties in domestic manufacture of nuclear power equipment are the materials for the shell of the pressure cap, the forgings for the connection section and INCONEL tubes in evaporator piping, in addition to the materials for the main pump and core valve. At present, only the Japanese Steel Company can supply the forgings for connection section. In China, some 15,000-tonclass presses are being built in China First Heavy Industries, China National Erzhong Group Co. and Shanghai Zhongxing Jiqi Chang Co., Ltd. However, it is speculated that they can master the core steel ingot and forging technology. In addition, on the fourth-generation nuclear power technology, Chinese scientists have developed the Parathion extraction technique to obtain thorium and rare earth chloride from the mixed acid system and the isolation technique to get Th (99%) from rare earth mineral by using N1923. In 2007, solar cell production capacity in China exceeded 1000MW and the production capacity is the No.1 in the world. Generally speaking, there is · 42 ·

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a “big middle and small two end” phenomenon in the solar energy industry of China in the materials—cells—components—application chains: the supply of silicon raw material is seriously limited; the vast majority of finished products are exported to the foreign markets. Silicon material shortage is due to the lack of core technologies (such as the purification technology). But the deepseated reason is the shortage of ancillary materials. To achieve the purification of silicon, materials that can work in high temperature, vacuum and a variety of chemical atmospheres are needed, including graphite, ceramics, quartz and various metallic materials and manufacturing process. At present, the processing equipment for polysilicon, such as ingot furnaces rely on their being imported. Though there is some rapid progress in making equipment based on the digestion and absorption of foreign technology, a breakthrough has still not been achieved for key parts and components for heater materials and high-temperature refractories. Due to the low production costs, thinfilm solar energy cells are gradually becoming a new development tendency in the photovoltaic market. Compared to developed countries, the research in thin film solar energy cells lags behind in many areas, mainly in materials design, interface and surface studies, large-scale film-forming and assembly, and the related equipment/package-scale production technology. A number of research units have achieved some encouraging results using organic materials for solar cells in the category of phthalocyanine, perylene and PPV, polyaniline and other conjugated polymer-type organic solar energy materials, such as the organic dye-sensitized Graztel-type battery materials that have a photoelectric conversion efficiency of 8%–10%. However, the current state of research is sparsely distributed and is basically consists of tracking the international trend. No systematic research is carried out in the electron donor/electron acceptor composite thin-film photovoltaic materials and the performance of photovoltaic cells. There is a solid base in China for the development of green secondary battery materials. At present, we have grasped the key battery materials and can produce these materials in large volumes. The raw materials for Nickel-metal hydride batteries and lithium-ion batteries are basically produced domestically. An entire industrial chain of upstream products—raw materials preparation— equipment manufacturing—battery processing—export trade—downstream products was formed in Nickel-metal hydride batteries and lithium-ion batteries. The low-power nickel-metal hydride batteries and lithium-ion battery industrialization also made rapid progress. At present, Chinese lithium batteries account for 16.9 percent of global production and the Li-ion battery output in 2007 was one billion. Preparation of the cell membrane (such as nano-fiber membrane) and lithium-polymer batteries is expected to improve in the future. The research and development on power battery has started in China and it has achieved some gratifying results. The power density of nickel hydrogen battery has been substantial increased; the power density and safety of lithium-ion power batteries also has made a breakthrough. In 2006, the number of electric

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bicycles reached 18 million, and the application of batteries in electric vehicles was in trial. A hybrid electric vehicle (F6DM) equipped with a lithium iron phosphate cathode 20kW·h lithium-ion battery has been developed successfully. On the aspect of fuel cells, a few large-scale factories in China can produce the fuel cell groups with tens of kilowatts output ability to ensure the development of fuel cell electric vehicles and other fuel cell-driven machinery. In the development and utilization of proton film fuel cells, the development level in China is similar to that of developed countries. In 2008, the first model of a fuel cell-driven car was examined and approved in the No. 29 Bulletin of National Development and Reform Commission, which is a new development direction for the application of new energy sources. At present, the application of biomass energy in China mainly is carried out in rural areas, which account for 20% of the national total energy consumption. However, it is encumbered by its low efficiency (10%–20%) and serious pollution. The solutions for these disadvantages are developing methane and R&D on solid particle forming devices with a volume compression ratio of 90%. For example, 1 ton fuel can be extracted from 1.5 tons of straw, which has the thermal efficiency of 70%–80% and can reduce pollution associated with field burning at the same time. The total biomass energy is equivalent to around 700 million tons of standard coal, wherein 315 million tons of equivalent standard coal is in crop straw, 319 million tons in forestry wastes, and 38 million tons in livestock wastes. The development of LED technology is increasing rapidly. More than 30 venues for 2008 Olympic Games were installed with 5 million RMB worth of 70–80 lm/W LED products. Under the continued promotion of 863 Program in the Ministry of Science and Technology, the key technologies for the industrialization of 100 lm/W LED have achieved breakthroughs, and the core technology of 130 lm/W LED part also has shown signs of a breakthrough. In 2007, 46% LED chips were produced domestically and the output value reached 1.5 billion. 20% power-based chips were produced domestically and the functional package products can meet the international advanced level. The next few years is a critical period for the independent innovation of Chinese semiconductor lighting, during which the sooner that the core integration patents and technology can be obtained, and the sooner that production of major equipment and raw materials can be started domestically, then the better to promote the demonstration and application of advanced LED products. In 2007, a “100,000 Solar Roofs Plan” was launched in Shanghai, after taking the lead for the promulgation of “Green Electricity in Shanghai Trial Subscription Marketing Methods” in 2005. To date, a lot of integration of photovoltaics with construction project has been completed, such as Shenzhen Bon-Garden City Park, wherein a 1MWp photovoltaic system network was installed, the Capital Museum equipped with a 300 kWp roof photovoltaic system, and in the Olympic venues and the Olympic Park projects embedded with photovoltaic power generation systems. Compared with advanced · 44 ·

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4.3.2 Field of Resources and Environment Demands analysis As population growth and rapid development of modern industry continues, the issue of environmental pollution has become increasingly prominent, and includes such issues as chemical pollution, plastic pollution 4 Demands Analysis of China’s Economic and Social Development on Advanced Materials

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countries, the photovoltaic construction integration technology in China is still in the demonstration stage, caused by the difficulties of the high cost of photovoltaic power generation technology and the low expected return of investors. The building energy conservation in China started at the beginning of the eighties of the twentieth century. However, only 150 million square meters building can meet the energy-saving design standards among the more than 45 billion square meters total housing construction areas. The demand for energysaving building is very large in China, which raises requirements for thermal insulation materials. At present, multi-wall thermal insulation materials mainly are polystyrene foams, particle-based polystyrene insulation mortars, which have the characteristics of low thermal insulation properties, poor fireretardant effect and short life expectancy. The research and development of new technologies and new products are lagging behind far behind those in developed countries. The application of energy-saving materials in traditional industries has been made significant progress in our country, for example, in the power industry. In 2001, high-temperature superconductor Bi 340m wire was manufactured successfully. In 2004, self-innovated three-phase 33.5 m/35 kV/2 kA superconducting cable system was laid in Yunnan Phuket network substation, implying that China is the third country having the capability to use the superconductor cable successfully in the national grid following the United States and Denmark. With the development of energy-saving motors (for example, motors in vehicles and wind power generators), TYX300–4300kW rare earth permanent magnet motors and 100kW hierarchy HTS motors are manufactured. At present, the market of the amorphous distribution transformers is formed and this new type of energy-saving product has also begun to be accepted by the city power grids. It is expected that the application of amorphous distribution transformers will be expanded rapidly with the introduction of new wear and tear standards for power distribution equipment by the State Power Corporation. In short, there is still a wide gap between China’s conventional energy used materials and that of advanced level abroad, so some of the key materials and components have to be imported. With regard to new energy materials, China already has special plans in 973 Program, 863 Program, Key Technologies R&D Programme and High-tech. Industrialization, and has achieved certain results, but there is still a considerable gap to meet the needs of our country, and research basically consists of following that of foreign countries, so there is a strong demand to strengthen applied research and engineering studies.

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and great industrial waste emissions, which cause acid rain, ozone depletion and the rapid reduction of biological species. Materials science and engineering must accomplish something in the following aspects: the first is to reduce environmental pollution from material processing; the second is to avoid destruction of environments during the application of materials; and the third is to develop advanced materials used for environmental governance. Ecomaterials refers to materials with less resources and energy consumption, small impact on ecological environment, high recycled rate and potential for biodegradability and reuse. Ecomaterials also can be used to refer to the traditional structure and function materials with excellent environmental coordination, or directly refers to the materials with the functions of environmental repair and purification. Industrial development has brought about much industrial waste in china, such as electronic waste due to rapid development on information industry and municipal waste from daily lives, which necessitates materials of waste governance, including sealing material to avoid waste leakage at the landfills, materials to treat heavy metal ions in the soil and biomaterials and technology to control biochemical products. On the other hand, recycling of waste (exploitation of waste resources) does not only generate economic benefits but also has good effects on environmental protection. For example, to realize the strategy of sustainable development in China, it is important to research integrated treatment of industrial waste, municipal waste and sludge and demands on raw materials and fuel in the processing of building materials. Material production consumes a lot of resources and energy; and waste materials are the major sources of pollution. Optimization of material processing and recycled technology of materials can save resources and protect the environment. For example, usage of 1 ton of scrap steel can save 1.3 tons of iron ore, reduce 50 percent energy consumption and 1.4 tons CO2 emissions; cement production by using slag can save 45% limestone and 50% energy consumption and reduce 45% CO2 emissions per ton. On the other hand, Chinese material industry is a large producer of CO 2 emissions. For example, CO 2 emissions from iron, steel and cement production, account for approximate 38% of the total CO2 emissions in China. The “Kyoto Protocol” taken effect in 2005 proposed a quantification target of CO2 emission reduction. Since 2012, China will need to reduce more than 50 millions tons of CO2 emissions each year. The emission reduction, processing and usage of CO2 have become an important subject to maintain sustainable and healthy development of Chinese economy and society. At present, there is no single technology which meets the requirements of CO2 emission reduction, processing and usage. It necessitates couples of varied technologies, initiating from the source of emissions and developing an integrated chain of utilization from CO2 capture to usage or storage. From June 1, 2008, China began to restrict the use of ultra-thin plastic bags under 25μm and the Chinese National Development and Reform · 46 ·

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Commission subsequently established a specialized policy to encourage the use of biodegradable plastics. Since ordinary plastic packages and agricultural films cause white pollution, they will be replaced by low cost and high-performance biodegradable plastics completely. According to the data of the American BCC research firm, the world production of biodegradable plastics reached 24.5 tons in 2007 and the global market of biodegradable polymers will approach 546 kilotons in 2012, with an increase of 17.3% per year, which is mainly used for mixed plastic bags, filled packing, medicine and health care and agricultural packaging. Consideration a 20% growth rate, it is expected the world market demands for biodegradable plastics will be over 2 million tons in 2020, approach 12 millions tons in 2030, and in 2050 the world consumption of plastic will be 300 millions tons, in which bio-degradable plastics consumption will reach 35 millions tons. The scale of domestic industries will account for 20% of the world. In the aspect of environmental protection, the demands for materials in China include noise control materials and electromagnetic shielding materials. Mineral resources, including coal resources, metal mineral resources, non-metallic mineral resources, oil and gas mineral resources, geothermal resources and underground space resources, is the material basis of human existence and development and plays an important role in the development of the national economy. Mineral resources require materials technology in all aspects, including mining tools, transportation equipments and storage containers. At present, the amount of consumed mineral materials per unit gross domestic product in China is 2 to 4 times of that in the developed countries; the secondary utilization of resources is only equivalent to 1/4~1/3 of that in the developed countries; and coal consumption in cement production accounts for 25% of national coal production. An issue of development of materials science and engineering is to reduce the dependence on resources and energy, especially on scarce resources; the other issue is to meet the material demands for development and utilization of resources. China is a country with serious drought and water shortage. The total amount of fresh water resources is 2.8 trillion cubic meters, accounting for 6% of the global water resources, only ranking after Brazil, Russia and Canada and being the fourth of the world. However, per capita water resources is 2200 cubic meters only, about 1/4 of the world average and 1/5 of the United States, ranking at 121 of the world, and being one of the most water-poor countries. However, as a result of rapid economic development, water pollution has been serious, the overall quality of the national surface water is moderately polluted, and the demands for sewage treatment materials are imperative, including membrane materials, ion-exchange materials, absorbent materials, catalyst materials, antibacterial materials and biological materials. At the same time, the development of sewage treatment materials needs to deal with the issues of low efficiency, high cost (material and processing cost) and pollutants without approaches of treatment. On the other hand, 80% of annual water consumption

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(500 billion cubic meters) is used for agriculture in China, food production per cubic meter water is less than 1kg, which is equivalent to only 1/2 of that in developed countries. To make a reasonable usage of water resources, it is necessary to develop water-saving, water-conserving and desalination material. About 1.5 million square kilometers of land in China belongs to ecologically fragile zone, accounting for 1/6 of the overall national land area approximately. It is necessary to carry out the restoration and reconstruction work of degraded ecosystems and to develop advanced vegetation materials to solidify sand, including new super absorbent polymers and polymer emulsion, etc. The mining process of mineral resources, may produce a lot of waste, causing environmental pollution and damage. For example, the production of titanium dioxide using sulfuric acid generates much strong acid waste liquid and residue. From the statistics, the production of 1 ton titanium dioxide generates 8–10 tons 20% concentrated sulfuric acid waste in China, 200 tons 5% acid concentrated waste water, 0.5–0.6 ton acid residues, and 3–4 tons byproducts of sulfuric acid ferrooxidants. It consequently cannot be delayed to develop clean processing technology of mineral resources. With the increase of global population, consumption of materials speeds up. In particular, the improving quality of people’s lives and enhancing desire accelerates depletion of resources. As resources of the Earth’s surface and shallow crust are depleted, exploitation of resources has shifted gradually to deep mining. It was demonstrated recently that the ore reserves in the deep earth’s crust (1000–1500 m) is higher than the result reported before, and new mineral deposits will be discovered along with improvement of prospecting approaches. However, the temperature gradient of Earth is 30–50°C/km generally, which brings “hot black” problem to deep mining. For example, rock temperature is as high as 80°C in the 3000m deep wells for the deposits in the western region of South Africa. The downhole temperature reaches 40°C in the 1100m deep wells of copper deposits at Donggua mountain in China, which impacts construction and requires development of high-performance compression resistant and thermal insulation supporting material used in the mining. Exploitation of onshore oil field in China uses conventional water flooding methods, collection rate is around 33% on average and 2/3 of the reserves remain in the ground. With increasing demands for oil in China, it is more important to enhance the collection rate of oil. Polymer flooding and chemical ASP flooding technologies are effective methods, while it is needed to develop highly efficient polymers and to further study the mechanism of extracting oil. The petrochemical industry is one of the pillar industries in China; petrochemical industries accounted for 21% of national GDP in 2006, and it is expected to reach 26% in 2010. In the world, the basic chemical materials of leukotriene (ethylene, propylene, butadiene) and triphenyl (benzene, toluene, xylene) are prepared from oil at present; oil consumed by petrochemical · 48 ·

Advanced Materials Science & Technology in China: A Roadmap to 2050

Current status of development Sustainable development has been applied as a national strategic objective for the development of China. The government pays great attention to and supports research to develop technologies of ecological environmental protection and rational exploitation of resources. The work has made encouraging progress and a unique research organization has been formed. 4 Demands Analysis of China’s Economic and Social Development on Advanced Materials

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industries accounts for 6% of the total oil consumption; and around 95% of organic chemicals use oil and natural gas as raw materials. In China, the oil consumed by petrochemical industries accounts for 20% of the total oil consumption approximately, while more than 50% of consumed oil relies on imports. Therefore, based on the awareness of short oil resources in China, it is essential to carry out research on preparation of important chemicals through methods which do not use oil and promote industrial application of such methods actively for further economic development. Exploitation of non-metallic minerals resources places great demands on materials, for example, the exploitation of salt minerals needs corrosionresistant alloys and the exploitation of stone mines needs high-strength and wear-resistant metallic materials. The exploitation of geothermal resources of high-temperature rock bed requires the development of slurries which are able to resist high temperatures, drills and the cements which can be used to reinforce wells. On the usage of underground resources, since oil and natural gas storage tanks on land and sea may become targets of terrorist attacks, deep underground storage is a more secure and reliable method of storage. On the other hand, similar to other nuclear countries, China at the forefront of research into how to deal with high-level radioactive waste; each country is highly deliberative about its secure and permanent disposal due to its extremely toxicity. After long-term study it is generally realized that: the most practical and feasible solution of the high-level radioactive nuclear waste disposal is deep underground storage. Deep underground storage of energy and resources needs supporting materials with high-strength, compression and corrosion resistance performance; and efficient deep burying of nuclear waste needs solidifying materials, anti-radiation materials and buffering cushion materials. Ocean accounts for 71% of the Earth’s surface, and the seabed is extremely rich in mineral resources, including nickel, cobalt, manganese, lead, zinc, gold, silver and aluminum metallic deposits as well as gas hydrates, marine oil and natural gas resources. With depletion of land resources, there is an increasing competition on exploitation and possession of marine mineral resources. The resources mainly used at present are sodium, potassium and iodine in the sea water as well as oil and natural gas in the continental shelf. Among the undeveloped marine mineral resources, polymetallic nodules, cobalt-rich crusts, and submarine sulfide deposits at the deep seabed attract the most attention. The materials needed for the exploitation of marine resources include wear and corrosion resistant materials, optical fibers, high-performance buoyancy materials, and light materials with compression resistance.

