Dear all
A heavy « double month » issue especially in the field of critical materials: this time more with business deals (Tesla signing cobalt contract with Glencore and urging miners to « get nickel », BMW signing battery contract with Northvolt, MP Materials going public...) but also some urge for new technology to ease the future constraint on critical resources (AM acknowledging the need for electronic components to be more energy efficient or the US Army funding research for easily accessing potable water with a new aluminum panel).
Food for thought as well coming from Marc Andreessen pushing for customer friendly innovation rather than investor friendly buy back ... confirmed by a Forbes article describing the long story of Japanese research and industry delivering on customer led materials innovations.
Further on the scientific front, good progress in the field of composites - be a new recycling technology for thermoset at MIT or the new 3D Fab Lab at Swinburne University - as well as on the road to renewable hydrogen for fuel cells - be a new gold/platinum/MOF catalyst for water electrolysis at Tomsk University or graphene being used to make more durable fuel cells for cars at Queen Mary University of London.
On the sustainability front, we picked 3 examples: the World 1st certification of a full electric aircraft by EASA, the MasterCard initiative to help payment card issuers to transition away from first use PVC to 28 alternative sustainable materials, and the standard for nature based solutions unveiled by IUCN last week.
And finally some good news (be deals, awards, fundings, new product launches or papers) coming from our WMF start up alumni with Carbios (France), Cuberg (USA), Genes’Ink (France), Kebotix (USA), Materials Zone (Israel), Membrasenz (Switzerland), Mosaic Materials (USA), Nawa Technologies (France), Opus 12 (USA) and Saratoga Energy (USA).
