Chinese researchers have published most Material Science papers, but what about commercialization?

There has more material science papers published in China than in any other country in the world, but in order to obtain the economic benefits, China also needs to put research results into application.

Beijing Science and Technology student researchers of nanotechnology department

Developing new industries around advanced materials in order to sustain economic growth was a great initiative for China. In the past 15 years, material science, especially the field of nano materials, has become the focus of Chinese policy makers. For more than a decade, China has published most of the papers in the field of materials science, and since 2010, the production of these papers has only increased.

According to Web of Science, papers published by Chinese authors has tripled from 2006 to 2015. In 2015, 10 % of the papers published by Chinese researchers were in the field of materials science. Behind the increase of published papers there is the joint efforts from the government's large-scale capital investments and talent introductions.

In addition to promoting economic development, new materials can also benefit infrastructure construction, helping 1.3 billion people in China by solving housing, employment and transportation problems. ‘From military industry to health care, all fields are in need of more and better materials.’ Said Li Shutting, professor at Suzhou University.

But most of the researchers believe that more resources must be invested in the transformation of basic research. Application scientists say that the lack of support will block China's efforts in the commercialization of material research.

Cutting edge technology

Heavy investment in materials science is an important part of China's overall science and technology strategy. In the national R & D program announced in 2016, the Chinese central government promised to provide adequate funds for critical research areas, such as agriculture or strategic areas that could improve China's industrial competitiveness. Prime Minister Li said that the goal is not only to ‘catch up with the traditional advantageous fields of developed countries’ - including high performance alloys and steel research, etc - but also to be in the leading position for the emerging areas. One of Chinese government priority is nanotechnology.

In February this year, shortly before the National People's Congress, the Ministry of Science and Technology announced a number of research results obtained with the support of its funds. Last year, Chinese scientists developed an iron-based superconductor, a super alloy and a carbon nanotube transistor with a 5 nanometers only grid length.

This small transistor is developed by physicist Peng Lianmao and his team at the Beijing University. For years Peng's laboratory have been developing smaller and smaller carbon nanotube semiconductor devices and integrated circuits which are the future of computational processing. Model shows that microprocessors made of carbon nanotubes are 10 times faster and more energy efficient than silicon wafers.

In January this year, the carbon nanotube transistor with a 5-nanometers grid length developed by Peng's team was published on the journal Science. The project was funded by the Ministry of Science and Technology, the National Natural Science Foundation of China, and the Beijing Municipal Science and Technology Commission. As part of the government's nanotechnology special project, Peng's laboratory will receive 32 million yuan for the next five years.

Development of Applied Science

These funds allow Peng’s team to carry out high-quality research, but he said that more money should be put into the application of research so that research teams like Peng’s could develop prototype products based on nanotechnology research.

‘Application research is innovative and requires long-term commitment and effort. But application researchers do not have necessary research funds.’ Peng added.

For example, the nanotechnology special project offered more than twice the amount of funds to the basic scientific research team than Peng’s laboratory. Some of the basic research teams received 90 million yuan for five years. But to make carbon nanotube equipment into a computer chip would require ‘billions of money in infrastructure construction, equipment purchasing and recruitment,’ Peng says, ‘the university does not have that kind of capacity.’

Peng said that the government has the funds and the resolution to support the entire chain of new material research and development, from the laboratory to the products. But he thinks that, under the influence of policy inertia and some authoritative scientists, basic science is being mostly beneficiating from the funds.

He said that, if the project has strong governmental support and investment, the large companies or the state-owned enterprises are more likely to contribute to the project, which would promote the commercialization of the technology.

Peng Lianmao believes that, within 5 or 10 years, the carbon nanotube chip will be developed to maturation. Like his team, other teams from the world are moving towards this direction. For Peng Lianmao, in order to achieve further development, to make their own technology to industrial scale production, they need to cooperate with the enterprises. ‘The engineering is not an advantage (for my lab),’ he said, ‘but if we could make some further progress, the country may take our research into account and there would be state-owned enterprises willing to work with us.’

The original title is ‘China's blue-chip future’

Published on Nature Index 2017 China

Original author: Tian Peng

Original article here