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Specification, indication and quantification of material environmental impact are the basis to develop ecomaterials. Evaluation of material environmental load is related to the environmental issues of material life-cycle and the present LCA method have been widely accepted by material scientists to evaluate the material environmental load. A lot of work has recently been done on modeling of typical materials (products) in the developed countries. Several Chinese universities have also carried out evaluation on the environmental load of typical materials under the support of the National Natural Science Foundation of China Program Outline. Deep investigations and studies have been done on the typical metals, building materials and chemical materials, and the related basic database has been established, while many works lacks depth and needs to be improved. At present, international research on catalyst for automobile exhaust purification is focused on three-way catalyst Pt-Rh or Pt-Rh-Pd precious metals with Pt as the major component. The research on this area in China is focused on the following aspects: study and development of three-way catalyst of mixed rare earth oxides with small amount addition of precious metals, study on three-way catalysts of non-precious metal, study on application life of threeway catalyst (anti-aging, anti-poisoning), study and development on threeway single Pd-based and lean-burn catalysts. The cellular ceramics are major matrix materials of catalysts dealing with automobile exhaust, and the current study in foreign countries on cellular ceramics has become mature and the main materials are cordierite, mullite, titanium stone, spodumene, silicon carbide and silicon nitride. The cellular ceramics in China are cordierite, aluminum titanate with high aluminum composition and composite of cordierite and aluminum titanate, the current researches are focused on decreasing the thermal expansion coefficient, increasing the thermal shock resistance and the improvement of molding technology and sintering technology. Photocatalytic materials have such advantages as low energy consumption, simple operation, mild reaction conditions and less secondary pollution in pollution disposal; and most organic pollutants can be degraded into CO2 and H2O, or evolve into the corresponding inorganic small molecule of SO42–, NO3–, PO43–, Cl–, etc., to achieve complete mineralization. In recent years, China has undertaken extensive researches on photocatalytic degradation of organic matter in water. Some results have been obtained on the study of the biological degradation of toxic and harmful substances, such as halogenated hydrocarbons and halogenated aromatic compounds. Biodegradable plastics form a class of plastics which can be broken down into carbon dioxide or methane, water, mineralized inorganics with contained elements and new biomass by microorganisms in the aerobic or anoxic conditions. At present, the research and industrial development of domestic biodegradable plastics is growing rapidly. 10 kilotons production of starch, i.e. plastic (PSM), in Wuhan Huali Environmental Technology Co., Ltd. has been accepted by domestic and overseas markets due to high ratio of performance · 50 ·

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and cost, and it has made profit since 2007 because of the breakthrough in the thin film products and one-time packaging technology. Based on the laboratory techniques of Institute of Microbiology Chinese Academy of Sciences, Ningbo Tianan Biologic Material Co., Ltd in Zhejiang province has solved the key technologies of kiloton production of PHA with 8 years improvement and is building the production line for 10 kilotons production, which may be the world’s largest PHA suppliers. Mengxi High-Tech. Group Co., Ltd. and Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry Chinese Academy of Sciences worked together in 2004 and achieved kiloton production of carbon dioxide based plastics; and Zhejiang Haizheng Biomaterials Co., Ltd. achieved 5000 tons production of polylactic acid in 2007 by using the patented technology on polylactic acid from Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry Chinese Academy of Sciences. China has programs for the preparation of important chemicals by using non-oil resources, although the preparation technologies are under research and development. It has made encouraging progress on some technologies. For example, China has established a “CO gas phase catalytic synthesis of dimethyl oxalate, oxalic acid, and ethylene glycol” continuous process pilot apparatus (annual scale: 300 tons of dimethyl oxalate, 100 tons ethylene glycol) and pilot tests have been carried out. Referring to the desalination of sea water, China has primarily had the production capability of reverse osmosis desalination with single unit capacity up to 20–30 kilotons/day, distillation with capacity up to 20–40 kilotons/day (the cost of desalinated water is about 0.5 U.S. dollars/ton). It is expected that in 2010 the total desalination capacity of sea water will reach 0.8–1 million cubic meters/day. Subsequently, water desalination will become an important part of water supply security system in coastal areas and China will be a great power in the desalination industry internationally. In recent years, China has provided some successful examples of modification of the aerial environment, but others were given up halfway and did not reach the desired results. Private enterprises in Chengdu have developed a kind of layered silicate sand materials recently, which have good effects on modification of desertification and are tested in many areas. China has widely studied clean production of mineral resources. For example, China has explored the alternative technologies of clean processing in the metallurgical industry with heavy pollution since 1990, and a green metallurgical technology of sub-salt has been proposed to produce tellurium titanium oxides, replacing the present sulfuric acid and high temperature chlorination methods with heavy pollution. The technology is in its trial stage now. Generally, the progress on research and industrialization of ecomaterials in China is slower than and lags far behind that in the developed countries. Market share of the ecomaterial and eco-products is low and there is no competitiveness in the markets. In all kinds of Chinese enterprises of

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materials and productions, a lot of them are not authorized “green certificate” of exemption from export examination. The value of Chinese export goods hampered by “green barriers” is more than 20 billions U.S. dollars in the past two years. With China’s accession to the WTO, it is a urgent task to promote development of ecomaterials and materials used for resources exploitation because of economic globalisation and international marketisation of materials and products, especially because of extreme limit of natural resources and the environment.

4.3.3 Field of Human Health Demands analysis China is a great country with 1.3 billion population and 60 million disabled people. According to the reports from the Ministry of Civil Affairs, there are over 15 million physically handicapped patients currently in China; 8 million among them are stump patients; several millions patients suffer Kaschin-Beck disease induced by rheumatoid disease; over 10 million patients suffer coronary heart disease; and about 5 million patients blind from cataracts. Meanwhile, general medicines have the problem of obvious side-effects and it is difficult to send medicines to ill parts. Difficulty treating some difficult and complicated diseases is not always due to the lack of new therapies at present but due to the lack of smart technologies for the delivery of medicines. On the other hand, applications of new materials and technologies in medicine are saving tens of thousands of lives. Taking development of imaging contrast agents and technologies as an example, 70% of women older than 40 in the U.S. have undergone breast imaging contrast, which is able to discover breast malignancy and cure it at the initial stage. Consequently, the mortality in each 100 thousand patients dropped from 33.3 in 1990 to 27.1 in 2000. With development of the economy and the elevation of living standards, people have placed special emphasis on respective medical rehabilitation. Furthermore, China is becoming an old-age society. Acceleration of oldage progress and pursuit of health and longevity stimulate the demand for biomaterials. However, as the country with the largest population in the world, the current sale of biomedical materials is less than 4% of global market and the average consumption per person is less than 1% of the U.S. Therefore, there are great demands for the biomedical materials with high performance in clinical treatment, such as repairing and replacing materials of tissues and organs, blood compatible materials, materials for prediction of cancer at the early stage, controlled medicine release and target materials. Since entering the 21 st century, international biomedical materials and products have grown from 23 billion U.S. dollars in 2000 to 80 billion U.S. dollars in 2006 and are moving forwards to 100 billion U.S. dollars. It is predicted that 400 billion U.S. dollars can be reached before 2020. The annual growth of domestic markets of biomedical materials and products is as high as 20%–27% and higher than 20 billions Yuan at present. However, 95% of them · 52 ·

Advanced Materials Science & Technology in China: A Roadmap to 2050

Current status of development The Chinese market of medical apparatus has grown at 20%–27% annual rate for the past ten years, which is much higher than 7%–10% growth rate of the international market, and nearly reached 80 billion RMB in 2004, which is less than 4% of the international market. Compared with sales and imports in 2004, it can be seen that imported products account for more than a quarter of the domestic market of medical apparatus, and high-end products are monopolized by foreign companies and joint companies. The Chinese biomedical materials industry not only accounts for a low proportion of those used in industrial medical apparatus but also has an insufficient level of technology. Furthermore, most of them are disposable items and low-end products such as bone-screws and bone plates with unstable quality levels. Although biomedical materials in China have grown rapidly in the past ten years, some bio-compatible products, such as bioceramics of calcium phosphate, coating products, artificial heart valves, artificial joints, vascular stents, absorbable sutures, biological adhesives, biological fibrin glue, medical sodium hyaluronate, absorbable gelatin sponge, blood dialyzer and medical catheter, have been put on the market gradually. However, since most of them are not scale products and the quality is unstable, they are being expelled out of the market. The main products of biomedical materials still are low-end items of bone-screw, bone-plate, disposable items, absorbent cotton, gauze, bandage and wound dressing. Meanwhile, since there are few suppliers and production bases of medical-grade biomedical raw materials, improvement of production quality is seriously restricted. It can be said that a modern industrial system of biomedical materials and products has not been established in China. On the other hand, scientific and engineering researches on biomedical materials and products have made some progress under strong national supports in China, although studies on tissue engineering were started only recently. The National Natural Science Foundation of China has funded and initialized the investigation of tissue engineering and relative fields since 1995. A number of labs have been built to study tissue engineering and extended some studies to wider fields. The tissue engineering materials in china are mainly focused on bone and cartilage, followed by skin. Much progress has been made. 4 Demands Analysis of China’s Economic and Social Development on Advanced Materials

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are imported and overseas products registered in our country are as many as 2192 kinds in 2003 only. China has a quarter of the global population and great potential for biomedical materials. From the point of view of potential demands, the annual average consumption of medical apparatus are only 7 U.S. dollars per person, while it is several hundred U.S. dollars in the U.S., which is related to the relatively low average living standard in China. However, with development of the economy and elevation of living standards, it can be predicted that there will be more and more demands on both the quality and quantity of biomedical materials and products. It is expected that the domestic market of biomedical materials will be at least 10% of the global market and about 40 billion U.S. dollars by the year of 2020. It will be one quarter at least by the year of 2050.

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For example, nanocrystalline collagen-based material for bone repair developed by Tsinghua University has gained SFDA production-permission certification of the third-class medical apparatus as well as two patents in China and the USA giving independent intellectual property rights. Examined by over 2000 clinical applications, it has shown great potential for use as framework material for bone tissue engineering. Tendon tissue engineering materials developed by West China Hospital have partly met clinical requirements, close to international level. Self-developed titanium alloys with low-modulus are a promising bonerepairing material and they are under clinical test currently. At present, medicine delivery materials and related industries are still in the initial stage. Most products permitted for sales are simple controlled-release agents, such as coated tablets, sustained-release capsules, multi-matrix tablets and non-degradable filling agents. Safer medicine-delivery materials and new smart and targeting systems of medicine-delivery are still at the research stage. In conclusion, China will meet the population peak of old people and the demands on the biomedical materials are unprecedentedly pressing. However, modern industrial systems for biomedical materials and products have not been established completely in China. Biomedical materials and products made in China are low-end mainly, facing a severe challenge from imported products. To change the backward state of biomedical materials and products and meet the requirement of social and economic development, injection of new technologies and products, innovation of enterprise technology, development of new enterprises and products and adjustment of industrial technical structure are necessary.

4.3.4 The Field of Information Demands analysis The rapid development of information technology toward digital, network-based, large-capacity information transmission, ultra-fast real-time information processing and ultra-high density information storage has become the objective of information technology. However, information functional materials and devices are fundamental to reach this objective. The needs in the field of information involve generation of information, release, transmission, acceptance, acquisition, processing, storage and display and other aspects. To realize the processes, the following fabricating technologies for materials and devices must be developed such as the manufacture of silicon single crystal and wafer in large-size and epitaxial growth technology, high-temperature wide bandgap semiconductor materials (GaN, SiC , diamond films), nano-electronics basic materials and technology, III-V compound semiconductor materials in large sizes, optoelectronic integrated materials and integrated procedure technology, semiconductor micro-structural materials, silicon-based heteroepitaxial materials, information display materials (including organic, inorganic, luminescent rare earth), information storage materials and technologies suitable for superhigh-capacity, SOP packaging materials and technology, advanced · 54 ·

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Current status of development In the near future of this century, China will become the main base of the world undoubtedly in the fields of integrated circuits, optoelectronic devices and modules, production of communications and computer products, which brings unprecedented opportunities to development of the materials applied to the field of information. In microelectronic materials, great development and progress in silicon materials have been made in China accompanying more than 40 years of hard work by of Chinese scientists. The organizations engaged in R&D and production of monocrystalline silicon are more than 30. The main products are polished wafers in sizes 5 and 6 inches. Small-volume production for 8-inch wafers is beginning and the production process needs to be improved further. The level for 12-inch wafers is on the stage of research and development. For R&D of SOI materials (mainly SIMOX wafer technology), a larger gap between the advanced level abroad and ability of China exists, although some knowledge and research experiences are accumulated. For SOI materials only 4–6 inch wafers are currently produced and the manufacture of greater than 8-inch SOI wafers in China is nearly non-existent. In the SiGe heterojunction epitaxial growth and device processing (as SiGe HBT, SiGe optoelectronics), research and development level can not compare with the advanced level in the world, and the difference is even larger on a large production scale. In GaAs based materials in China, the pace of industrialization is slow, although researches on GaAs based materials began in 60s of the 20th century. In 2003, 5-inch and 6-inch GaAs single crystal boules were obtained by the LEC method, and a certain production capacity was formed. In addition, significant progress in the weighing unit technology used in single-crystal high-pressure furnace has also been made. At present, China has formed an annual output of more than 10,000 wafers of GaAs production and polishing lines with capacity of providing series of 2, 3, 4, 6-inch wafers. Meanwhile, China also built several 4-inch GaAs IC production lines in recent years. In SiC single crystal materials, the single crystal growth furnace with independent intellectual property rights has been successfully developed. So far, the technologies in 2-inch, 3-inch SiC single crystal, crystal processing, and epitaxial materials have made a breakthrough progress, and the materials have been applied to the device research. However, the uniformity and reliability of the devices needs to be improved. In the aspect of GaN-based high-frequency power devices, several organizations in China are engaged in research and development of GaN-based high electron mobility transistor (HEMT) device fabricated on SiC single crystal substrate, and some progress has been made. In opto-electronics materials, all-solid-state laser materials, devices and application of basic research in China is synchronized with foreign levels, and in some areas is at the international leading position. But generally speaking, 4 Demands Analysis of China’s Economic and Social Development on Advanced Materials

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magnetic materials, electronic ceramics, laser crystals, nonlinear optical crystal, and fiber-optic materials.

