The Advanced Materials and Processing Program and the Restructuring of Materials Science and Technology in the United States: From Research to Manufacturing (1995)

Dr. Schwartz briefly traced the background of the Advanced Materials and Processing Program (AMPP). Driven by application needs of the DOD, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and DOE, and with the underlying support of the National Science Foundation (NSF), the development of materials and an understanding of their nature have been major research activities at the national laboratories and our research universities. In the last decade the government 's role has been expanding to include direct support of industry for commercial applications. This expansion culminated in the Advanced Materials and Processing Program. The intellectual underpinnings for the AMPP were supplied by the recent MS&E study (Materials Science and Engineering for the 1990s, National Academy Press, Washington, D.C., 1989) and the four regional follow-up meetings. The most important message from this study is the necessity to involve the industrial community in the government R&D process from the outset. Industry participation in the identification of needs and in the planning and execution of programs is a necessary component of any program intended to assist in the development and maintenance of a world-class competitive manufacturing industry in this country.

Planning for the AMPP has been carried out by a dedicated group of materials program managers from the 10 participating departments and agencies that constitute the Planning Task Group of the Committee on Materials (COMAT). The spotlight on materials has heightened the emphasis on advanced materials and processing technologies in the 10 agencies, and the challenge of formulating a coherent federal program has stimulated interagency communication and coordinated multiagency planning of materials programs. The last few years have seen developments in federal law intended to stimulate joint ventures in R&D. Using trade associations and professional societies, companies now increasingly join forces to define and jointly pursue mutually beneficial R&D. In this first year of AMPP implementation, COMAT is experimenting with four examples of such program development: structural ceramics for load-bearing applications above 1000°C, materials for electronic packaging, a metal casting program, and infrastructure and construction materials.

In general, major efforts in materials developments are linked to major program commitments. In the initial organization of an environmentally clean car initiative, FCCSET's Group on Manufacturing was the designated leader, but technical planning will require intensive input from the materials and computing groups, and so the AMPP is being linked into the process.

The remainder of Dr. Schwartz's talk concerned the competitive position in which we find ourselves as we contemplate increased collaboration between public and private sectors in technology areas intended for commercial application. We've reached a state of knowledge about our business that allows us to contemplate, and often achieve, materials by design and manufacturing scale-up virtually without pilot plants. We have achieved a level of sophistication in the education of scientists and engineers which makes us the continuing object of envy by those who are among our most effective economic competitors, and our array of national laboratories are staffed and equipped at levels which have led to world-class accomplishments in the pursuit of the missions of the federal agencies. Our accomplishments

in many manufacturing endeavors have maintained or begun to once again achieve world-class competitive capability. However, in many others, we have clearly been surpassed by those economic competitors. We are facing an enormous challenge to more effectively couple those group strengths of our universities and federal laboratories with the resources in our extensive manufacturing complex and to achieve commercial success in an environment of increasingly global competition. There's no certain path to success in this endeavor, but one thing is clear. In this triad of government, university, and industry, it is industry which makes the products, and industry must, therefore, play a major role in defining the agenda and participating in the R&D. It is to the establishment of this environment of industry involvement that the planning strategy of the AMPP is dedicated.

Dr. Happer described the activities at DOE related to the AMPP. The AMPP is housed in a number of sections of the DOE. The biggest is in his organization, the Office of Energy Research, in the Basic Energy Division. The DOE has the largest dollar amount of any of the federal agencies in the AMPP. That number is a little “phony, ” because much of the money goes into facilities: facility construction, facility operation, synchrotrons, neutron sources, and so on.

Dr. Happer noted that the Congress has a real concern about initiatives, and of course the AMPP is an initiative. Because of fiscal problems, DOE and other agencies will have to fight hard to get all the money that has been proposed in the President's budget. There is also concern at DOE about the impact of all the mortgages the agency has for construction of facilities. An additional burden is the degree of oversight imposed on the DOE nuclear facilities. The Brookhaven reactor, for example, costs $25 million a year to operate, while the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) reactor costs $5 million. The difference stems from all the oversight requirements placed on the DOE.

Dr. Happer concluded his remarks with a description of several of the AMPP programs under way at the Department of Energy.

The recent budgeting processes at NSF, interactions with Congress, and how both of these influenced NSF's support of the AMPP formed the general theme of Dr. Harris' talk.

