Basic Research Needs for Synthesis Science (Brochure)

Abstract

The technology at our fingertips becomes more powerful each day. Smartphones are handheld computers, cameras, music players, boarding passes, and sometimes phones. Cars are ever more fuel-efficient, safer and loaded with computing power. LED lighting and solar panels are becoming common worldwide. None of these advances would have been possible without the capability to discover, develop, and create new materials and chemical processes. If the only limit to synthesizing new forms of matter were the imagination of scientists, then assemblies of atoms and molecules with unparalleled new architectures and capabilities would be possible—catalysts that turn garbage into fuels, solar cells to power buildings directly from sunlight, batteries with the energy density of gasoline, and materials that transport charge hundreds of times faster than silicon.