Revolutionising product design and performance with materials innovation

Increasing the rate of discovery and development of new and improved materials is key to enhancing product development and facilitating mass customisation based on emerging technologies such as 3D printing. Acceleration of materials discovery and development has been enabled by advances along multiple fronts, including capabilities of scientific instrumentation, high performance computing combined with more predictive computational methods for material structure and properties, and data analytics. Historically it has taken 15 to 20 years from laboratory discovery of new materials to their deployment in products. Systematic methods for accelerated materials discovery and development are still in early stages in the new digital era. Prospects are bright for realising a materials innovation ecosystem necessary to integrate new materials with digital manufacturing technologies to achieve new product functionality. A range of initiatives, gaps, and key policy issues to be addressed are discussed in this chapter.