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for synthetic crystals, there are still insufficient capabilities in research and development of strategic new materials and in materials with independent intellectual property rights. It is urgent to increase investment and accelerate the pace of development. In the aspect of GaN-based LEDs, there are many production lines in China. The LEDs are mainly based on sapphire substrates. Photoelectric conversion efficiency of the LEDs is not high compared with foreign productions. 2-inch GaN, AlN single crystal still needs to be imported into China. The international leadership in the study of non-linear optical crystal in China is recognized by the world, in addition to the well-known crystal brands in China such as BBO and LBO, and Chinese scientists have discovered new nonlinear optical crystals applied to UV and deep UV and dominated the direction of development in this area such as three cesium borate (CBO), lanthanum calcium borate (LCB), Beryllium Boron potassium fluoride (KBBF), boron acid strontium beryllium (SBBO). Absorption edge of KBBF is the shortest (deep ultraviolet region) and it is the unique crystal to realize sixth harmonic frequency from Nd: YAG laser. Its market is large. Chinese scientists not only preliminarily prepared the useful crystal KBBF, but also made a breakthrough in the development of the deep ultraviolet harmonic devices which are of completely independent intellectual property rights. The utility of these UV, deep UV nonlinear optical crystal will give further impetus to the development of the micro-electronics technology and the new generation of optical storage technology. In laser crystals, significant progress has been made in recent years in China. The development of the Nd: YAG, Nd: GGG and Nd: YVO4 laser crystal key technical indicators have reached international advanced level. The full solid-state laser output reached kW level by using Nd: GGG, Nd: YVO4 crystal. At present, many laser crystals used in the national key projects can be researched and developed by ourselves. Laser crystals have been exported to international markets and occupied about 1/3 in the market of worldwide. Now, China is the main country of the Nd: YVO4 crystal production and export. On the research of scintillator, China has always made an important impact on the international community. Domestic produced high-quality scintillation materials such as NaI, CsI (Tl), PbWO4, Bi4Ge3O12 have been used in the instruments of major projects and medical equipment abroad. However, in the study of the new generation of scintillation crystals, China is lagging behind the United States and European countries, such as in discovering the new scintillator of Lu2Si2O5: Ce, Gd2Si2O5: Ce, YAlO3: Ce with excellent performance. Foreign researchers have applied for patents for these materials, which set up patent barriers for our crystals being exporting to the European and American market in the future. It is pressing to strengthen the foundation capability of our scintillator research. Research in the field of optical storage started earlier in China. We took a place in the field of basic and applied basic research internationally, but had not much original research. Research on CD-ROM storage materials is currently engaged in mainly by the Chinese Academy of Sciences and others colleges in China. In recent years, research into · 56 ·

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4.3.5 Field of National Major Engineering Demands analysis Key devices of electronics, high-end universal chips and basic software, manufacturing technology and assembly processing of extreme large scale integration circuits, next-generation broadband wireless mobile communications, high-end digital control machineryand basic technology of manufacture, development of large oil-gas field and coal-bed methane, large-scale advanced pressurized water reactor and nuclear power plant of high-temperature gas-cooled reactor, control and governance of water pollution, breeding of new varieties with gene modification, major innovation of new medicines, prevention and cure of major communicable disease including AIDS and viral hepatitis, large aircraft, highresolution earth observation systems, manned space and lunar exploration programs were listed as 16 major projects in National Program for Mediumto Long-term Scientific and Technological Development (2006–2020). Each of the 16 major projects requires advanced material technologies as the technical support and material guarantee. For example, manufacturing technology and assembly processing of extreme large scale integration circuits requires advanced electronic materials. Control and governance of water pollution needs water treatment materials. Major innovation of new medicines depends on the controlled release and targeting of medicines. The reliance of aviation industry on materials is most prominent and two thirds of improvement on aircraft performance is dependent on development of new materials with high specific strength and specific stiffness according to statistics. In the following part, the requirement of large aircraft program on advanced materials is taken as examples for analysis. China started the large aircraft program on May 11, 2009. The target of structural materials of aircraft body includes: weight reduction, integration of structural load-bearing and function, increase of service life, high reliability and maintainability, low cost of fabrication and low cost of usage and maintenance. To realize these purposes, the body of aircraft would employ and develop an 4 Demands Analysis of China’s Economic and Social Development on Advanced Materials

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near-field optics and super-resolution near-field nano-optical storage materials, and other relevant physical mechanisms has also been carried out in China (including discoid digital photopolymer holographic storage material, twophoton absorption and organic photorefractive change of polymer materials). Encouraging progress has been made. In addition, the magneto-optical mixed record materials and ultra-fast optical storage materials have been studied. In short, in recent years, information materials research and industrial development has made great progress in China. The level of some research such as in the field of non-linear optical crystal and so on has maintained a leading position. However, there is still a wide gap between the level of information materials research and industrialization and the demand for information industry in China. The basic research and industrial development need to be strengthened further.

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overall structure and advanced structural material with high specific strength, high specific stiffness, high toughness, high resistance to stress corrosion and environmental friendliness; integration of structure and function would be developed; and applied researches should also be strengthened on the fatigue life, durability and damage tolerance of materials under the operating conditions. On the other side, an important trend on the structural materials of aircraft body is that the application of composite materials and titanium alloys keeps increasing along with improvement of aircraft performances. Taking Boeing airplanes as an example, from B747 to B787 the usage of titanium alloys increased from 4% to 15% and usage of composite materials from 1% to 50%. Engine of large aircraft are usually assembled turbofan engines with high bypass ratio. Increase of thrust force by raising outlet temperature and increase of thrust-weight ratio by reducing structural weight is employed to improve performance of engines generally. The improvement of engine performance is more dependent on the progress of material technologies, as an analysis showed 70% of improvement of aircraft engine is due to new materials. The key points of engine development are: (1) new-type superalloys, including the third-generation single crystal superalloys, intermetallics, double-performance powder disk and low expansion superalloys; (2) high-performance titanium alloys and their composite materials, including high-temperature titanium alloys, Ti-Al intermetallic compounds, burn-resistant titanium alloys; (3) ultrahigh temperature structural materials, such as ceramic composites and C/ C composite materials; (4) high-temperature polymer composites; (5) other key materials, such as coating materials, lubricant materials and brazing materials; (6) key processing technology, such as overall shaping technology; (7) technologies of functional coating, surface strengthening and protection. Current status of development Chinese metallic materials used in key and major projects of aviation, aerospace and shipping have developed into a large scale and high level, which meets the requirements basically. Taking structural steel used for shipping hulls as an example, it has developed from imitating to self-designing, from hearth furnace to electric furnace and refinery outside the furnace, and then to converter and continuous casting; and it has formed a series of 390MPa, 440MPa, 590MPa, 785MPa, which meets the application requirements for vessels. Great progress has been made on composite materials used in key and major projects in China because of studies within many years. For example, China has developed a lot of functional composite materials with low-density ablation, heat-shielding, thermal insulation and shock-resistance in the field of aerospace. The composite materials of carbon/carbon, high-oxygen silicon/ phenol-formaldehyde and silica/phenol-formaldehyde used for key and major engineering projects, have been prepared by means of liquid-phase low-pressure impregnation/carbonization, chemical vapor deposition, RTM molding, cloth belt winding and impregnation/hot-press sintering processes. There is an obvious gap between China and developed countries on polymer materials · 58 ·

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used for key and major engineering projects. High-end polymer materials can not meet the domestic demands. Research, development and industrial production of basic organic compounds and polymer materials are still at a low level. Taking specific engineering plastics and their processing additives as examples, some varieties are lacking in supply and need to be imported (usually can not be imported), or have a low industrial level (poor quality and stability). Research on ultra-high temperature ceramic materials in our country is still in the initial stage and not well funded. A few organizations have carried out some exploratory works but have not achieved any substantial progress at present. Domestic research in the past was focused on ablation-type heatresistant materials. A lot of structure enhanced C/C composite materials with 3D multi-directional weaving and fine puncturing have been developed and applied. Under financial support of 863 High-Tech R&D Program Outline, heat-shielding ceramic tiles have been developed through the studies of heatshielding materials used in space shuttle transportation. The main performance parameters of the heat-shielding materials are better than those of American second-generation ceramic tiles and the same as the third-generation materials of HTP-9.

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Development Targets and Possible Breakthroughs from Now to 2050

5.1 Developing Trends Concerning Demands on Advanced Materials China is in a period of high-speed development at present, and is expected to have a great demand for materials in the long term. Generally, there are several major trends on demands for advanced materials: firstly, demands of the amount and varieties of materials will be increased continuously over a very long time. Secondly, more attentions will be paid to the quality, reliability and cost. Thirdly, demands for energy materials, bio-materials, and environmental materials is more and more pressing. Fourthly, in the pursuit of highperformance, the materials are also required to be multi-functional. Fifthly, the materials should depend less on resources and energy, causing less pollution and damages to the environment. Along with the economic, social and technical development, the contradiction between the supply and demands of resources and energy will become more and more prominent. Environmental protection is attracting more concerns. Living standards and expectation are rising continuously. High technologies develop rapidly. All of these challenges require materials to meet the overall demands for the development of each field. On the other hand, materials should be easy to manufacture and have good performance, meanwhile depending less on resources and energy and inflict less damage on the environment. Around 2050, energy will be one of the core issues of Chinese economic and social development. A recent report from the Shell Company predicts that the primary energy consumption in 2050 will be 4 times that at present. Whether such prediction is reasonable or not, according to the current reserve of fossil resources and the situation of international energy market, it has no doubt that China has to revolutionize the structure of energy consumption in the following 40 years. According to the prediction, Chinese consumption of fossil fuel energy would drop to less than 60% of total energy consumption by

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2050. Renewable energy would be one of the dominating energy resources and the main energy will change from carbon-base to hydrogen-base. Hydroelectric power and nuclear power will account for more than 20% of the total power generation; Non-hydroelectric renewable energy would account for a quarter of the total primary energy. Transformation of energy consumption structure has set the new requirements for materials sciences and technologies which will play a supporting role. In coal and electric power industries, application of ultra-supercritical or more efficient power units is an inevitably trend, which needs metallic or composite materials with good high-temperature and anti-fatigue performance. The developing trend of gas turbine blades in power generation is to use metallic or composite materials integrated for structure and performance, having the characteristics of high-temperature resistance, corrosion-resistance, light-weight with high-strength, long application life and high reliability. The consumption rate of nuclear energy will rise from 0.3% in 1998 to 11.6% by 2050. With the increase of nuclear power generation units, it is inevitable to search wider for nuclear resources. China has the world’s second largest reserves of thorium. If nuclear pure thorium is able to be refined from the ThO2 minerals of Baiyunebo deposit in inner Mongolia, the lack of raw materials for nuclear power generation will not occur within a long period through the cycle of thorium and uranium. However, because neutron absorption elements of Sm, Eu, Gd, Pb, B in nuclear pure thorium (99.999%) must be controlled to be lower than 1 ppm, segregation technology will achieve a great breakthrough at that time. Within the following 20–25 years, the international wind-energy market will grow 25% annually on average. The cost of generation in the large windpower generation fields has dropped to 4 US cents per kW·h currently and the ratio of cost and performance of wind-power is competing with coal-power and hydro-power. It is predicted that the cost of wind-power will be reduced to 3 US cents per kW·h; the installed capacity of global wind-power will reach 1.231 billion kilowatts; and the annual power generation capacity will be 3000 billion kW·h, accounting for 12% of global power generation capacity, and which will need low weight and high strength materials with wear-resistance and corrosion-resistance. At present, wind power generation capacity in our country is less than 1% of the total power generation capacity, having extremely broad prospects of development. Wind-power installed capacity will reach 5 millions kilowatts by 2010 and then China will be the largest wind-power market and manufacturing center of wind-powder equipment. The wind-power installed capacity will reach 50 thousand megawatts by 2020, and 100 thousand megawatts by 2030, being one of pillars of domestic electric power supply. In the field of solar-energy applications, rising conversion efficiency and reducing cost are always the striving direction of solar-energy battery materials. By 2015, the price of solar-energy cell components is predicted to be possibly reduced to 1 dollar/Wp and the thickness of Silicon plate is predicted to be

Roadmap 2050

near 100μm. The manufacture cost of business mode would reach 1 dollar/W and conversion ratio would be 15%–20%. By 2050, the power price of solarenergy would be 0.05 dollar. According to the arrangement of key 863 Program during “the Eleventh Five-Year Plan”, we would accelerate the research on key technologies in CdTe film cells, layered film cells of amorphous silicon/ microcrystalline silicon, dye-sensitized solar cells. And new a breakthrough is believed to be achieved in the near future. This kind of product would ultimately replace single-crystalline silicon cells and become the dominating product in the market, within which the ratio of silicon film cells would be rising and possibly occupy 30% of market share. After 2030, the efficiency of highly-stable dye-sensitized solar cells would be more than 25%, gradually seizing the solar cell market. Undoubtedly, there would be a great-leap-forward development in Chinese photovoltaic industries within the future 20–30 years. By 2030, there would be a great breakthrough on the idea that the accumulated photovoltaic installed capacity would reach 80 GW. By then, the photovoltaic industrial would break the cost bottleneck, and supplying power day and night would achieve a partial degree of self-sufficiency. According to the “research and development program of semiconductor lighting” released by the United States, by 2015, lighting efficacy of commercial cold-white light and warm-white light LED devices will achieve 200lm/W and 188 lm/W, respectively. Lighting efficacy of commercial OLED devices will reach 150 lm/W. By 2010, lighting efficacy of domestically produced LED devices would break 100 lm/W, and come into general lighting market. By around 2020, Chinese semiconductor lighting technologies will obtain a substantial breakthrough, and gain broad applications, being expected to seize more than 30% of lighting market. Saving energy in industry, transportation, and architecture is the key to realize the structural optimization of energy consumption. Within the following period, the secondary battery market and energy-storage batteries for the industrial and car-loading market will keep growing rapidly. The total output value of Li-ion batteries is expected to break through 10 billion dollars by 2016. By 2020, car-consumed energy will be a quarter of our oil consumption. Then, the oil dependence ratio will be over 60%. Hybrid vehicles will be the mainstream. Electric cars and fuel-cell cars will seize over 25% of markets. New-types of materials based on Mg alloys, Al-alloys and nanocomposites, will be widely employed. Before 2050, transport systems and tools will go through a disruptive revolution. In the future, there will be great potential for energysaving architecture, concerning a lot of development and the employment on new types of materials, which include thermal protection and insulation materials, transmission thermal insulation materials, phase-transition energy-storage materials, photovoltaic power generation/heating materials, energy-saving lighting materials, and smart tuning materials. Along with the development of material technologies, before 2030, the energy-consuming level of architecture in our country is expected to be 7L (calculated by the annual fuel · 62 ·

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consumption per square meter). In the industry , transformation of industrial structures and significant improvement of industrial efficiency should be realized before 2050. Superconducting materials, nano-materials, thermoelectric conversion materials, energy-storage materials, catalytic materials, and newtype segregation materials would be widely applied. Zero growth rates of ecological and environmental degradation will be basically realized by 2050. The quality of the ecological environment will be superior to the international average standard. The treatment rates of urban sewage and wasted materials, industrial wasted waters and materials will reach 100%. 60% of cities will own nationally standardized first-level air quality. The improvement of ecological and environmental quality has set a higher and more pressing requirement on the environmental materials which are considered as the technological basis and material protection, especially concerning aspects of sewage treatment, purification of automobile exhaust emissions, and utilization of wasted materials. With increasing demands placed on minerals and resources, resource exploitation is moving forwards to underground, deserts, ocean, and polar regions, setting higher and severer demands on material technology. Deep exploitation of minerals requires higher anti-pressure and thermal-insulation of the mine-support materials. The exploitation of oceanic resources needs numerous pressure-resistant, corrosion-resistant and high-strength materials. In underground spaces, nuclear waste materials increase more and more with the development of our nuclear industry. The solution method is to be buried deeply, which requires anti-radiation materials and solidified materials. The future utilization of underground space is the large basement and cross harbor tunnels, which demand high pressure-resistant and corrosion-resistant materials as the supporting materials. Along with the development of science and technology, human discovery, exploitation, and utilization of space resources will be the inevitable trend, demanding varieties of so-called “inter-atmospheric air-space craft”, which could rapidly go back and forth between earth and space across the atmosphere or orbit in outer space for a long-time. The development of inter-atmospheric air-space craft is the enhancement and leaping-forwards of aerospace and aeronautical achievements, which demands high-temperature and ultrahightemperature resistant materials, metallic materials, inorganic materials and composite materials. Development goals in the field of information in China anticipate that the scale of the information industry in 2020 should be ranked first in the world, that China will become a strong information industry country, that we will form the world’s largest information network systems supported by independent technique, that we will hold the right to control information, and to establish a solid national security information system. In the information age, the demands of super-capacity information transmission, ultra-fast realtime information processing and ultra-high density information storage has

