The U.S. National Science Foundation is investing $50 million in research infrastructure to enable the discovery and development of materials that can withstand extreme conditions, from lightweight composites for better armor to superalloys for fusion energy reactors. The funding will establish two new NSF Materials Innovation Platforms — high-tech facilities that provide access to specialized equipment and instruments. Each Materials Innovation Platform will receive $25 million from NSF over six years.

Each of the new NSF Materials Innovation Platforms, one in Texas and one in Wisconsin, will acquire scientific equipment and build a system, or platform, that incorporates it. The platforms will be available to U.S. researchers from academia and industry and will include capabilities for autonomous artificial intelligence-driven experiments. Each platform will host dozens of visiting scientists each year to conduct experiments, which are selected through a competitive review process. Of those scientists, an estimated 10-20% will come from universities and colleges that spend comparatively less on research and may not have the resources or infrastructure for similar equipment and systems.

"The NSF Materials Innovation Platforms serve a broad national need as user facilities that provide access to some of the best equipment and expertise for materials science research," says NSF Mathematical and Physical Sciences Directorate Head Tie Luo. "NSF wants researchers with great ideas, wherever they are in the U.S., to get their hands on this equipment and work together to pursue those ideas."

In Texas, the NSF Autonomous Robotic Metallurgist Materials Innovation Platform (NSF ARM-MIP) will be based at Texas A&M University. NSF ARM-MIP will integrate robotics and AI into a single autonomous laboratory capable of creating new alloys in a fraction of the time typically required. The applications for new alloys include fuel-efficient jet turbines, stronger armor for tanks and other vehicles, radiation-resistant materials for nuclear reactors, corrosion-resistant bridges and biocompatible implants. Traditionally, alloys can take more than a decade to be created and deployed. ARM-MIP will significantly accelerate that process.

In Wisconsin, the NSF Materials AI and Transformation through Research Infrastructure for eXtreme environments Materials Innovation Platform (NSF MATRIX-MIP) will be based at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. NSF MATRIX-MIP will investigate how the chemical and structural complexity of materials influences their performance in extreme environments, like those with high heat or strong radiation. MATRIX-MIP will explore how to use complexity to design and create materials with superior properties in such environments. Researchers will design experiments that use AI to rapidly predict the properties of many new materials, fabricate them using high-throughput synthesis methods and then measure their resulting physical properties.

In addition to investing in two new Materials Innovation Platforms, NSF is also supporting an existing platform's efforts to continue its scientific work while expanding its work with U.S. industry. The NSF 2D Crystal Consortium Materials Innovation Platform at Pennsylvania State University has received continuous funding from NSF since its inception 10 years ago, allowing it to become an established and world-class research facility. Two-dimensional materials, which are only a few atoms thick, are used in next-generation semiconductors and quantum technologies. NSF is providing $4.6 million over four years to transition the platform's operations into a self-sustaining model that will rely mainly on user fees, so it will continue to be a national resource for many years to come.