MATERIALS BY DESIGN^®

Throughout history, materials have paced the evolution of technology. Yet from the Stone Age to the Space Age, materials development has resulted from discovery, a costly and time-consuming process of “trial and error.” It is not unusual that newly discovered materials have frequently been placed into practical use long before much is understood about them, often with catastrophic consequences. Today, materials no longer need to be discovered, they can be designed.

The last half of the 20^th century saw a dramatic shift in the need for increasingly complex structural materials. Computers provided the means to rapidly design new products, but new material insertion into production hardware remained extremely difficult, typically taking 15-20 years, if it is successful at all. Recognizing the need for an alternative to the historic empirical method of discovery, in 1998 the President’s Office of Science and Technology designated the computational design of materials as one of five critical technologies for the next decade.

With the advent of more powerful and less expensive computers, Prof. Gregory B. Olson of Northwestern University’s Department of Materials Science and Engineering had the same vision in the mid-1980’s and began pioneering basic research in computational materials design. His efforts subsequently led to the development of Materials by Design^® and the formation of QuesTek Innovations. QuesTek’s technology is a computational-based materials design and development process centered on material systems approach. Starting with the performance requirement of a new material, QuesTek incorporates detailed processing-structure and structure-properties relationships into a material system design. This information is then integrated via QuesTek’s proprietary Computational Materials Dynamics^™ platform, which is a core modeling software system that accelerates the design, development and insertion of new materials into the commercial market. As a result of its technology, QuesTek has become a recognized leader in the emerging fields of nanoscience and computational materials design.

QuesTek’s vision is to lead the computational materials design revolution and, using the best design tools and computational design systems, rapidly develop new advanced materials, or redesign existing materials, adding value to our clients by enhancing product performance, improving manufacturing processes and reducing costs. As the leader in the emerging field of computational materials design, QuesTek’s novel materials have been targeted to reduce or eliminate long-term environmental impact, enhance product performance and safety or reduce the cost in aerospace, automotive, biomedical and consumer-based products.

If you need special material properties to solve your particular needs, you may need to move beyond off-the-shelf materials and get in touch with the people leading the Materials by Design revolution at sales@questek.com.