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accelerated the conversion pace for information carriers from the electronics to opto-electronics and photonics. The era of fiber optic communications, mobile communications and digital information networks has become the general trend of information technology development. Accordingly, information functional materials have been developed into thin materials, thin layer micro-structural materials, functional system-on-a-chip materials which set materials, devices, and circuits as a whole, and to the direction of organic/inorganic composites, organic/inorganic and complex life and nano-structured materials. At the same time, accompanied by the development of materials systems from uniform to non-uniform, from linear to nonlinear, and from the equilibrium state to nonequilibrium state, the control accuracy of materials processing by growth will also develop to a single atom, single-molecule scale. From the material system point of view, with the exception of silicon and silicon-based material as the basis, the contemporary micro-electronics technology will not change until the middle of the 21st century. The compound semiconductor material microstructure will play an increasingly important role due to its excellent optical properties in high-speed, low-power, low-noise devices and circuits, especially in optoelectronic devices and optoelectronic photonic integration. At the same time, significant progress has been made in highly efficient light-emitting silicon-based research in recent years, so that people have seen the dawn of silicon-based optoelectronic integration. Organic semiconductor light-emitting materials, due to their low cost and good flexibility have become an important development direction of R&D of the full color, high-brightness light-emitting materials. This materials is expected to become the next-generation leader in flat panel display materials. The successful development of GaN-based violet, blue, green heterostructure light-emitting materials and devices will enable optical storage density to be doubled. On the other hand, some high-performance new materials will also be widely applied in the field of information, such as new micro-electronic materials—single-layer graphite (graphene). Wide application of ultra-magnetoresistance (EMR) organic polymer materials will promote the development of electronic components towards light weight and small size. The Chinese population will reach 1.42 billion by 2050, 24% of which are aged people. The average life expectancy age will be 85 years. We are entering into old-age society. With the development of the national economy, people are asking for a life with higher quality. The requirement on ecological materials will change from simple functions to intelligence. Therefore, the development of biomaterials will be from an initial state of increasing the quantity to a later stage of improving the quality, meanwhile keeping manufacture cost lower and lower.

5.2 Developing Trends Concerning Advanced Materials Material science and technology is a subject both of basics and · 64 ·

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comprehensiveness. From a traditional sense, it is of very strong crossdisciplines, overlapping physics, chemistry, mathematics, and engineering. Recent developments make it overlap a lot of engineering subjects, such as the chemical industry, mechanics, the information industry, electronics, laser, i.e. the content of material science and technology is very rich, containing nearly all varieties of materials, overlapping many subjects, concerning all aspects of behaviors from micro-scale to meso-scale (including nano-scale) and microscale, covering relevant contents from fundamental subjects and engineering technologies. So, materials science is a multi- and inter-disciplinary forefront comprehensive subject. It is both a fundamental subject aimed at discovering the underlying laws in materials science and technology, but also an applied subject closely related to engineering and technology. Material science has a relatively long history and the subject system tends to be stable. But along with scientific development, comprehension of deeper levels of structure and performance of varieties of materials keeps extending and deepening. And large social and economic demands on materials and continuous inter-disciplinary promotion make material science active. Generally speaking, main developing trends of contemporary material science and technology can be summed up in the following several aspects: 1) Traditional materials will still seize an important position. Metallic material will still show obvious advantages on the ratio of cost and performance, processing and present equipments. And new products are emerging. They will still have strong vitality. Polymeric materials will develop greatly with prior performance. Especially, polymeric functional materials are under consideration for development. Engineering ceramics will be developed by improvement of performance and reduction of cost. Functional ceramics has been in a main position in functional materials and will continue to develop. 2) Composite material is the developing focus of structural materials, mainly including resin-based high-strength and high-modulus fiber composite materials, metal-matrix composites, ceramic-matrix composite materials and carbon-carbon-based composite materials. Surface coating or modification of material is another group of widely applied and economic materials, with broad development prospects. 3) Bio-materials will gain more applications and development. One is the bio-medical materials, which can replace or repair human organs, blood and tissues. The other is the bio-mimicking materials, which can mimic the biological functions, such as reverse osmosis membranes. 4) Development of nano-material science and technology attracts special attentions. Nano-material science and technology are one of the investigating focuses in nano-science and technology currently or in the future. There may still be great developments in the future 5–10 years, possibly inducing important changes in economy, technology or even living styles. 5) New manufacturing, new processing and new performance-testing methods will form the breakthroughs for developing and investigating new

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materials, gradually attracting high attention. Starting from atoms or molecules as the initial materials and controlling the component and structure in micro scale have been important developing directions for the synthesis of present advanced materials. The synthesis technology of environmental-friendliness and low-cost attracts human attention. In some fields, the integration has been realized between the synthesis and preparation of materials and design and production of devices. The relevant new technology and equipments are continuously emerging. 6) Characterization and testing of materials are important bases for the development of new materials. Comprehension of the performance, components, and structure is the important research content of contemporary materials science and technology. Varieties of testing methods of material performance and characterization of material structure from macro-scale to micro-scale at different levels are an important part of material science and technology. The life evaluation and prediction of material attracts attention. New methods, technologies and equipments relative with characterization and evaluation of materials are emerging one after another. 7) Design of materials and performance prediction develops very fast. At different levels of micro-scale, meso-scale and macro-scale, or starting from molecules, atoms and electrons, design and preparation of new materials according to desired performance are becoming mature. Multi-scale and crosslevel design of materials with the aim of “designing material according to demands” attracts attention. Collaborative design and production of materials microstructure are common. 8) Material science and technology pay more attentions to multidisciplinary and comprehensive science. On the giant background of natural sciences and technologies, by multi-subjective overlapping and integration, comprehensively employing modern scientific and technical achievements, continuous exploration and innovation should be made to develop new material science and technology. 9) New materials are developing in directions of high-performance, lowcost, complexity, functionalization, low-dimensions and intelligence. Numerous key-important and far-reaching impacting materials are emerging one after another, playing an important role in the growth of society and improvement of people’s living standards. 10) Attention should be paid to the development of new materials and inter-promoting of improving, updating, and enhancing basic and traditional materials. New materials technology promotes the development of emerging industries, playing a more and more important role in the transformation and updating of traditional industry. 11) More attention will be paid to the coordination between materials, their products, the ecological environment and resources and their relationship with the sustainable development of human society. Development of material science and technology and environmental science and technology will be · 66 ·

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5.3 The Development of Content of Materials Research Materials are the natural basis on which human beings live and develop. For thousands of years, human beings have been employing materials as tools and developing their applicable values. For a long time, people’s investigation interests in materials form the relationship between performance, manufacturing processing and components, and such a relationship has been based on experiments and experiences. Significant and glorious achievements have also been achieved concerning material processing and related techniques, which took hundreds, or even thousands of years, accumulation and evolution of crafts, but still lacked explanation and recognition of nature. Since the 20th century, scientific thinking, results from fundamental subjects, and processing practices have converged in material fields. Finally a scientific chain has been formed relating the inner structure and performance of materials, which is an important way and historical leap. By discovering the inherent complicated systems of multi-level structures contained in materials, explanations on the materials complexity started to have a basis. For example, observation of microstructure by optical microscopy, of sub-structure by electronic microscopy, of crystalline and molecular structure by XRD equipment, of atomic structure by excitation spectrum and of nuclear structure by high-energy bombardment disclosed varieties of structures inside the structures constituting the scientific frames of understanding of solid-state materials. This meant that understanding of the nature of materials and scientific explanation of behavior and phenomenon of materials was added into experiments, and theories were added into practices. With social and economic development, the contents of material research show several following trends: the first one is the development of computer techniques. Computers play more and more important roles in the design and performance of materials, and have become the crucial tools in the design and production of new materials. The second one is that material science has intersected several large subjects, such as physics, chemistry, mathematics, and engineering. The developments in recent years have also made it intersect large sets of engineering subjects, including the chemical industry, mechanical industry, information industry, electronics industry, and laser industry. The research content has remained innovative. The third one is that the impacts on resources and environments during the whole life cycle are attracting more and more attention due to environmental and resources problems. 3R (reduction, reuse and recycling) guides the design and production of materials products. For a long period, material applications have been aiming to maximize the performance and function of materials. Only a single or several aspects 5 Development Targets and Possible Breakthroughs from Now to 2050

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closer. The development of materials science and technology of resourceconserving, energy-conserving and sustainable materials will attract world-wide attention.

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are concerned in cost-control. For example, in material manufacturing, only the production cost is considered, paying less attention on the reliability of usage and recycling and reuse. Since in the initial design of the products many requirements in the following processes can not be considered completely, costs will be amplified step by step, leading to a several times increase of the final cost. Along with the development of society and economy and the advancement of science and technology, consideration of the whole life-cycle cost with investigation and application of the corresponding controlling technique have been or are going to be the inevitable trend.

5.4 Core Technology Problems The production and application of materials goes through such process as, “natural resources—materials—parts—devices—system—refuse/resources again”. Correspondingly, the whole life-cycle cost of a material contains the costs of the raw material, manufacturing, processing, assembly and integration, testing, maintaining, repairing, and recycling, which overlaps other resources, energy, labor, and environmental in the whole life-cycle cost of materials. Along with the development of society and the economy, consideration of the whole life-cycle cost with investigation and application to the corresponding controlling techniques have been or are going to be the inevitable trend, which should be recognized as early as possible. Faced with the whole life-cycle, cost and cost-controlling are the most widespread, pressing, and forward-looking major propositions, being a major scientific and technical problem affecting future development and progress of modernization. There are many constrains on the whole life-cycle cost, such as dependence on the cost of resources, the cost of raw materials during processing and manufacture, efficiencies of use and cost decided by the performance and reliability of materials, pollution cost and recycling utilization ratio. However, the improvement of material science and technology is the key for the realization of low-cost of whole life-cycle. For example, in order to save resources and energy, it is necessary to develop short manufacturing and processing technology, replacement technology of rare elements, near net shape technique, intelligent manufacturing and processing technique, environmentally-friendly materials, green preparation and energysaving processing techniques, failure-protection technique, and utilization technique of wasted materials. At present, foreign countries, such as United States of America and Russia, have already accepted the concept and practice of whole life-cycle cost for materials, mainly applied in high-tech weapons and equipment for military aircraft. At present and in the future, in focusing on the whole life-cycle cost and cost-control, there are some core technology problems: (1) the prediction, design and control of usage behavior of materials: by clear understanding of · 68 ·

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5.4.1 Prediction, Design and Control of Usage Behavior of Materials In previous investigations into new materials, trial-and-error methods were usually employed, leading to lots of waste of resources and labor. Along with the development of society and economy and advancement of science and technology, on-demand design and realization of precise control of performance have become an inevitable trend for the development of advanced materials. Prediction, design and control of material usage behavior are based on a clear understanding of the material component—structure—texture— erformance. By theory and calculation, content, structure and performance can be precisely predicted. Design and preparation of materials at microscopic, mesoscopic and macroscopic level are beneficial to develop new materials with accurate multi-level structure while reflecting the design performance. It can help people to develop new materials and greatly reduce the cost and time of material research and testing, which is the long-term aim. According to the space scale of subjects design, material design can be divided into three levels: micro-scale design level, whose scale is of several nanometer, or so-called atomic scale, electronic scale designing; continuous model level, whose scale is of several micrometers, considering materials as the continuous media; engineering level designing, responding to macro-scale materials, concerning research and design of processing progress and usage performance of bulk materials and parts. As to functional materials, such as magnetic materials, optical materials, the mechanism which dominates their functional performance is relatively simple. Common calculation at electronic scale level is enough to solve most questions. But for structural materials, mechanical performance is usually affected at many levels, such as macro-design, microstructure, and electronic structure, which require joint simulation at many levels. Materials design concepts, such as biomimetics, self-assembly and complex composite materials and nano-technique, plus further understanding and prediction abilities supported by computer, will lead to new emerging materials which can meet the requirements of the future. At present, we are in an initial stage of employment of theoretical application and calculation in designing materials. Superconducting superlattice materials, nonlinear optical crystalline and spintronic materials are the successful examples of materials design. Currently, the paradigm on materials design is still not founded. The main methods for materials design are the following: 1) The foundation of a materials database. 5 Development Targets and Possible Breakthroughs from Now to 2050

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relationship between structure and performance, accurate forecasts are carried out on material performance, leading to the realization of precise processcontrol and design; (2) efficient recycling of material; (3)integration of structure and function in materials; (4) analysis and testing technique of materials.

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2) Based on the understanding of multi-scale theory, foundation of the quantitative relationships between microstructural parameters and performance. 3) Ecological design theory and method of materials. 4) Calculation design, modeling and mimicking, virtual preparation and manufacturing. 5) Predictions of materials life-cycle and usage behavior. 6) Expert systems of materials design. 7) First-principle theory calculation.

5.4.2 High-Efficient Recycling of Materials The increasing demands for the quantities and varieties of materials will last for a long period with social and economic development in our country. According to the traditional model, the growth model of materials follows unidirectional linear progress “resource—products—waste”, which means more materials are produced, more applied, more consumed resources, and more waste is produced, more seriously affecting resources and materials. But, with higher and more critical requirements from resources, environments and other aspects on materials synthesis and applications, linear growth of the unidirectional model will not be fitted for the development of materials fields in our country. Employment of “resource—products—waste—renewable resources”, meanwhile adding repair and re-production of old materials and structures, can realize the high-efficient recycled usage of materials, which has been the inevitable developing trend of materials fields. High-efficiency recycling technique of materials would be the most worthwhile breakthrough in present material fields, with “reduction of usage, reuse and changing into resources” as the principles. The “reduction of usage” is to reduce the consumption of resources and production of waste as much as possible during the production and application of materials. The core is to raise the utilization of resources; “reuse” means to continue the usage after using, repairing and reproducing several times and extend the usage life as much as possible, in order to avoid the change of materials into waste too early. “Changing into resources” means to change waste into resources to the utmost extent. Changing from wasted to valued, from harmful to beneficial, can reduce both the consumption of natural resources and the emission of pollutants. From the present situation, there are mainly two ways for “changing into resources”, one is the recycling usage, such as used Al changed into renewable Al, wasted paper into renewable paper waste plastic into fuel or raw materials; the other is to change wasted materials into raw materials, such as recycling and reuse of plastic, coal ashes in power generation plants for building materials which can used in road-building and construction projects, municipal solid waste for electric power generations. In order to realize high-efficiency employment, it is necessary to start from molecular design and component structure design of materials and · 70 ·

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5.4.3 Integration of Structure and Function Generally, materials can be divided into structural materials and functional materials according to their applications. During the application of structural materials, their strength, toughness, mechanisms and thermodynamic properties are mainly used, while the sonic, photonic, magnetic, thermal properties of functional materials are mainly used. One of the developing trends in advanced materials is to combine functional material with devices, tending to smallscale and multi-function, to realize the integration of structure and function of materials and further develop smart techniques of materials and high-intelligent multi-level structural composite materials, which can both meet the structural design and the functional device requirements. The integration of structure and function of materials is beneficial to reduce resources consumption and employ short processing during the preparation of devices. For composite materials, along with more complex systems, the improvement of final properties shows a nonlinear synchronous relationship with the cost of manufacturing and processing. There must be additional profits to ensure the sustainable development of composite materials techniques. The design idea behind “integration of structure-function” exploits to full advantage the multicomponent, multi-phase nature of composite materials. By choosing proper materials with photonic, electric, magnetic and thermal properties as one part or more than one part, composite materials can obtain functional properties without changing the fixed mechanical performance under the condition of not 5 Development Targets and Possible Breakthroughs from Now to 2050

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investigate the synthesis, processing and usage stability of materials under the effect of light, electricity, heat, force, media and such external fields, to realize homogeneity and unification of materials preparation, stabilization and recycling techniques. Meanwhile, it is still necessary to systematically investigate renewable preparation techniques, transformation and its control of structure and performance during the material recycling process, quality control techniques for recycling products, and set up technical standards and rules and establish evaluation systems for renewable systems. On the other side, as for the active material, it is necessary to clearly understand the evolution principal and mechanism of materials performance, realize the accurate access and prediction of materials and structural devices during failure progress and to carry out structure repair of old-aged materials in order to extend usage life. Currently, concerning the restoration of old materials, obvious advantages and high-efficiency can be observed in paste repair with composite materials compared with traditional mechanical connection. The former has been employed in the restoration and maintenance of steel structures and concrete structures in aviation and aerospace craft, structural parts in high-speed trains, and civil construction in foreign countries. In the coming 10–15 years, the restoration and maintenance of our existing civil construction structures will become more and more prominent, with broader application of restoration and life-extension techniques.

