The Materials Reality of China Scientists Are Discovering How to Fulfil Their Ambitions in a System That Is Rapidly Modernizing
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MATERIALS SCIENCE IN CHINA SPOTLIGHT A flexi-screen mobile phone is on display at an exhibition in Chengdu last year. The materials reality of China Scientists are discovering how to fulfil their ambitions in a system that is rapidly modernizing. BY SARAH O’MEARA y the time Dawei Zhang’s study visa to which China can develop new materials, The names are intended to draw comparisons the United States had been renewed, it known as the Materials Genome Engineering to biological superprogrammes such as the was too late. The 29-year-old materi- (MGE) project. Human Genome Project. In essence, China’s Bals scientist was back in China with his wife Such large-scale scientific ventures have policymakers want to make better use of the and son, ready to begin a postdoc at the Uni- become common in China over the past dec- information stored in the country’s databases versity of Science and Technology Beijing ade, forming key elements of the government’s about the behaviours of materials, so that new — one of the country’s leading materials plan to transform the country into a high-tech materials can be developed. /VCG/GETTY institutes. The delay had prompted him to economy that can match, and eventually But the researchers are still at an early stage. accept a position in China, rather than pur- surpass, the world’s leading scientific nations. Zhang’s team struggles to understand the sue research on self-healing materials in the Launched in 2016, the MGE aimed to match methods of data scientists — a problem, he United States. the scope of the Materials Genome Initiative says, that is common across the world. Looking back, Zhang realizes that the in the United States, a “When we were preparing the proposals for unexpected move worked out well for him. NATURE.COM $250-million federal MGE, we were aware of this, but it wasn’t until CHENGDU ECONOMIC DAILY CHENGDU ECONOMIC Six years later, his research into materi- More on China’s programme designed we started working on it that I realized this als corrosion has become part of a national materials scene to shepherd advanced would be a long-term issue.” 1-billion-yuan (US$150-million) programme go.nature.com/ materials science into The students in the laboratory often WANG XIAO/ WANG to revolutionize the speed and efficiency with materialsinchina industrial applications. do better than the more experienced ©2019 Spri nger Nature Li mited. All ri ghts reserved. 21 MARCH 2019 | VOL 567 | NATURE | S1 SPOTLIGHT MATERIALS SCIENCE IN CHINA professors, says Zhang. “They have time to 1.6 billion yuan for six special projects, which go off and study these new ideas in depth.” HARD DATA also covered nanotechnology. A final goal of the MGE, he says, is to China now publishes more high-impact develop a centralized, intelligent data-mining A history of materials research papers than any other country in software platform that can offer instant feed- 23 fields with clear technological applications, back to companies involved in, say, car manu- 1980s: Chinese universities and including batteries, semiconductors, new facturing, steel-making and shipbuilding, on research institutes develop 23 small- materials and biotechnology (see go.nature. how materials behave. scale materials databases with financial com/2xuboa9). And in November, a start-up At his lab at the Institute of Advanced support from the national government. called Qing Tao Energy Development, begun Materials and Technology in Beijing, Zhang They are used and updated infrequently. in 2014 by PhD graduates from Tsinghua works in a cross-disciplinary team, some of 2000: China launches two national, University, Beijing, announced that it had whose members focus on the MGE (see ‘Hard centralized materials databases developed the country’s first solid-state battery data’) while others do basic research. Data involving 18 research institutes. For the production line. scientists help him to process the information first time, data are collected and entered Yet, despite the country’s growing impact, in the databases to aid the creation of models in a standardized format (see http:// it’s not clear whether China’s scientists are for new materials, and biologists look at the www.materdata.cn). achieving as much as they could, given their influence of microorganisms on corrosion. His 2016: Policymakers invest in resources. John Plummer, a former senior institute also welcomes guest professors from developing databases and big-data editor for Nature Materials based in Shanghai, the United States and Europe. technology for China’s Materials who is now a senior portfolio editor at Nature It’s the kind of diverse, multidisciplinary Genome Engineering project, which Research, acknowledges that China is a leader community, Chinese scientists