Question: What do you believe will be the greatest material discovered or invented in this decade?

Beth Mortimer answered on 16 Jun 2012:

There are so many candidates from this, but I have to draw inspiration from my own work (as we often think about the potential impacts of our work!)

I think materials to replace plastics will be extremely important. Plastics are polymers which require a lot of energy and resources to make, including oil. Energy is bound to become an important factor in future life, whether because oil has run out, or because low-carbon energy is needed for the climate. A range of polymers, probably from different sources, that are energy efficient, have good material properties and have low environmental impact (low carbon, biodegradable) will be required.

Biological polymers, such as silk, may play a role in this, which is why silk research is so well funded. They are environmentally friendly, 1000 times more energy efficient to make than man -made polymers, extremely strong fibres which may replace other man-made polymer fibres/polymer sheets. Long way to go though – ideally we need to make large amounts without harvesting from the organisms themselves, and we don’t know yet how they make their silk so we can copy it! If we do copy it, we need it to be a cheap process, otherwise it isn’t going to be competitive on the world market…

I’m sure there are many other great ideas. The joy of science is you can be really surprised at what people come up with, so this decade many materials may be invented which are completely new and wonderful!