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increasing manufacturing and processing cost too much. The integration of structure and function and functionalization of ceramic materials is reflected in the following aspects: One, is to realize the functional diversification of ceramic materials by controlling micro- structure. For example, by controlling the structure of grains and grain boundaries, high transparency ceramic materials can be obtained. So, special optical properties can be given to high-strength, high thermal stability ceramic materials. For example, laser ceramics, transparent ceramics, and microwaveabsorbent ceramics have important application values. The second is to realize high-performance and multi-functionality by multi-phase composites. For examples, ceramic-metal composite materials which can maintain good hightemperature resistant properties and improve toughness of ceramic materials, microstructure-enhanced ceramic-based composites, multi-ferroic materials, magnetic-photonic-electronic composite functional materials and ultrahigh temperature ceramic materials. The developing trend of the integration of structure and function of polymeric materials is the research of intelligent structure systems, the realization of the integration of intelligent sensors and activators and of selfdiagnosis and self-repair of damage, and the connection between neuron and intelligent system of computers in order to realize the life processes controlled by outside information. Additionally, an important development trend of architectural materials is multi-functionality to realize the integration of photovoltaic components, thermal-electric components and architectural materials.

5.4.4 Analysis and Testing Techniques of Materials The materials analysis and testing techniques contain the following several aspects: Firstly, comprehensive employment of several testing and characterization techniques. At micro-scale, nano-scale and atomic scale, researches on materials microstructure, atomic structure and electronic structure, are carried out to obtain more subtle and more accurate understanding of the material micro-scale world, and its effects on the material’s performance. Secondly, research on the microstructural evolution and dynamic progress of physical and chemical reactions on the materials surfaces and complete microstructural characterization and in-situ performance testing; thirdly, research and development of experiments and theory of new testing and characterization techniques, to meet the growing demands of material science, and to raise the precision of analytical methods, as well as realize the automation, digitization, and visualization of testing and characterization techniques. In recent years, techniques of materials analysis and characterization have grown rapidly, and achieved great progress: 1) The quality and functionality of hardware in various analysis equipment have gained breakthrough progress, for example commercial field-emission electron guns have developed into TEM, SEM, electronic probe, and new · 72 ·

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electronic sources provided by auger electronic energy spectrum equipments. This has significantly raised the electronic resolution of microstructural analysis, making is specially suitable for comprehensive nanoscale analysis. 2) Visualization, computer-control of varieties of analysis techniques and enhancement of high resolution and measurement precision have also achieved breakthroughs. For examples, the horizontal resolution of scanning tunneling electronic microscopy has reached 0.1 nm and vertical resolution is higher, reaching 0.01 nm, with testing depth about 1–2 atomic layers. 3) The development and application of new analysis methods has made breakthrough progress, for example, the synchronous completion of microstructural characterization and in-situ performance testing. Besides research on microstructural characterization, TEM is also used to test mechanical properties in-situ of nanotubes, nanobelts, nanowires and electronic properties of carbon nanotubes, and to test the work functions of carbon nanotube needles. By the use of specially-designed sample holders, material microstructural evolution can be researched in-situ under external field (temperature, stress, electric fields, and magnetic fields), and TEM and STM (or AFM) functions can also combined. So that, not only information on material micro-structures but also measurements of the electric and mechanical properties can be obtained. The future keys to developing trend of material testing, analysis, and evaluation technique are the following: 1) The application of giant scientific equipment and foundations of relevant methods. According to the requirement of researches, the development of new equipment and new accessories, or improvement or updating of existing characterization equipment, is one of the necessary conditions for carrying out innovative research work and obtaining innovative results. By advanced analysis techniques and by establishing corresponding experimental equipment, deeper research will be done on materials, such as by using synchronous irradiation and neutron diffraction techniques. Presently, China Hefei synchronous irradiation accelerator has finished the second program and its performance has been improved greatly. The “Shanghai Lightsource”, the third-generation Shanghai Synchrotron Radiation Facility has been established and will be open to users in 2009. There are incomparable advantages in carrying out research on material microstructures by the use of neutron scattering techniques rather than other scattering techniques (XRD, electrons, laser, and synchronous irradiation). At present, Ministry of Science and Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China Institute of Atomic Energy have established the Beijing center for neutron scattering spectrometer by mutual funding and mutual sharing, investing 0.77 billion Yuan to establish the advanced research reactor, and an additional 41 million Yuan on a National Large Scientific Instrument Center, which provides a small angle neutron scattering spectrometer and neutron spectrometer. With the application of these large scientific instruments, the development of material

Roadmap 2050

research work will be greatly enhanced. 2) Research and application of new-generation microscopy and equipment. This includes 3D electronic microscopy images techniques with highresolution, 3D X-ray microscopy and in-situ and real-time testing of structure and performance. Through more precise characterization by advanced microscopic analysis on material and component units, richer, more precise and more quantitative structural information can be obtained. For example, the discovery of carbon nano tubes and the confirmation of atomic configuration at nano-sized grain boundaries of metallic bulk materials is dependent on TEM techniques with atomic-scale resolution. 3) Measuring techniques of material physical and chemical properties with higher space and time resolutions. Establishing measuring experimental conditions of material physical and chemical properties with higher space and time resolutions, can not only investigate atomic-scale microstructures but also measure varieties of the physical and chemical performances of materials. 4) Measuring techniques of material physical and chemical properties under extreme conditions. Establishment of testing platforms and methods of physical and chemical performances under some extreme conditions, such as ultrahigh pressure, strong magnetic field and extreme low temperature requires. 5) Prediction of material performance, life-cycle and failure analysis. 6) On-line monitoring and controlling technique during manufacturing process. 7) Material testing and evaluation standards and measurement of standard materials. There are many standards (national standards or industrial standards) at present. However, their development can not keep pace with new materials research. The lack of testing methods for new and advanced materials limits research. Along with the development of science and technology, especially the high-speed development of modern equipment and new materials and new processing, it is necessary to develop standard materials, especially standard spectrum substances (direct reading spectrometer, X fluorescence spectrum and spectral glow), standard reference materials for phase analysis, standard reference materials for gas analysis, standard material analysis for inclusions and standard reference materials for trace elements, such as composite materials. The developing trends for materials testing and analysis techniques are reflected by miniature, intelligent, computerized, network-based and on-line real-time distant methods. The miniaturization and intelligence are collective reflections of these trends. Of course, development of modern science and technology has also provided unprecedented possibilities for the micro-miniaturization and simple operation of analysis devices. The rapid development of computer technology is a vivid example. Another example is · 74 ·

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5.5 Overall Development Goals of Advanced Materials in China Around 2020, the innovation system of materials science and technology will be basically built in China. The quality and properties of some fundamental raw materials such as steel, cement, and nonferrous metal will reach or get close to the international advanced standards in an all-round way. The energy consumption of manufacturing fundamental raw materials will be decreased by 50%, the cyclic renewable usage ratio of materials will reach 10%, the service life of existing materials will be extended by 50%, and the reduction and reutilization of carbon emission will reach to 20%. The capability for the design of technical processes and the manufacture of key equipment can basically satisfy the requirements of key engineering projects construction, national security, equipment manufacture, and transportation. The innovative ability of enterprises will enhance greatly, and the fundamental research level as well as research capabilities for new materials and new technologies will get close to those of the developed countries. Around 2030, China should lead the technology of manufacturing fundamental raw materials all over the world; the service life of existing materials will be extended by 100%, the cyclic renewable usage ratio of materials will reach to 20%, the reduction and reutilization of carbon emissions will reach to 50%. China will transform strategically from being a large consumer of materials to a strong producer and innovator of materials, from following the development of advanced technologies in other countries to independent innovation. This transformation will be able to satisfy the requirement for materials of our country’s economy, national security, development of sustainable society, and also achieve the aim of extensive green preparation, manufacturing and recycling of traditional materials. Around 2050, development of advanced materials in China can satisfy the requirements of advanced technology, renewable energy, citizen health, and environmental protection. The cyclic renewable usage ratio of materials will reach to 50%. Self-repairing and self-healing bionic materials can be applied; intelligent materials will become leading materials. New achievements, methods, tools and facilities in physical sciences and information technology will be widely applied in materials design and simulation, processing simulation and manipulation, as well as testing-analysis and evaluation-characterization of materials; by which materials structure the can be precisely designed and 5 Development Targets and Possible Breakthroughs from Now to 2050

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the emergence of array detectors (CCD) which create good conditions for the micro-miniaturization of imaging equipment. The emergence of micro-fluidic chips lays the foundation for the miniaturization and instrumentation of the analysis methods of traditional materials.

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predicted, and the corresponding technical process can be exactly controlled and realized.

5.6 Emphasized Development Goals and Breakthroughs of Key Technologies 5.6.1 Energy Material Year 2020 Goals: The key structural materials and related processing technologies for energy equipment satisfy the actual demand, forming an independent supply; accomplishment of a series of breakthroughs in key materials and technologies for clean energy; China becomes the principal manufacturer of wind energy equipment. Key technology breakthroughs: Key structural materials for energy equipment (e.g. ferritic heat-resistant steel, austenitic heat-resistant steel, hot corrosion-resistant single crystal alloy, new organic/inorganic materials, high temperature gas separation materials) where the level of their technologies meets actual demand, and independent supply has been fully realized; new materials including magnesium alloy, aluminum alloy and carbon fiber composites can be mass produced, and have been widely applied in automotive industries; large power lithium battery, super-capacitor industries become mature, technological bottleneck in hydrogen preparation and storage technologies has been broken through; technology for preparation of hydrogen from wind energy and solar energy become basically mature, hydrogen related industry based on hydrogen fuel battery becomes an embryonic form; traffic energy fossil and solar energy materials basically meet the needs; power of commercial battery increases by 20%, photovoltaic converter breaks its cost barrier, the design of photovoltaic system/construction integral system is widely applied; the total capability of wind energy equipment reaches 50,000 MW, lightweight and high strength bionic structured materials have been practically applied, China becomes the manufacturing center of wind energy equipment; semiconductor lighting gradually replaces traditional lightening, and reaches 30% of the lighting market. Nano-structured heat isolating materials and intelligent heat-saving glass can be extensively prepared and utilized; a range of thermoelectric materials, catalytic combustion materials, and permanent-magnet superconducting materials has been widely applied in industry area, with higher than 15% average power saving efficiency; biological energy, neotype battery (e.g. oxidation-reduction battery, sodium-sulfur battery) technologies become mature; city construction and engineering structural materials fabricated by waste materials with lowcosts, low-energy consumption, long service life have find practical usage.

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Year 2050 Goals: Industrial energy-consumption is reduced by more than 50%, establishing energy resource system which can be sustainably developed: consumption of fossil energy decreases to lower than 60% in the total energy consumption, renewable energy becomes one of the dominant energy resources, hydrogen based energy resources substitute carbon based energy resources for consumption; hydroelectricity and nuclear power supply 20% of the total electric energy production; non-hydroelectric renewable energy resources occupy 25% of the non-renewable energy source.

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Year 2030 Goals: Fully realizing China’s self-production of energy equipment; full reduction of energy consumption of construction and transportation. Key technology breakthroughs: Technologies of combustion catalyzing, environmental purification, cyclic materials usage, high-temperature coatings, gas separation have been widely used in coal-fired power plants; new nanostructured, superconducting, optical materials and organic/inorganic composites are widely used for main component materials in the fields like wind energy and solar energy, nano-structured materials and nano-manufacturing technologies increase the efficiency of solar battery by 30%, forming one of the core technologies in energy area, self-producing all key equipments, ratio of silicon film battery increases; as development of new materials with properties of radiation resistance, corrosion resistance and solar absorption becomes mature, technologies of electricity generation from solar energy in space start to be explored; hydrogen generation by solar or wind energy passes economic evaluation, properties of hydrogen storage materials have been greatly enhanced (>20%) and the process can be performed at room temperature; key materials and technology for fuel cells find a breakthrough with high efficiency and low costs, forming the fabrication and assembly technologies of for construction of solid oxide cell power generation station, model high temperature fuel cell/ gas turbine combined power generation station has been put to application; materials related to nuclear power plant (Th extraction separation, neutron multiplication, ceramics composites, nonferrous alloy etc.) are developed with priority and meet the actual demands; with the help of high-capacity battery, fuel cell and energy storage equipments, costs of transportation energy consumption are decreased significantly. New superconducting material (Tc close to room temperature), permanent-magnet materials and amorphous alloys gradually realize energy-saving in industry and also find applications in the household.

2020

2030

2050

Year

Fusion reactor materials

New battery material technology

Technology path

Superconductive material with the Tc higher than room temperature

Solar energy conversion materials with the efficiency excesses 30%

Energy cost of construction reaches 7L

Semiconductor lightening

New generation bionic, Solar energy conversion materials with the light-weight and efficiency excesses 20% high-strength blade

Nationalization of key structural material Low-cost construction material in energy equipments

Wide application of light-weight and high-strength materials in car

Solar energy conversion materials with the efficiency excesses 30%

Superconductive material with the Tc higher than room temperature

Hydrogen production by solar energy technologies

Fusion reactor materials

Solar energy conversion materials with the efficiency excesses 40%

Generation of electricity from space solar energy

35% of communication energy is hydrogen energy

High clear combustion in electric

Fusion materials developed nationally

Energy cost of construction reaches 3L

Technology integration

Key material and technology in high-efficient and low-cost fuel cell

Generation of electricity from space solar energy

Key technologies

Wide application of light-weight and high-strength materials in coal power industry

Exploratory research

Roadmap of energy material development (to 2050)

Energy equipment materials and technologies sourced nationally, break though in clear materials. Being the biggest country of wind energy equipment manufacturing

Energy equipment produced nationally, costs of construction and communication overall decrease

Industry costs reduce 50%, sustained energy system: fossil energy fraction35%. Fuel cell power stations are generally constructed. Products like polymer-lithium battery, semiconductor lighting, super-capacitor become mainstream in the market. A various new types of batteries are widely utilized. Construction materials are mainly fabricated by waste, with more than 80 years service life. All the buildings are intelligently designed; traditional heating and airing techniques have been totally aborted, energy saving level reaches 3L. China has fully accomplished the adjustment of industry structure, decreasing industrial energy consumption costs for more than 50%.

