Radical Materials

Revolutionary advances in all aspects of science, biology, nanotechnology, medicine, robotics and quantum physics have seen the creation of radical new materials. The past decade has seen some amazing advances in our ability to engineer materials with increasing precision at such a small scale.  Much of this change is thanks to advances in nanotechnology, which investigates the relationship between the structure of the materials at atomic or molecular scales and their macroscopic properties.

Many of these radical materials are still at the research stage.  However scientists are finding that they far outperform conventional materials in their strength, lightness, conductivity, ability to transmit heat, and a whole host of other characteristics. As demands for high performance materials continue to increase everywhere from medical devices to advanced microprocessors and safe, efficient cars to space flight, radical materials will become increasingly common. Brand new materials suitable for the construction, electronics, medical and textile industries will allow for products that cannot be fabricated using current techniques. 

All this attention has created global interest and has attracted massive research and development, capital investment and creating a new generation of industry giants. Fortunes will now be made as scientist partner with big businesses to patent and trademark new materials. The companies that now embrace this rapid change will become leaders of the high technology industries of the future. The huge advances can drive the creation of new products or even new industries, but stable industries also employ materials scientists to make incremental improvements and troubleshoot issues with currently used materials. In other words rather than haphazardly looking for and discovering materials and exploiting their properties, one instead aims to understand materials fundamentally so that new materials with the desired properties can be created.