The MaterialsCommons project marks the inception of the first pan-European federated digital infrastructure for materials research and development. Steel producers ArcelorMittal and Voestalpine are participants.
Around 70 per cent of all technical innovations are directly or indirectly materials-based. However, it still takes 10 to 20 years to develop new materials and bring them to market; and that is a time frame that is no longer acceptable, given climate targets, the energy crisis and upheavals on the geopolitical stage. The sluggishness is largely explained by high demand for existing material data, which is simultaneously hard to get hold of. At the root of that is the highly fragmented nature of the European materials data landscape: data from research projects is scattered across numerous platforms, databases and national initiatives; it has a low level of interoperability, is hard to find, and is practically inaccessible for many stakeholders, especially small and medium-sized enterprises. Inefficient data searches and redundant data collection alone are estimated to cost over 10 billion euros a year across Europe. At the same time, global competition with the USA and China is intensifying in key technologies such as AI, microelectronics and energy: all areas in which high-performance materials play a crucial role.
The MaterialsCommons project aims to standardise the fragmented European materials data landscape and accelerate the development of new high-performance materials by a factor of 4. Coordinated by Prof. Dr Peter Gumbsch from Fraunhofer IWM/KIT, the project, which is funded by the European Commission, connects 26 research institutes from 14 countries with more than 30 industrial partners, which include Bosch, Siemens, ArcelorMittal, Infineon, Voestalpine and Schaeffler. MaterialsCommons creates a central, user-friendly entry point to far-flung data repositories, workflows and AI tools with no requirement to centralise data.
Platforms retain their independence
The federated architecture, that is, the amalgamation of individual platforms that retain their independence, affords data sovereignty, IP protection – and interoperability. The core innovations of the MaterialsCommons project include shared ontologies, taxonomies and metadata schemas as the “common language” of the materials community. What is more, automated, multi-stage research processes are under development, so-called self-driving lab workflows in which experiments, simulations and data analyses are orchestrated and executed without manual intervention, across multiple laboratories and locations. By the time the project is completed, more than 90 per cent of the most frequently used European repositories are expected to be accessible via a single interface.
The infrastructure is being trialled in six industrial use cases: battery materials with Siemens, among other industry partners; bainitic steels with Bosch, ArcelorMittal, Voestalpine and Schaeffler; quality assurance in additive manufacturing with Schaeffler and Applus, and materials for microelectronics with Infineon and Siemens. The industrial partners expect significant time savings and massive cost reductions during individual development processes.
According to Fraunhofer IWM, the current geopolitical and economic situation frames a pressing need for this project: the OECD is forecasting a 40 per cent rise in global resource consumption by 2040, fossil dependency is increasingly being replaced by dependency on critical raw materials, and the European Critical Raw Materials Act, the Net-Zero Industry Act and the Ecodesign for SustainableProducts Regulation require new materials at a pace that cannot be achieved via conventional methods. Each year in the absence of such an infrastructure means billions lost due to inefficient use of data, slower innovation cycles and a delay in achieving climate targets. Therefore, MaterialsCommons is not just a technical infrastructure project, but a strategic investment in industrial sustainability, resilience and prosperity in Europe.
Source: idw