2020

2030

2050

Year

Waste recycling

Scaled preparation hygroscopic resin and macromolecular latex

Preparation of environmental paint basis resin and colorful padding

Species differential technology of biodegradation plastics

Long-life and high flux membranes separation material

Scaled application of CO2 as industrial chemical resource

Technology path

Wide application of nano-enviormental (purification) material

Preparation of environmental paint basis resin and colorful padding

Low-cost and long-life desalination membranes separation material

Scaled manufacturing technology of biodegradation plastic materials

Low-cost preparation hygroscopic resin and macromolecular latex

CO2 consolidated as industrial chemicals and products

Waste recovery technology

Utilzation the chemical technology to prepare chemical raw marerial from plant resource

CO2 consolidated as industrial chemicals and products

Waste recycling

Database of environment-friendly materials

Technology integration

Utilzation biologic technology to prepare low-cost chemical raw marerial from plant resource

Key technologies

Utilzation the biologic and chemical technology to prepare chemical raw marerial from plant resource

Exploratory research

Goals

Build complete database of bulk materials under environmental load, providing the key foundation for ecological material development; environmental paint in representative of aqueous paint reaches more than 65% of the total paint; green and environmental biodegradation plastic materials achieve 2% of the plastic materials in market; more than 50% of the urban sewage can be treated and recycled, sea water desalinization technology is generalized; desertification is effectively controlled

Environmental paint in representative of aqueous paint reaches more than 75% of the total paint; green and environmental biodegradation plastic materials achieve 5% of the plastic materials in market; more than 70% of the urban sewage can be treated and recycled, sea water desalination is widespread in coastal cities

Implementation of recycling and high-efficient application of resources, implementation of ecological environment degradation with zero growth, implementation of civil sewage and waste disposal ratio, industrial sewage and waste ratio of 100%, aqueous paint reaches more than 60% of the total paint, application of biodegradation plastics reaches 10% of the total plastics. 60% cities possess air quality with national level I standard

Roadmap of environmental material development (to 2050)

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Year 2050 Goals: Accomplish the high efficiency cyclic usage of resources; realize zero growth of ecological environment degradation implementation 100% treatment of civil and industrial sewage and waste disposal; more than 90% of paints in the market are aqueous paints; application of biodegradable plastics reaches 10% of the total plastics; 60% cities possess first degree air quality in national standard. Key technology breakthroughs: Establish database of environmentallyfriendly materials; form mature technologies in developing environmental protecting paints, sewage treatment and car exhaust cleaning materials, waste recycling technologies, biodegradable plastics, technologies of CO 2 consolidation and utilization.

5.6.3 Bio-medical Material Year 2020 Goals: The urgent demands for biomaterials in China will promote the rapid development of domestic biomaterials, the progress of domestic biomaterial development mainly lies in improvement of properties, some domestically produced materials will replace import materials, biomaterial enterprises will gradually become strong, and the dependence on importing will be released. In another aspect, advanced fundamental researches in developing a new generation of biomaterials will be maintained at an international advanced level. Key technology breakthroughs: 1) Realize domestic production of most coronary artery stent materials, implant bone replacing materials like titanium alloys find wide application; 2) Besides the biodegradable materials of polyactide-polyglycolic acid replacing imported materials, domestic production of many copolymer of polylactide and bio-compatible materials, other polyester and degradable materials, polysaccharides materials,related property modified materials and polymeric materials will be granted; fundamental researches of targeted, 5 Development Targets and Possible Breakthroughs from Now to 2050

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Year 2030 Goals: Environmental protecting paints represented by aqueous paints reach more than 75% of the total paint; green and environmental protecting biodegradable plastic materials achieve 5% of the plastic materials market; more than 70% of the urban sewage can be treated and recycled, seawater desalination is widely used in coastal cities. Key technology breakthroughs: Key fabrication technology of base resin and colorful padding for high-performance environmental protecting paints is resolved; low-cost fabrication technology of separating membrane materials with long-life, high flux, high selecting efficiency has been developed, low-cost fabrication and processing technologies of sand-binding vegetation material, such as hygroscopic resin, macromolecular latex, and the like, have been mature.

Roadmap 2050

intelligent material as well as the new generation of biomaterials will be rapidly developed; 3) Besides basic accessories, the fabrication platform for producing nanoscaled or micro-scaled medicine carriers with size-uniformity, controllability and good repeatability in mass production is established. These materials and have been successfully applied in the controlled release of several drugs and been sold on the international market; technical platform supporting materials which can maintain the activity of protein drugs and related drug fabrication technology are established, and the activity maintaining materials have been applied long term keeping additions in several protein drugs; the other dosage forms of protein drugs, such as per os, nasal cavity, application of intake receive developing, un-injection protein drug dosage finds application; breakthroughs are accomplished in targeting drug medication systems, which will be applied in cancer therapy; intelligent drug medication systems receive deeper development, research on bio-compatibility progresses gradually more in-depth; 4) Molecular magnets (the organic molecule contains magnetic ionic such as Mn, Fe, Co and so on) will not only be initially applied in fields like quantum memory and quantum communication, but also find application as magnetic induced “biologic missiles” in medical area, carrying drugs to effectively attack targets; 5) Realize domestic production of separation medium for drug series, occupy certain part of domestic markets, and gradually reach the international advanced standard; domestic production of blood purification material, with quality which gradually reaches the international standard; 6) Accomplish massive manufacturing of blood substitute, complete the clinic experiments, and gradually put them into application; 7) Achieve breakthroughs in the research of controllable degradation of polymer materials and related products which are used for implantation and organization engineering; more than 2–5 species of natural polymer and related property-modified polymer or composite are approved as new wound dressing according to national standard, and are put into practical medical application; find breakthroughs in micro-capsule products for cell transplantation and related fabrication technology, and put them into clinic research; 8) Endow material surfaces with multi-functional properties like animal skin by structural bionic technology; accomplish the optimization and improvement of composite materials properties by bionic mineralization technology, and apply these composites in artificial bone and tooth with biological activity and compatibility. Year 2030 Goals: Further increase the species and quantity of domestic biomaterials; continuously enhance the competitiveness of bio-materials producing enterprises. The demand for biomaterials increase continuously, which will promote intelligent material being put into the market. · 82 ·

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Year 2050 Goals: The interaction of biomaterials with other areas like biology and the related integration of technologies have been ultimately developed; it is possible to design biomaterials according to the needs of the human body, including artificial organs and targeted drug carriers. Key technology breakthroughs: 1) Intelligent and targeted drug release controlling materials are widely applied, and such materials can comprehensively take into account drug properties (such as molecular weight), biocompatibility (interaction between matrix and preparation), drug target (organ, tissue, cellula), route of medication (per os, nasal cavity, implant, injection), form of drug release (continuous release, impulse modified release) as well as the releasing period , therefore many complicated and difficult disease can be cured; 2) According to fine adjustment of material microstructure, surface molecular composition and arrangement, it is possible to apply composite bioactive materials which are developed by cell multiplication, differentiation and functional usage, as well as application of asymmetric materials which are constructed based on certain tissue or organ with different three-dimensional configuration and ordered arrangement;

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Key technology breakthroughs: 1) Polymer materials with similar characteristics to biological muscle tissue, and which can also be used as artificial muscle, will be practically applied in surgery; by combining protein, gene or drug controlled release with scaffold material in tissue engineering to promote the repair and re-growing of tissue; 2) Pre-clinical and clinic researches of intelligent polymer biomaterials have been extensively carried out; breakthroughs are accomplished in fundamental research of bionic biomaterial; 3) Fabrication platform of uniform sized, controllable drug carrier finds much wider application, more than 10 kinds of release controlling drugs have been gained, which are approaching the international market, several types of long-effect protein drug are under development; the other dosage forms of protein drugs, such as per os, nasal cavity, application of intake, receive much wider development, 5–10 species of non-injectable protein drugs receive clinic approval; 4) Targeted medication systems will be applied in cancer therapy; breakthroughs will have been made in the fundamental research of intelligent drug carriers; 5) Properties of drug separating and purifying medium reach the international advanced level , and have a wide range of applications in China; 6) Performance of blood purifying products reach the leading level in the world, and the products occupy a significant proportion of Chinese markets; blood substitutes have been put into practical clinic application.

2020

2030

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Year

Basis research on intelligent and biomaterial is rapidly developed

Blood product comes into application

Generally nationalization of the coronary artery stent material, wide application of framework material such as titanium alloy and so on

Polymeric injection accessories are approved in clinic, enterprise can produce various accessories, natural macromolecular and their modified material or composite are approved as new wound dressing

Technology path

The advanced preparation technology of size-uniform and controllable bio-microcapsule becomes mature

The variety of medical accessories with mass production increased, and gradually catches up with the international level

Domestic production of series drug separation medium, occupies partly markets in the country, and reaches the leading position in the world gradually; Domestic production of blood purification material, and product property reaching the leading position in the world gradually

Intelligent biomaterial and targeting drug carrier are applied in clinic

The preparation technology of size-uniform bio-microcapsule is applied in different source of medication

Property of blood purification product reaches the leading position in the world, and occupies partly markets in the country

Intelligent and targeting drug control and release materials are widely applied; the material can take into account of drug property, biocompatibility, drug target, route of medication, drug release form as well as the releasing period and so on

With the combination of protein, gene or drug control and release with tissue engineering scaffold material, tissue repair and renew are promoted

Various problems of blood substitute are solved, breakthroughs in microcapsule products for cell transplantation

Application of protein drug un-injection dosage, the targeting drug medication systems will be applied in cancer therapy

Technology integration

Satisfaction the demands of intelligent medication system, bio-single detection, systematical control of biologic growth, hyperblastosis repair and modification

Key technologies

According to the precise adjustment of material microstructure, surface molecular composition and arrangement, it is propitious to the application of cell multiplication, differentiation and function display complex bioactivity material as well as asymmetric material constructed based on certain tissue or organ with different three-dimensional configuration and ordered arrangement

Breakthroughs in basis research of bionic biomaterial

The biocompatibility of biomaterial ca be predicted by computer design, new biomaterial come to appearance

Computer simulation can freely design and predict the fate of biomaterial, drug carrier, implants in the body

Exploratory research

Goals

Properties of domestic biomaterial enhanced, fractional material will represent the import material, biomaterial enterprise will become strong gradually, the import dependence will release. On the other hand, the leading and basic researches on new-generation biomaterial run neck and neck with the international level

The species and quantity of domestic biomaterial increase furthermore, biomaterial enterprise will become strong. The demands of biomaterial increase continuously, which promotes the intelligent material into market

Subject crossing in the fields of biomaterial and biology and so on as well as the technology integration reaches perfection, it is possible to design biomaterial according to the damans of human body, including artificial organ, targeting drug carriers and so on

Roadmap of bio-medical material development (to 2050)

Roadmap 2050

· 84 ·

Advanced Materials Science & Technology in China: A Roadmap to 2050

5.6.4 Information Material Year 2020 Goals: Functional Materials of China’s information industry will have many independent intellectual property rights of core technologies. The majority of micro-electronics, opto-electronics will achieve self-sufficiency in basic materials. Key technology breakthroughs: It is estimated that 18 inch silicon wafer and epitaxial films will be put into production in 2016, and become the leading product in 2020. The preparation of GaN-based heteroepitaxial materials and 6-inch high-quality SiC single crystal, and the devices will mature, and the preparation of homoepitaxial SiC and high-temperature high-power device will be matured , and be widely used. A breakthrough in preparation of 3-inch AlN crystal and 2-inch graphene will be made . Breakthroughs will also be made in the preparation of ZnO and diamond films, and the p-type doping of ZnO and the n-type doping of diamond , and are expected to be applied to the development of related new devices. Photoelectric functional polymer materials with a superior performance both in the wide-band (about 3.0 eV ) and narrow band (less than 2.0 eV) will be developed. The preparation of photonic crystal with spectrum from infrared to ultraviolet will mature. A variety of photonic crystal passive components will be widely used in the fields of communications, and a number of new active devices based on the concept of a photonic crystal will appear, especially laser devices and logic devices. At the same time, with some breakthrough of the integration of a variety of photonic crystal components technology, all-optical integrated information systems will appear, such as high-speed photonics in certain core components of the computer. Semiconductor quantum dot light-emitting devices will be applied in the field of optical communications and other practical applications. Breakthroughs in large-size, high-quality covariant (flexible) substrate preparation will be made and these materials will be widely used in large mismatch heterostructure growth and related electronic materials, optoelectronic devices and circuit manufacturing. Deep ultraviolet nonlinear optical materials and devices will be in practical application. All-solid-state laser full color large-screen projection display technology will be developed into products from the demonstration of a prototype, and gradually occupy home theater, large-screen digital cinema and high-end products, such as public information market, and become a new generation of full color projection display of the mainstream. With the success of research and development of the key materials of optical fiber amplifier such as halogen and sulfur chalcogenide glass, all-optical networks may be realized. 5 Development Targets and Possible Breakthroughs from Now to 2050

· 85 ·

Roadmap 2050

3) Intelligent and organic engineering products come into application. With the combination of biological sensors, micro-processing technology and micro-machines, intelligent and implanted micro-carriers are developed, which satisfy the demands of intelligent medication systems, bio-signal detection, systematic control of biological growth, hyperblastosis repair and modification.

Roadmap 2050

High and low dielectric constant thin film materials will be practically applied in ultra-large-scale integrated circuits. The rate of the chip type of resistors, capacitors, inductors, sensors, anti-EMI components, transformers, frequency control devices and other electronic components is expected to be more than 90%. Breakthroughs will be made in the preparation of relaxer ferroelectric single crystals and other new piezoelectric crystal materials, the development of high-voltage constant and electromechanical coupling coefficient of lead-free piezoelectric materials, the low temperature co-fired technology of piezoelectric materials and other materials, and the key technology of microelectronics MEMS devices and integrated devices, and they will be applied in transducers, micro drives, micro-sensors, micro motors and micro-displacement devices. A breakthrough will be made in the key preparation of new lead-free piezoelectric ceramic materials, and they will be widely applied in the filter frequency and the frequency notch filter devices. A breakthrough in the passive integration technology development on the LTCC platform will be made. The complex and integrated technology of electronic ceramic materials and passive electronic components will be developed, and be gradually applied in the semiconductor integrated circuits. Quantum disk and multi-dimensional mass memory will be practically applied. The information density will be up to 300Gb–1Tb/ inch2. The high quality fabrication process of magnetic tunnel junction will more mature, and then the bottleneck of magnetic memory (MRAM) in largescale applications will be breached, with access to business applications. The preparation of the field emission devices based on carbon nanotube will be expected to be solve, and be applied to the research and development of a variety of nanoelectronic devices. The stability of the preparation of large thermal conductivity (800W/mK) in the carbon matrix composites will be realized, and be successfully applied to various types of high power density electronic devices. Year 2030 Goals: Advanced information materials will be widely used in the whole society, and the level of the vast majority of the materials will reach a leading position. Key technology breakthroughs: Computer systems developed by applying the characteristics of ultra-high density information capacity of biological molecules (proteins, DNA, RNA, etc.) and chiral molecules, will have an operation model similar to the nervous system with the biological model, and have the computing speed and storage capacity which is over 1000 times higher than the fastest current computer, and have very low power consumption and manufacturing costs. The principle prototype is expected to be developed in 2025. Through the development of new composite technologies, self-assembly techniques, new types of organic/inorganic hybrid photoelectric materials, functional materials with excellent performance will be prepared and practically applied in optoelectronic devices. Breakthroughs in growth technology of 15-inch GaAs crystal, 8-inch SiC and 4-inch AlN will be made. Compound · 86 ·

Advanced Materials Science & Technology in China: A Roadmap to 2050

2020

2030

2050

Year Larger size, high-quality semiconductor crystal growth and processing technology and epitaxial technology

Key technologies

Organic and inorganic hybrid materials

Laser crystal, optic fiber

Basic nano-materials

Technology path

18-inch Si substrate and epitaxial wafer, 6-inch GaAs; 4,6-inch SiC; 2-inch graphene, AlN, ZnO