Dr. Harris explained at some length the saga of the NSF budget process in the last few years. The proposed budget for FY92, the last year of Erich Bloch's “doubling budget,” represented an 18% increase over that of the previous year. This growth was supposed to take care of the AMPP as well as several other new initiatives. However, the research budget in its final form was down about 1%. Furthermore, Congress specified certain substantial amounts to be spent on the Laser-Interferometric Gravity-Wave Observatory (LIGO), the Gemini telescope project, and the Magnet Laboratory. These developments, together with delays in obtaining the final budget, made funding decisions very difficult for the program managers. The budget of the Directorate for Mathematical and Physical Sciences (MPS) was also tight in FY93. The Division of Materials Research (DMR) was the only division in MPS to get an increase. The AMPP investment throughout MPS was up, made possible by cuts elsewhere. Congress felt that NSF should not have started so many initiatives at once, and it insisted that LIGO be fully funded. Dr. Harris lamented the in-fighting among members of the science community on projects such as Gemini, the Supercollider, and the space station. He concluded his formal talk with a plea for a

cooperative attitude among physical scientists to decide how best to use those resources that we do have.

Dr. Buchanan started his talk by pointing out that he was wearing two hats. He is director of ARPA's Defense Sciences Office, the office in which most of the materials science work is carried out at ARPA. He also is director of the Technology Reinvestment Program of the Defense Conversion Project. Dr. Buchanan noted that, at ARPA, the emphasis in materials science is more on the materials and less on the science. It is hoped that a product will result from any specific effort. A product involves all of the different facets of the science itself, even beyond the actual structural or other functional properties of the material, but also includes the manufacturing and process technology to make the material affordable as well as useful. ARPA is interested in, for example, ceramics, but ceramics that do things, that are used in engines, that serve as components for various devices.

Two areas of focus for ARPA are intelligent processing and free-form manufacturing. Intelligent processing combines sensor technology, mathematical modeling, and controls to ensure that a process yields a material with low enough price and high enough quality to enable its use in a product. Free-form manufacturing creates components without the necessity of completing a whole new set of tools and dies. Ones and zeros are turned into components without the intervening tooling steps. The DOD is interested in free-form manufacturing because, in this period of downsizing, it permits the manufacture of only a few parts in an economical fashion. ARPA has been involved in AMPP-like projects for a number of years. Dr. Buchanan described four awards to precompetitive consortia. These involve an electronics materials synthesis program, smart materials and structures, affordable polymeric composites, and organic thin film materials that can be assembled an atom at a time or a molecule at a time, in ways that are predicted and designed by computer code. These projects illustrate the interdependence of processing, modeling, utility, and economics, all intertwined, that could serve as a hallmark of the ARPA program.

The first “A” in NASA stands for “aeronautics.” Both NASA and its predecessor organization were heavily involved in the aviation industry since the early days of flight, but in the 1960s NASA turned more of its attention to space. In 1969 the United States had a 91% share of the commercial airline business. It has since given up commuter aircraft production, it dropped out of the development of supersonic transport in 1971, and it now sees a shrinking market share in long-haul planes. The Europeans were forced to solve difficult materials problems with the Concorde. The resulting materials technology has enabled them to build up a robust and competitive aeronautics industry. Wind tunnels in this country have been neglected, so that U.S. planes have to be tested in European or Russian facilities.

A major challenge to maintaining and reclaiming our market share lies in the field of materials. We have to get away from designing planes as if they were to be built in aluminum and then simply replacing the aluminum with composites. We have to start from scratch. A clean combuster that does not put out environmentally damaging oxides and nitrides must be able to operate at temperatures ranging from 3,000 °C to 3,400°C for 10,000 hours. Dr. Goldin described a project to build a clean, economical, quiet, high-speed civil transport. Development of the advanced materials needed

for the transport will be carried out jointly with industry and universities. NASA is also looking for improved materials for subsonic aircraft and, eventually, for a hypersonic plane. Spacecraft also need new materials that will increase the fraction of the total weight that can be devoted to the payload.

The space station will permit fundamental materials research to be carried out. Experiments performed in weightlessness elucidate the effects of gravity on solidification, sedimentation, and other processes.

The panel discussion involved speakers listed above plus Bill R. Appleton, Oak Ridge National Laboratory; Praveen Chaudhari, IBM; Henry Ehrenreich, Harvard University; Merton C. Flemings, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Robert A. Laudise, AT&T Bell Laboratories; J. David Litster, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; John M. Poate, AT&T Bell Laboratories; and James C. Williams, General Electric. The comments summarized below also include some input from the audience.

• “Although a manufacturing initiative may supplant the AMPP, materials will, of necessity, be an integral part of this new effort.”

• Among all the agencies involved in funding materials research, there appears to be no oversight to ensure that the various classes of materials receive funding commensurate with their importance. A large amount of money may go into one area while another is seriously underfunded. The case of magnetic materials was cited. This important class of materials receives only about 1.5% of the materials research budget, yet magnetic storage is an industry comparable in size to the semiconductor industry.

• “Processing of advanced materials must be developed to the point that they are economically competitive.”

• There is a shift toward applied research and away from basic science. “It appears that there is little, if any, new money for AMPP. Many of the new plans discussed in this session depend on industry support, but no money is available from this source.”

• “It is essential to come up with some mechanism to set priorities.”

• “AMPP will need some success stories.”