JULY 20258 EUROPEEUROPEIN MY OPINIONRecognizing Dr. Andreas Frehn's extensive expertise in technology and innovation at Materion, this exclusive feature offers invaluable insights into the challenges of advancing high-performance materials and processes and strategies for leveraging sustainable solutions to support key global megatrends like clean energy, advanced mobility, and connectivity.In strategic foresight, megatrends refer to long-lasting and system-changing developments with a global character and a duration of several decades. They affect almost all areas of life and can manifest themselves, for example, in transformed consumption patterns, values or technologies. Current megatrends include connectivity, advanced mobility and clean energy and represent a meaningful part of the research activities at universities and companies. Innovations in the context of these megatrends are based not only on technological progress, but also on innovative, high-performance materials. Two-thirds of technical innovations, regardless of the economic sector, are directly or indirectly attributable to new materials. Crossing industry and scientific boundaries is a key factor for generating groundbreaking results and makes materials science and development a key and cross-sectional technology. The influence of digitalization and artificial intelligence is further driving this progress and is creating additional opportunities.At the same time, the topics of climate and resource protection must be considered. In the field of materials production, the sustainable and economical mining of raw materials should be mentioned. Furthermore, the choice of the right production process is of great importance. In the steel industry, for example, the trend towards the CO2-optimized electric steel process can be observed. In addition, steel manufacturers are working on processes that use hydrogen instead of coal. Often, the semi-finished products are shaped as close as possible to the final component geometry to reduce the process steps, and thus, helps to decrease the machining efforts. New production processes, such as additive manufacturing, make it possible to break out of the traditional manufacturing routes and enable almost direct production of the final component without having to cast, roll or forge. Advancing Sustainability and Performance through Innovative MaterialsIn the final product, the materials should have a positive impact on certain properties so that an increase in longevity, a reduction in component size or significant weight savings can be achieved in the application. Nowadays, the approach is often to use materials exactly where their special properties are needed and thus to utilize their greatest benefit. And finally, the topic of recycling will continue to grow in importance. For metals or glass, very high recycling rates are already being reached today. However, the recovery of materials from certain products (e.g. electrical components) is sometimes complex and leads to challenges in the recycling process.Materion has been dealing with materials and related topics for more than 100 years. In doing so, the company has always been guided by megatrends and accompanied them with suitable solutions. And this is still valid and relevant for today's megatrends mentioned above. The history of the company is closely linked to the element beryllium, which is mined in the HIGH-PERFORMANCE MATERIALS AND PROCESSES FOR COMPLEX APPLICATIONS WITH PROVEN SUSTAINABILITYBY DR. ANDREAS FREHN, DIRECTOR TECHNOLOGY & INNOVATION AND TECHNICAL MARKETING EMEA, MATERIONDr. Andreas Frehn
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