All-optical network using chalcogenide, halogen and sulfur glass

High dielectric constant and low dielectric constant thin film material

15-inch GaAs, 8-inch SiC, 4-inch AlN

Biological computer proteins, DNA and chiral molecules

30-inch Si substrate and epitaxial wafer, 20-inch GaAs, 12-inch SiC, 4-inch graphene

New information materials

Exploratory research

High-temperature wide bandgap semiconductor materials and devices, Deep ultraviolet nonlinear optical materials and devices; photonic crystal components, large covariant (flexible) substrates, all-solid-state laser full color large-screen projection display technology, lead-free piezoelectric ceramics materials, relaxor ferroelectric single crystals and other new piezoelectric crystal material, the chip ceramic information functional materials and devices, ultra-high density magnetic storage materials and devices

Compound semiconductor in the semiconductor industry accounts for 6% market share. 20-inch large-diameter Si wafer and epitaxial film are widely used

Biological Computer

Compound semiconductor in the semiconductor industry accounts for 8%–10% market share. Greater size, high-quality Si wafer and epitaxial film are widely used

Technology integration

Roadmap of information material development (to 2050)

Industry of information functional materials in China will have many independent intellectual property rights of core technologies. The majority of micro-electronics, optoelectronics materials will achieve self-sufficiency in basic

Advanced information materials are widely used in the whole society. The vast majority of materials reach the world’s leading

Domestic functional information materials will fully meet the needs of information society

Goals

Roadmap 2050

5 Development Targets and Possible Breakthroughs from Now to 2050

· 87 ·

Roadmap 2050

semiconductors will account for a 6% share of the semiconductor industry’s market. A breakthrough will be made in preparation and epitaxial growth of 20inch large-diameter silicon wafers will be made. Large-diameter silicon wafers and epitaxial film will be widely used. Year 2050 Goals: Domestic functional information materials will fully meet the needs of the information community. Key technology breakthroughs: The key materials for biological computing will undergo a complete breakthrough. Bio-computers will be realized in a wide range of applications. A breakthrough in 20-inch GaAs crystal growth technology will be made. Compound semiconductors in the semiconductor industry will account for 8%–10% market share. A breakthrough in growth technology of 12-inch SiC crystal, 6-inch AlN and 4-inch graphene will be made. Graphene will be widely used as a new type of microelectronic material. A breakthrough in the preparation and epitaxial growth of 25–30 inch large-diameter silicon wafers will be made. A breakthrough in the preparation technology of ultra-high thermal conductivity carbon-based composite material with thermal conductivity greater than 1500W/mK will be made. The bottlenecks relating to heat dissipation materials of the ultra-large scale integrated circuits will be resolved.

5.6.5 Construction Material Year 2020 Goals: Implementation of domestic self-supply of high-quality construction materials, accomplish key breakthroughs in green, environmentalprotecting and energy-saving materials as well as low-cost composite construction technology. Key technology breakthroughs: High-efficient energy-saving fabrication technology of high quality cement; multifunctional and multilayer design of construction enclosure material; development of PV components and thermoelectric components and their related integration technology with construction material; find R&D breakthroughs as well as technological breakthroughs in environment (humidity, temperature, air quality and so on) adjusting materials and shielding materials which block harmful electromagnetic radiation; recycling methods and technology for reuse of secondary resource, such as industrial waste; material forming and compositing technology; establish evaluation method and standards for evaluating the ecological environment impact of related material and components during the full cycle of raw material selection, manufacture, application and discarding; security during materials fabrication and application; application of nanotechnology in energy-saving construction material; establishment of 3D digital design, construction of core systems as well as the industrial tool sets.

· 88 ·

Advanced Materials Science & Technology in China: A Roadmap to 2050

2020

2030 to 2050

Year

Multifunctional and multilayer design to construction enclosure material

Material forming and composite technology

High-efficient and energy-saving preparation technology of high quality cement

Integral technology of PV component, thermoelectric components and construction material

Technology path

Intelligent and environment adjusting material

Energy-saving construction material and component

Integral component modular processing and fabricated construction

Environmental coating

Multifunctional composite wall

Low-cost, clean and energy-saving material

Waste material recycling technology

Component steam technology

Design/simulation analysis/manufacture integrative ceramic material

3D digital design and construction system

Technology integration Intelligent construction material

Environment adjusting and electromagnetic shielding material

Key technologies

Evaluation method and standards of material enviroment

Exploratory research

Roadmap of construction material development (to 2050)

Implementation of domestic self-supply of high-quality construction material, key breakthroughs in green, environmental and energy-saving materials as well as the low-cost composite onstruction technology

Wide application of green, environmental and energy-saving construction material, implementation of intelligent construction material actual application

Goals

Roadmap 2050

5 Development Targets and Possible Breakthroughs from Now to 2050

· 89 ·

Roadmap 2050

Year 2030 to 2050 Goals: green, environment-protecting, and energy-saving construction materials find wide application; realization of the practical application of intelligent construction materials. Key technology breakthroughs: Level of construction materials R&D and application has been upgraded greatly, waste consumption ratio reaches more than 60%, lifespan of construction materials increases to more than 50 years, energy consumption levels of buildings is hopefully to be reduced to 3 L. Clean energy, energy-saving technology, environment-adjusting material as well as electromagnetic shielding material and devices find large scale applications; technology of industrialized processing of glass coating, environmentprotecting coatings and multifunctional composite walls; modular processing of integral components and construction technologies by means of assembling; establishment of innovative design and integrated manufacturing systems which combine design/simulation analysis/manufacture of ceramic material.

5.6.6 Carbon Material Carbon material possesses structural and functional diversification as well as design suitability. From the demand point of view of further high-technology developing, the super structure-reinforced material in representative of highperformance carbon fiber; nuclear carbon characterized by large-size, highpurity and isotropic; ultra high temperature structural material—carbon/carbon composite characterized by high strength, high ductility, excellent oxidation and ablation resistant; and carbon matrix composite characterized by high strength and high thermal conductive will play an important role in the national key scientific projects. Year 2020 Key development directions 1) High-performance carbon fiber for civil applications such as large aircraft, spacecraft and wind power generation blade. Goals: Form the development and mass production ability of highperformance carbon fiber which is represented by T1000, alongside the development and with ability for industrialized processing technology; level of research and development to approach close to that of developed countries such as Japan. Key technology breakthroughs: Raw material polymerization technology, fast multi-site spinning technology, oxidation and carbonization technology of high-density precursor. 2) Large size, high-purity and isotropic nuclear carbon for application in high-temperature gas cooled nuclear reactor. Goals: Develop nuclear carbon with diameter of more than 1 m, impurity content is controlled less than 100 ppm. With less than 1.05 isotropic parameter, the nuclear carbon can satisfy the application demands of reflection layer and base of core substructure in high-temperature gas cooled nuclear reactor. · 90 ·

Advanced Materials Science & Technology in China: A Roadmap to 2050

Year 2030 Key development directions 1) High-performance carbon fiber for application in civil fields such as large aircraft, spacecraft and wind power generation blade. Goals: Establish and optimize surface treatment and finishing agents or coating system of carbon fiber, serialize the processing to adapt to the technological demands of carbon fiber reinforced composite with different matrices (resin, metal, ceramic, etc.). Key technology breakthroughs: Carbon fiber surface treatment technology; processing technology of surface finishing agent; surface coating system and its preparation. 2) Large size, high purity, isotropic and fine grained graphite for application in fine ceramics sintering, single crystal and polycrystalline silicon refining, electrical discharge machining, continuous casting of metals, high temperature and corrosion resistant containers. Goals: Fine grain and isotropic graphite with larger than 2 m diameter. Key technology breakthroughs: Fabrication technology of superfine raw material; isostatic pressing technology; high temperature calcination technology. Year 2050 Key development directions High strength and high thermal conductivity C/C composites for application in plasma facing material in nuclear fusion reactor, thermal management material in high capacity electronic devices. Goals: Develop high strength and high thermal conductivity C/C composite with higher than 100 MPa bend strength and 250 W/mK thermal conductivity, which can be used as high heat-flux devices in nuclear fusion reactor; development of ultra-high thermal conductivity carbon matrix composite with the thermal conductivity more than 1500 W/mK, which can be used in thermal management of high capacity electronic devices. Key technology breakthroughs: Fabrication technologies of high thermal conductivity pitch interphase carbon fiber; knitting technologies of PAN based carbon fiber and interphase pitch carbon fiber; high-temperature graphitization and catalyzed graphitization technology. 5 Development Targets and Possible Breakthroughs from Now to 2050

· 91 ·

Roadmap 2050

Key technology breakthroughs: Modified fabrication technology of raw material (oil coke/pitch coke, pitch), secondary coking technology, hightemperature calcination technology and chemical purification technology. 3) Long-term, high-temperature oxidation resistant and low-ablation carbon/carbon (SiC) composite. Key technology breakthroughs: Processing control of chemical vapor deposition and texture formation of high-performance pyrocarbon and SiC matrix; structural design and advanced manufacturing of erosion resistant and hightemperature oxidation resistant C/C, C/SiC composite; design and manufacturing technology of high-temperature oxidation resistant coating materials.

2020

2030

2050

Year

High-performance carbon fiber

Chemical vapor deposition and texture forming process control

Serialization of finishing agent

isostatic pressing technology

Technology path

Fast spinning

Secondary coking technology

Raw material polymerization technology

Large size nuclear carbon

C/C composite

Carbon fiber surface treatment technology

Large sized and fine graind graphite

Continuous and high thermal conductive fiber

Large-scale and low-cost preparation technology

Hybrid forming

Key technologies

High strength and high thermal conductive C/C composite

Exploratory research

Uniform oxidation and carbonization

High temperature chemical purification

Oxidation and ablation protection treatment

Composite technology

High temperature calcination technology

Composite forming

Formation of the development guarantee and mass production ability of high-performance carbon fiber which is represented by T1000; oxidation resistant C/C composite satisfies the application requirement of supersonic speed flight hardware; nationalization of nuclear carbon, satisfy the application demands of high-temperature gas cooled nuclear reactor

Establishment and completion carbon fiber surface treatment and finishing agent to meet the demands of composite with different matrixes; Fine grained isotropic graphite with the diameter larger than 2 m, to satisfy the demands of die material in metallurgy and mechanical industry

C/C composite, with higher than 100 MPa bend strength and 250 W/mK thermal conductivity, which can be used as high heat-flux devices in nuclear fusion reactor; development of high thermal conductive carbon matrix composite with more than 1000 W/mK thermal conductivity, which can be used in thermal management of high capacity electronic devices

Thermonuclear fusion reactor Thermal management of electronic devices

Goals

Technology integration

Roadmap of carbon material development (to 2050)

Roadmap 2050

· 92 ·

Advanced Materials Science & Technology in China: A Roadmap to 2050

Over a long timescale, metallic materials will still be the dominating material, and play an important role in the economic and social development of human beings. However, the development of metallic materials fabrication and processing technology will face great challenges in the coming future. Year 2020 Goals: Per capita metallic materials consumption in China will achieve the world’s average level; high quality metallic materials can be basically selfsupplied; energy-saving and emission-reduction, as well as the production efficiency in metallurgy industry will reach the leading position in the world, large and super large scale metallic structural components can be domestically manufactured. The capability of the design process and manufacture of key equipment basically satisfies the requirements of key engineering constructions, national security, equipment manufacture, and transportation. The innovation ability of enterprises will have been improved greatly, and the fundamental research level and research capabilities of new materials and new technologies will approach that in developed countries. Key technology breakthroughs: Materials computation and design become important technology in the research and development of novel materials. The R&D efficiency of novel materials will be greatly improved by the successful correlation of multi-scale design and computation methods, as well as the accumulation of fundamental data, hence greatly enhancing the controllability of the processing and the predictability of the properties for engineering materials. Important advances will also be achieved in the fields of, for example, stable or metastable materials structure and properties changing during their synthesis and processing; strengthening and toughening mechanisms of metallic materials and evolution of properties during service; usage of the electronic, magnetic, optical, thermal, chemical, and the like characteristics under specific environments; materials structure and properties under extreme conditions (low dimensional scale, specific pressure or temperature, etc.); and theories and methods related to computational material science. The variety of high-temperature intermetallics will increase constantly; by overcoming or avoiding their shortcoming of poor plasticity, intermetallics will become suitable for a wide range of applications; high-strength and lightweight metallic materials will have been applied in big scale, including highperformance and easily-formed magnesium alloy and aluminum alloy with ultrahigh-strength (over 800 MPa); problems of high melting point alloy related with the oxidation resistance, processing properties and cost reduction will have been solved; low-cost and high-performance metal matrix composites and related forming technologies will have been developed , including structuralfunctional integrated composites and high strength and high temperature resistant structural composites; realization of the complete domestic production 5 Development Targets and Possible Breakthroughs from Now to 2050

· 93 ·

Roadmap 2050

5.6.7 Metallic Material

Roadmap 2050

of nuclear metallic materials and components. Achieve key technological breakthroughs in energy-saving and emission-reduction in the metallurgy industry, as well as in the technique of environmentally-friendly non-coke iron making, with the adoption of large coke-oven, direct steel making and hydrogen metallurgy technology, decreasing CO2 emission by more than 50%, and reducing energy consumption by 30%, while improving the efficiency by 2 times, gradually achieve zero emission. The new generation of compact steel production technology will find industrial scale application. Non-oxidizing hot rolling of steel technique is realized in industrial applications, with the non-oxidizing heating and non pickling processed. Have developed high quality and high speed continuous casting technique, with the speed of continuous casting exceeding 4 meter/minute, and a low level of inclusion size and oxygen content. The processing technology and equipment for heavy castings and forgings range in the advanced level in the world. Make great progress in a series of novel synthesis and processing technologies for metallic materials. Advanced powder metallurgy technology and granular shaped materials are widely applied, resulting in powder metallurgy materials and products with fully dense, composite structures, high performance, high accuracy, complex-shaped and serialized characteristics; computer aided fast laser technology receives wide application in die and complex structure device manufacture. Year 2030 Goals: Per capita metallic materials consumption in China achieves the average level of developed countries; various high performance metallic materials can be completely self-supplied; the demands of advanced technology development, citizen health, energy resources and environment, national security, and the like requirements have been satisfied; the innovation system of metallic materials science and technology is essentially accomplished in China. Key technology breakthroughs: Metallic materials find practical application in the field of clean renewable energy, such as hydrogen energy; metallic materials including stainless steel, titanium alloy, and magnesium alloy and so on, have been widely applied as biomedical metallic materials for the body implants and medical devices; amorphous alloys and nanocrystalline materials with ultra-high strength (more than 5000 MPa) and big volume have been developed, with practical applications in some areas; key breakthroughs will have been made in the development of fusion reactor materials. Make important progress in the structural-functional integration technology of metallic materials; intelligent synthesis and processing technology of materials will have received wide industrial application; intelligent synthesis and processing technology will have been developed which integrates the design of materials structure and properties, design of components, as well as the realtime monitoring and feed-back control of the whole procedure in materials synthesis and forming process; ultra-precise micro-forming processing technique and corresponding evaluation and characterization methods become · 94 ·

Advanced Materials Science & Technology in China: A Roadmap to 2050

2020

2030

2050

Year Technology integration

Hydrogen energy metallic materials Biomedical metallic materials

Material device damage detection and repair

Total lifespan evaluation of material

Low-cost materials recycling technology

Metallic nanocrystalline materials and nanotechnology Accurate design and control of metallic material microstrucure and property

Key technologies

Technology path

High-strength and light-weight metallic material, high-temperature intermetallic compound Large forge piece processing technology Environmentally-friendly non coke ironmaking, compact steel production, high speed continuous casting, Computer aided fast laser technology Non-oxidizing heating rolling Structural and functional Powder metallurgy technology composite technology and particle material Relationship between material calculation and design, between structure and property