say, that is cru- echoes the Materials Genome Initiative in some areas of materials science — such as cial to doing great research but is often lacking launched by then-US president Barack nanomaterials, condensed-matter physics and in labs. “The goals of the Materials Genome Obama in 2011. structural materials. But it does not yet com- Initiative in the States and in China are the pare to the United States or Europe in terms of same: to produce better materials more quickly materials research overall, he says. that cost less. It’s very important we collaborate 2015 was in materials science. Jia Zhu, a nanomaterials scientist at Nanjing with overseas scientists because the materials Since 2006, China’s scientific research and University, says: “We need to do more to pro- genome is a new topic. We need to figure out development (R&D) funding has been guided mote original ideas. In the US, when they start the best path together,” says Zhang. by a national plan to improve the country’s a new programme or research, they won’t look level of innovation by 2020. The plan includes at other people and say, ‘They’re doing that, so A CLEAR FUNDING PLAN the realization of ambitious research and we should do that.’ In China, we still do that.” Funding for materials science in China has development projects, such as Moon explo- quadrupled since 2008, and the field receives ration and the development of China’s first TIME TO TAKE A RISK? the second highest level of funding from domestically designed passenger aircraft. In 2014, geophysicist Ho-Kwang Mao began the National Natural Science Foundation These goals are designed to spur technologi- splitting his time between the Carnegie Insti- of China (NSFC), behind only medical sci- cal breakthroughs and improve the country’s tution in Washington DC and Shanghai. After ences (see ‘China’s funding boost for materi- economic prospects, and materials science is more than 50 years working in the United als’). The volume of China’s materials-science crucial to their success. States, he was hoping to help Chinese officials research has grown correspondingly. Accord- In 2018, the NSFC pumped more than solve one of the country’s most pressing R&D ing to data from the Web of Science, the num- 2 billion yuan into 701 projects, including problems. “They asked me: ‘What can we do ber of papers on the topic more than tripled the MGE and work on nanotechnology and to improve fundamental research in terms of between 2006 and 2017, to around 40,000 (see advanced electronic materials. In the same quality, not just quantity?’” ‘Big progress’), and around one in every nine year, the Ministry of Science and Technol- The scientist, who was born in Shanghai, papers published by a Chinese researcher in ogy announced total funding of more than studies how materials respond to extreme CHINA’S FUNDING BOOST FOR MATERIALS BIG PROGRESS Engineering and materials science have received, on average, the second highest China’s output of materials-science papers far outstrips that of the level of funding from China’s National Natural Science Foundation since 2001. United States, but international collaborations are relatively sparce. 2.5 China 10 United States 2.0 8 1.5 6 China responds to the global nancial 2017 1.0 crisis by increasing Yuan (billions) Yuan 4 research funding. 2012 2007 0.5 2 2002 0.0 0 2001 2003 2005 2007 2009 2011 2013 2015 2017 (thousands) with an international collaborator Papers 0 10 20 30 40 Total number of papers (thousands) SOURCE: WEB OF SCIENCE SOURCE; NATIONAL NATURAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION OF CHINA SCIENCE FOUNDATION NATURAL SOURCE; NATIONAL S2 | NATURE | VOL 567 | 21 MARCH 2019 | CORRECTED©2019 Spri nger N26atu rMARCHe Li mited. A2019ll ri ghts reserved. ©2019 Spri nger Nature Li mited. All ri ghts reserved. MATERIALS SCIENCE IN CHINA SPOTLIGHT pressure, and told officials that they should give him the money to start a lab to produce NATURE “truly transformative research”. He explained that there would probably be no immediate breakthroughs. His only guarantee was that he would attract scientists from all over the STEFEN CHOW FOR FOR CHOW STEFEN world who had the same potential for pro- ductivity that he himself has demonstrated: during his career, Mao has had 65 papers published in Nature and Science. “Give me the money and I’ll give you the scientists,” he said in 2008, at an event held by the NSFC and the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), the largest scientific organi- zation in the country and a policy adviser to the government; Mao was made a member in 1996. The officials gave him the money — and in 2013, the Center for High Pres- sure Science and Technology Advanced Research (HPSTAR) was established, with branches in Shanghai and Beijing. Mao’s labs are not funded through the usual cen- Q&A tral bodies, such as the Ministry of Science and Technology, but directly by the Ministry of Finance.