Soft Materials and the Future

Materials have always been a major driver in technological change and the growth areas of materials also change. New alloys made jet aircraft and gas turbine engines possible, semiconductors made electronics possible and new polymers built the plastics and synthetic fibers industries. These businesses are still all important and still employ many materials engineers but the action is always at the fuzzy edge where new materials are leading to new products.

Much of the engineering of the future will have "Bio" as part of the title: Biotechnology, Biomaterials, Biomimetics, Biomedical, Biocomputing. Some of this is driven by medicine, some is driven by the need for machines that work better with people, like robots, some is a need for lighter, more efficient machines and some is a desire to move to a softer kind of technology. A current example of this is in organic electronics where organic semiconductors are making possible flexible transistors, data storage and displays. This will let us do a better job of integrating the electronic components into the structure, the same way your nerves are integrated into your tissues. It will also let us move to cheap, printable, disposable electronics so everything has sensing, computing and display functions as well as structure: the smart cereal packet or smart T-shirt.

As well as soft electronics, soft cars and soft robots there are many soft materials that are developing quickly but are un-noticed. Food, cosmetics, paints and medicines are going to get a lot more attention from engineers in the future.

Our department is Materials and Textiles because it covers this whole range of soft, flexible and composite materials. Traditional apparel is still on the menu because it can teach us so much but we and the textile industry are changing and new technology is the theme.

Finally, this is not just a question of white coats in labs. Technology works when people use it for new designs and new products which people want. We not only want people to make new technology, we also need people who understand it and can make it useful. For every scientist inventing materials there must be engineers to design with materials and a business community to make it happen.