High-melting point and oxidation resistant alloys Metallic material low cost materials recycling technology Material property evaluation and evaluation under extreme condition

Amorphous alloy and nanocrystalline materials with ultra-high strength and bigger volume Ultra-precise micro-forming Total lifespan evaluation of metallic process and evaluation technology material Material intelligent preparation and processing technology Accurate prediction and design of metallic material microstrucure and property

Nuclear fusion reaction metallic materials

Exploratory research

Goals

Per capita metallic materials consumption of China achieve the average level of that all over the world; high quality metallic materials can be basically independently supplied; energy-saving and emission-reducing, as well as the production efficiency in metallurgy industry reach to the leading level all over the world, large and super large scale metallic structure component can be independently manufactured. The capability of designing process and manufacturing key equipments basically satisfy the requirements of key engineering constructions, national security, equipment manufacturing, and traffic and transportation. The innovation ability of enterprises enhances greatly, and the fundamental research level and research capabilities for new materials and new technologies get close to that in developed countries

Per capita metallic materials consumption of China achieve the average level of those for developed countries; various high quality metallic materials can be completely independently supplied; to satisfy the requirements of advanced technology development, life and health, energy and environment, national security and so on; to basically found the innovation system of metallic materials science and technology in China

China will strategically transform from a big country of producing metallic materials to a strong country of producing metallic materials, achieve the independent technological innovation of metallic materials, and fully satisfy the requirement of the country’s social economic development and the national security

Roadmap of metallic material development (to 2050)

Roadmap 2050

5 Development Targets and Possible Breakthroughs from Now to 2050

· 95 ·

Roadmap 2050

mature and have been applied in micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS), micro devices and other systems. Environmentally polite and low-cost synthesis and processing technologies have found a wide range of application; with the application of entire life cycle (ELC) evaluation methods for metallic materials, the evaluation of aging structures residual life and related rehabilitation technologies have been widely applied. Year 2050 Goals: China will strategically transform from a large consumer and producer of metallic materials to a strong country of production of metallic materials, achieve the independent technological innovation of metallic materials, and fully satisfy the requirement of the country’s social economic development and the national security. Key technology breakthroughs: Realization of large scale industrial application of metallic nanocrystalline materials and nanotechnology; technologies related to the structural-functional integration of materials have been maturely applied. New achievements, methods, tools and facilities from physical science and information technology will be applied much more widely in materials design and simulation, process simulation and control, as well as testing-analysis and evaluation-characterization of materials; the structure and properties of materials can be precisely designed and predicted, while the corresponding technical process can be exactly controlled and realized. The synthesis and processing procedures of metallic materials are controlled to be environmental-friendly, and low-cost cyclic materials re-usage technology has been widely applied.

5.6.8 Ceramic Material Since 1960s, advanced ceramics have attracted wide attention because of the strong demands in the fields of high-temperature components, information technology and so on. The fundamental research and application of investigations into ceramic materials are now enjoying prosperity. Although ceramic material has been widely applied in many areas, a lot of key scientific problems and technical issues are not completely solved. For instance, brittle fracture behavior of ceramic material still has a great impact on its security and reliability in service; compared with metals, there is still no breakthrough in manufacturing ceramics with near-net-shape dimensional control and lowcost techniques. The widespread applications of ceramic materials rely on thorough solutions to the fundamental issues of ceramic design, fabrication, and performance predictions as well as the related key technological problems. 1) Fabrication technologies of Ceramic Materials: Recently, the preparation technique of most advanced ceramics has still relied on the traditional ceramic (porcelain) fabrication techniques , i.e., forming and hightemperature sintering, in which complicated fabrication processes and high temperatures are required. Besides, the preparation technique is power-wasting, · 96 ·

Advanced Materials Science & Technology in China: A Roadmap to 2050

Year 2020 Goals: Achieve a breakthrough in the principles and technology of ceramic materials service property prediction, and establish the design principles and technology of ceramic materials. Key technology breakthroughs: 1) Structure-property relationships for ceramics and design principles 5 Development Targets and Possible Breakthroughs from Now to 2050

· 97 ·

Roadmap 2050

costly, and incapable of near-net-shape dimensional machining, and can not meet the requirements neither of shape complexity nor the multi species and bulk production demands of modern industry. Therefore, revolutionary changes in fabrication technology are required for the widespread application of ceramic materials. Nowadays, the main research subjects include: direct synthesis and fabrication of ceramic materials with controllable shape and composition by means of mild chemical processes or bionic methods; with the assistance of computers and special other fields (laser for instance) the combination of forming-sintering-machining procedure in ceramic material production can be achieved; utilizing an integrated processing technology which combines thin film-thick film-sintering to realize the integrated fabrication of functional devices, based on the current passive integration technology; 2) Structure-functional integration and multi functionality of ceramic material: one important direction in the design of ceramic materials is the integration of structure and function or multiplication of functions; one aspect is by control of the microstructures to realize the multiplication of ceramics properties, making composites with multiphase composites is another method to achieve the high-performance or multi functionality of ceramics; 3) Structure-property relationships and multi-scale microstructural design of ceramic material: compared with metals, ceramic material is an emerging subject, the research of structure-property relationships and microstructural design of ceramic material is immature. For example, although the brittle fracture mechanism of ceramic material has been generally understood, we still can not effectively control the brittle fracture of ceramic by means of microstructural optimization. Moreover, the investigation of machinable ceramics is very active recently, but there is no definite conclusion on the machinability of ceramic materials, as well as whether both high strength and high ductility can be realized for ceramics. Solving these fundamental issues relies on further advancing materials science computation, especially computations for ceramic materials, which mainly include the structureproperty relationship investigation at the atomic-molecular level, the correlation between interface microstructures at nano- and sub-micron scale and properties as well as the structural design and control at the “macro” scale which is larger than a micrometer. With synthetic consideration of preparation technology, microstructural control and property design, the statistical design of ceramic materials based on materials databases will show very big advantages. Especially the establishment of service property prediction and evaluation methods will have important effects on the wider application of ceramic materials.

Roadmap 2050

of multi-scaled ceramic microstructures, service property prediction and evaluation methods of ceramic materials; 2) New structure-function integrated materials and their design principles, exploration of new bionic fabrication technology, probing of the physical foundation of functional ceramics with multifunctional characteristics, and the organic-inorganic composites as well as new material systems; 3) Near-net-shape forming and machining technology of ceramics; 4) In the application technology aspects, domestically produced hightemperature ceramic coatings will find application in areas like steam turbines, with an approval from the international markets; integrative manufacturing techniques and domestic produced facilities of functional ceramics and devices reach the international advanced standards. Year 2030 Goals: Find new technological breakthroughs in the energy-saving preparation of ceramic, achieving the combination of functional designstructure design-preparation technology for ceramic materials and components. Key technology breakthroughs: 1) Computer aided methods begin to be successfully applied to service property prediction of ceramic materials; 2) Nano-technology will be integrated into the property design and fabrication methods of ceramic materials; problems relating to the reliability of ceramics will have been thoroughly solved, breakthroughs are made in chemical and bionic fabrication of ceramics; 3) In the applied technology aspects, structure-function integrated material will have found wide applications; practical application of new low-energy consumed fabrication technology of ceramic is realized; new technological breakthroughs will be made in ceramic energy-saving fabrication, achieving the combination of functional design-structure design-preparation technology for ceramic materials and components. Year 2050 Goals: Ceramic materials find wide applications in extreme and special conditions, which will greatly promote the development of frontier sciences and technology. Key technology breakthroughs: 1) Self-healing functionality and structural design of ceramic material, wide application of ceramic integrative fabrication technology; 2) Computational modeling of the ceramics’ failure mechanisms, which can accurately predict their service-life; 3) Ultra-high temperature ceramics and multifunctional materials find wide application in the fields of nuclear energy and space technology.

· 98 ·

Advanced Materials Science & Technology in China: A Roadmap to 2050

2020

2030

2050

Year

Near-net-shape forming and machining techniques of ceramics

Application of domestic produced high-temperature ceramic coatings on steam turbine with an approval from the international markets

Wide applications of structure-function integrated material, practical applications of new low-energy consuming ceramic preparation techniques

Integrative manufacturing techniques of functional ceramic and devices, domestically produced facilities reaching the leading position in the world

Service property prediction and the establishment of the evaluating method of ceramic materials

Integration of nano-techniques into ceramic material property design and preparation methods

Technology path

New structure-function integrated materials and their design principle, exploring for new bionic preparation techniques, exploring for multifunctional functional ceramics, the physical foundation on organic-inorganic composites as well as new material systems

Structure-property relationship of ceramic and microstructure design principle at multi-scales

Successful application of computer aided methods on service property prediction of ceramic material

Thorough solution of the reliability issue on ceramic and breakthrough in chemical and bionic preparation of ceramic

Wide application of ultra-high temperature ceramic in the fields of nuclear energy, space technology etc, as well as wide application of the multifunctional material

Technology integration

Self-healing function of ceramic and its structure design, wide application of the integrated ceramic fabrication techniques

Key technologies

Computational modeling of ceramics failure mechanisms, which can predict their severing-life exactly

Exploratory research

Roadmap of ceramic material development (to 2050)

Principle and technological breakthrough in the service property prediction of ceramic material, establishment of the principle and technology of ceramic material design

Breakthrough in the new technique of ceramic energy-saving preparation, achieving the functional design-structure design-preparation technique integration for ceramic material and components

Wide applications of ceramic in extreme and special conditions which will greatly support the development in frontier science and techniques

Goals

Roadmap 2050

5 Development Targets and Possible Breakthroughs from Now to 2050

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Roadmap 2050

5.6.9 Polymer Material Year 2020 Goals: Domestic commodity polymer materials become highly competitive in terms of production scale, cost, and performance, and most high-end products are produced domestically. Key technology breakthroughs: 1) Materials technology: Polymerization of polyolefins with controllable structure and composition: technologies such as living chain transfer polymerization, chain shuttling polymerization, and living coordination polymerization of dienes via rare earth catalysis, will be ready for commercialization. Coordination polymerization can produce homopolymers and block copolymers of polyolefins with well defined molecular weight and molecular weight distribution, stereo-selectivity, and structure, allowing expanded performance and applications. High-performance and multifunctional rubber: to overcome the deficiencies of natural rubber, the design and optimization of the molecular structure of synthetic rubbers to mimic and then surpass natural rubber, enables their production in large scales. Optoelectronic polymers: a series of breakthroughs are achieved in production technology, such as metal-catalyzed living polymerization and polymerization via metal-free catalysis, polymerization technology and purification technology, that are suitable for industrial processes. Similar breakthroughs are also achieved in material design and performance optimization by custom-tailoring molecules based on readily available knowledge on structure-property relationships. Synthesis of near-infrared and infrared low-bandgap organic photonic materials is studied, and the materials properties and devices are explored. The stability of optoelectronic polymers under exposure to light, oxygen, and moisture is understood, and service life of the devices is extended. New device fabrication technologies specific to polymers are developed, such as high-precision printing. Biomimetic polymers: bio- structures, processes, and functions are mimicked and the responses of biomimetic materials to external stimuli in complicated environments are studied to optimize the speed and the magnitude of the response. Mimicking of bio-structures leads to multifunctional surfaces and interfaces, and the performance of composite materials is improved and optimized by mimicking bio-processes. Utilization of polymer wastes: separation of the carbon and hydrogen elements via catalytic cracking and de-hydrogenation directly produces carbon nanotubes, nano-graphite, active carbon, and carbon black as materials for electronic, medical, and new energy device applications. 2) Product development: Engineering plastics: expand the production scale of current facilities to decrease energy consumption and costs so that they are more competitive, and improve current and develop new technologies · 100 ·

Advanced Materials Science & Technology in China: A Roadmap to 2050

5 Development Targets and Possible Breakthroughs from Now to 2050

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Roadmap 2050

and products. For the products in urgent demand and dependent on import, build large-scale production plants based on self-developed technologies in conjunction with acquired advanced foreign technologies. Heat-resistant specialty polymer materials: polyimides are used as base resins for composites, structural adhesives, self-extinguishing lightweight foams and noise- and heat-insulation materials of low toxicity, lightweight cable shield and jacket materials. Polyimide fibers with the mechanical properties of carbon fiber T700 and the density of 70%–80% of the latter become available. Synthetic rubber: traditional butadiene rubber and isoprene rubber are produced using rare-earth catalysts, and match the structure and performance of natural rubber. Optoelectronic polymer materials: Development of high-bandgap (Ľ3.0 eV) and low-bandgap (ļ2.0 eV) optoelectronic polymers with superior overall properties is crucial for realizing high-performance light-emitting displays and solar cells. Separation membrane materials: high-performance reverse osmosis composite membrane systems with salt-rejection rate of 99.5% and water flux of a 30% increase over current level are produced commercially, with domestic membrane components. Biomimetic polymers: design and synthesis of molecules with multifunctions such as sensing and driving, synthesis and integration of base materials, sensing materials, and driving materials, fabrication of biomimetic surface and interface morphologies, and development of multifunctional active paints, and low-drag sound-absorbing materials for aerial or underwater highspeed vehicles. Water-saving polymers: high-performance, low-cost and multifunctional polymers are used in large scale for efficient agriculture. 3) Applications: Polymer light-emitting displays: polymer light-emitting displays of ļ 30 inch size become mainstream products, and flexible displays based on polymer TFT circuits enter the market. Optoelectronic polymer materials for energy applications: lifetime and efficiency of polymer whitelight-emitting diodes meet civil use requirements, and prototype products have emerged. Products of flexible polymer solar cells with power conversion efficiency better than 5% are available; the efficiency of polymer solar cells on rigid substrates exceeds 10%, which are ready for commercialization. Optoelectronic polymer materials for communication and sensor applications: low-cost polymer TFT arrays enter the RFID and sensors markets and are used for information transfer and bio-medical and environment detections. Other applications of optoelectronic polymer materials: new materials and technologies for solar photolysis of water are developed and their market potentials are assessed. Utilization of polymer wastes: polymer molecules are cracked controllable ways to functionalize backbones or chain ends to yield low molecular weight functional products such as telechelic oligomers. Utilization of oil-production

Roadmap 2050

wastes: 30% or more petroleum-based raw materials are substituted with those based on weathered coal to produce oil-water separation materials at 80% cost with 10% performance increase and 90% water recovery in service, and which utilize waste mud in the production of coal-water slurry on a large scale. Year 2030 Goals: All high-grade polymers are produced in domestic facilities, and recycled with high efficiencies. Key technology breakthroughs: 1) Materials technology: High performance rubber: thermoplastic elastomers and rubber nano technologies are develop, and rubber is designed and processed at the molecular level. Commercial technology for optoelectronic polymer materials: systematic development of processes and facilities for mass production of high purity products. High performance dye-sensitized solar cells: dye-sensitized solar cells with high stability and 25% efficiency become a reality and ready for commercialization via the development of high performance dyes, high performance nano-structured thin films and hole-transport materials, and new materials suitable for new device designs. Osmosis membranes for desalination: models are established to correlate osmosis and filtration performance with process parameters and microstructure of the membrane, and structures are optimized to yield asymmetric membranes with high salt-rejection rate and high water flux. Biomimetic polymers: the highly-efficient and pollution-free energy conversion of muscles is mimicked to prepare highly-efficient and durable electro-active polymers, which control the motions of artificial organs with precision. Utilization of polymer wastes: the efficiency of conversion of polymer wastes to produce mid- and high-grade oil products via highly-selective catalytic cracking and high-pressure high-temperature steam cracking is improved. 2) Product development: Flexible platforms: driven by the needs to increase the performance-cost ratio and conserve resources and the environment, and making use of controllable polymerization and physical and chemical modification technologies, the variety of polymer material platforms is drastically reduced, and high performance polyolefins are replace engineering plastics in many applications. Heat-resistant specialty polymer materials: electro-insulating polyimides with high thermo-conductivities are used in microelectronic devices with ultrahigh integration, and polyimides of refractive indices of >1.8 and dielectric constants of