Address on organizing MCES
Director Hideo HOSONO
Materials are essential to shaping human eras, as may be seen in the naming of the Stone and Iron Ages. Our current society may someday be linked to abundant ingredients such as Si and SiO2, which are used as semiconductors and optical fibers, respectively. It is the grand challenge of materials science in this century to realize high performance / functionality using only those elements that are most abundant on earth. We proposed the materials research approach called “Ubiquitous Element Strategy” in 2004 on the basis of research achievements in cultivating the electroactive properties of the 12CaO?7Al2O3 (C12A7) crystal, which is composed only of the first, third and fifth most abundant elements. C12A7 is a main ingredient of commercially available alumina cement, and no one considered that it could work as a platform for realizing the huge variety of active functionalities summarized in Fig.1.
Figure 2 illustrates the relationship between materials’ functions and constituting elements. Function is connected to elements through their structures. Although each element has intrinsic degree of internal freedom, such as size, charge, electron orbital, spin, and so on, the structural factors offer much space for cultivation. Nanostructure, surface, interface, defect, and extraordinary valence state are a few examples these opportunities. There has been remarkable progress in the more than two decades of extensive worldwide research into nanoscience and nanotechnology. The most fascinating aspect of nanotechnology is its high potential to make the seemingly impossible possible. Thus, the Element Strategy Initiative (ESI) should be ranked as the real practice of nanoscience and nanotechnology. A high value should be placed on finding unexplored relations between function and element. Renovating the traditional image of each element is the ultimate goal of the ESI.
ESI is a Japanese original science and technology policy initiated in April 2004 at a Hakone Workshop sponsored by the Japan Science and Technology (JST). ESI was then selected for a focused national policy in 2006 to facilitate research for securing rare elements through innovative science and technology. The mission of the ESI is to create new materials science leading to breakthroughs for the solution of the rare element crisis. To achieve this goal, strong collaboration between materials scientists and researchers in the fields of advanced theory, analyses, characterization, and synthesis is absolutely vital; cooperation is particularly important between those dealing with state-of-the-art large-scale facilities such as SR-ring and the experts of materials modeling and computation.
The Materials Research Center for Element Strategy (MCES) was established in 2012 to achieve two objectives: (1) conduct the national research project “Element Strategy Initiative (ESI) to Form a Core Research Center (electronic materials area)” sponsored by MEXT, JAPAN, in collaboration with NIMS and KEK; and (2) to promote cooperative research with industry at the Yokohama campus of Tokyo Tech. Tokyo Tech has a brilliant history in materials research leading to industrialization, exemplified by the ferrite magnets invented by Professors Yogoro Kato and Takeshi Takei, and the conductive polymers discovered by Professor Hideki Shirakawa, for which he received the 2000 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
It is our ambition to undertake novel materials science that leads to solutions for securing rare elements and breakthrough materials that open a new frontier in materials science and industrialization. “Industry is a training hall for materials scientists”; this is a famous remark by Kotaro Honda, the father of metallurgy. That is what we are seeking at MCES.
We are deeply grateful to Tokyo Tech, MEXT, JST, and the many people associated with ESI policy for their efforts in establishing MCES and supporting its continued activity.
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