• Use of organic materials to provide robust defenses against laser threats to personnel and equipment; and

• Novel catalyst systems to provide in situ defenses by neutralizing chemical and biological attack.

DoD investments in such areas will maximize the development of important novel organic materials with specific military applications. If these opportunities are pursued, the panel expects that:

• Modeling will become a routine first step in organic materials development.

• Synthesis and processing of organic materials will tend to converge.

• Polymers of high purity with totally controlled microstructure will become available, with important applicabilities.

• Aggregates of organic materials on the nanometer scale will yield new opportunities in material functionality.

• Combinations of low- and high-molar-mass organic molecules with inorganic materials will become widespread, offering unique functional advantages.

The Panel on Functional and Organic Hybrid Materials believes that organic materials of low or high molar mass are destined to play a vastly increased role throughout the entire spectrum of military applications for the foreseeable future. By virtue of their functional flexibility, facile processibility, and intrinsic low weight—all of which contribute to an economic advantage over the application life cycle—their penetration into regimes hitherto held by metallic and other inorganic materials will continue at an unabated, and perhaps accelerated, pace.

In this chapter, the panel discusses what it believes to be the defining general concepts that will emerge in the next two decades to fundamentally change the science and engineering of organic and hybrid materials. Advances based on these materials are foreseen in electronic and photonic devices, eye protection against laser weapons, lightweight full-color displays, photovoltaic energy collectors, protection against chemical and biological agents, and many other areas. Many of these changes will be

Front Matter (R1-R22)

Executive Summary (1-8)

1 Department of Defense Materials Needs (9-20)

2 Using New Materials in Defense Systems (21-26)

3 Structural and Multifunctional Materials (27-54)

4 Energy and Power Materials (55-94)

5 Electronic and Photonic Materials (95-134)

6 Functional Organic and Hybrid Materials (135-180)

7 Bioinspired and Bioderived Materials (181-210)

8 Integration of Research Opportunities (211-224)

Appendix A: Meeting Speakers (225-236)

Appendix B: Biographical Sketches of Committee and Panel Members (237-246)

Appendix C: Integration of Materials Systems and Structures Development (247-250)

Appendix D: Energy and Power Materials (251-284)

Appendix E: Functional and Organic Hybrid Materials (285-292)

Appendix F: Bioinspired and Bioderived Materials (293-308)