ASM International’s (Materials Park, Ohio) Emerging Technologies Awareness Committee recently conducted a survey of several hundred ASM members to gain feedback on technologies that members believe will have the most impact on the future of materials science and engineering. The survey asked respondents to name three materials-related technologies and three process-related developments expected to have a significant impact within the next few years. It further asked respondents to clarify which of these technology developments they expect to have the single greatest impact.
“One of the goals of ASM’s Emerging Technologies Awareness Committee is to identify the latest trends and areas of interest within materials engineering. Surveys such as this are very helpful, in that they gather feedback on leading-edge topics that ASM can then build content and courses around,” says committee chair Roger Narayan, FASM, professor of biomedical engineering at North Carolina State University.
Of the 300 total responses, most could be placed into 11 major categories including: Additive manufacturing/3D printing; biomedical or bio-based materials; energy materials such as fuel cells and batteries; environmentally friendly/recycled or substitute materials; high-performance materials for light weight, high strength, high temperature applications; integrated computational materials engineering (ICME) and computational modeling; welding and joining; metals processing technologies; nanomaterials and nanomanufacturing; smart or multifunctional materials; and surface coatings/engineering.
Of these categories, the top five included high-performance materials (66 responses), energy materials (50 responses), additive manufacturing (39 responses), nanotechnology (35 responses), and ICME (26 responses). The survey was not intended to provide statistically significant data, but rather to gain a deeper understanding of what members perceive to be the most promising next-generation technologies related to materials engineering.
Based on these survey results, the Emerging Technologies Awareness Committee plans to consider further actions such as developing new education courses, publications, databases, and feature articles around these topic areas. Survey results will be shared with members and others via the ASM Newswire, Advanced Materials & Processes (AM&P) eNews, and AM&P magazine.
