Conference: Critical Materials and Clean Sustainable Energy - A Square Table Workshop

Colorado School Of Mines, Golden CO

Investigators

Abstract

NON-TECHNICAL DESCRIPTION Materials act as core enablers of transformative technologies that can help address global concerns such as climate change, sustainable manufacturing, and critical materials supply chains. Addressing climate change through adoption of clean sustainable energy will place additional demands on critical materials needed for new and existing technologies. This Square Table will explore the challenge of material constraints to the adoption of clean sustainable energy with particular attention to how the Materials Genome Initiative (MGI) approach can help address supply chain constraints on critical minerals and materials. These constraints will be considered within the context of overarching themes of scalability, manufacturability, and sustainability. The scope of the table includes materials used directly in clean energy as well in other applications that impact supply of and demand for such materials. Participants will help to identify gaps in the Materials Innovation Infrastructure and identify the parts that need to come together. The Square Table will facilitate interactions of communities spanning the materials development continuum, including researchers, industry, and end users. TECHNICAL DESCRIPTION This award is to support a Square Table on Critical Materials for Clean Sustainable Energy, to be held in December 2022. The Materials Genome Initiative (MGI) Strategic Plan proposed National Grand Challenges that can be addressed by accelerating materials development as a mechanism to build out the Materials Innovation Infrastructure. This Square Table will inform the scoping of a potential MGI grand challenge through identifying opportunities to accelerate the adoption of clean sustainable energy by addressing critical materials challenges. The four sides of the Square Table will facilitate interactions of communities spanning the materials development continuum: (1) critical minerals/materials community, (2) data/computational (the Materials Genome Initiative), (3) advanced manufacturing, and (4) sustainability. The goal of the meeting is to foster stimulating discussions between individuals whose work at the frontiers of their own discipline may not yet intersect in a substantial way yet but whose exchange of knowledge, thoughts, and ideas could identify research discoveries and directions that have high potential impact on, and may be transformative for, critical materials for clean sustainable energy. The outcome of the meeting will summarize the overarching questions discussed in the meeting, the key challenges and opportunities identified in the meeting, and the new, potentially transformative ideas that emerge from the discussions. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.