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Getting Materials Out of the Lab
Inventing new materials is only the first step. Getting them into mass production and use is just as hard.
Yet they enable almost every one of humanity’s technical achievements: rebar unlocked the skyscrapers of the 1920s; chemically strengthened glass delivered us smartphones; and stainless steel, not created until 1913, brought with it the clinical equipment upon which modern medicine depends. Certification is a set of extensive tests in controlled environments both to uncover the new material’s failure modes and measure important properties for engineering applications: how its performance changes under pressure and temperature; how it deforms under a tension or compression; how flammable it is; and more. The majority of material innovations aren’t standalone products, but tightly integrated pieces of a bigger system: anodes for batteries, plastic shelves in refrigerators, or the carbonized fiber filaments of Edison’s lightbulbs.
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