Materials Field Unified in Name Only

The materials community has long been united in its call for a national materials policy, but it has continued to be frustrated in the achievement of that goal despite passage of several major pieces of federal legislation on materials issues in the past fifteen years. The National Critical Materials Act of 1984, for example, seemed to fill the need for high-level government representation of materials interests by establishing the National Critical Materials Council in the Executive Office of the President. But it remains to be seen whether, with its limited staff and budgetary resources, the council will be able to bring about any real change.

From the perspective of the materials community, an effective national policy would need to be rooted in the recognition of materials as an important ingredient in economic development and national security. Such a policy would demand measures to preserve the industry against the inroads of foreign (presumably cheap) competition, encourage cooperative research by government and industry, and help mitigate burdens (such as withdrawals of federal land from mineral development) upon enterprises in the industry.

One major reason for the difficulties in developing cohesive policies in this field is the diversity of the field itself. The term materials covers multitudes of substances ranging from wood and metals to high-technology materials such as ceramics and glass fibers. In its most general formulation, often used by materials specialists to obviate lengthy definitional discussions, it includes substances used to make physical things, be they machines, tools, buildings, or fiber-optic cables. Clearly, the policy issues and objectives that relate to materials are equally complex. Furthermore, the field seems to be increasingly fragmented into three major groups: strategic and critical materials, traditional materials (typically produced in large volume), and advanced materials.

Policy focus too narrow

While one can argue endlessly over the definition of the terms strategic materials and critical materials, they are broadly understood to denote a degree of essentiality during periods of military emergency combined with inadequate availability within the United States. Obviously these characteristics are highly elastic, which explains why the number of materials included in these categories varies so widely, from four to about sixty. (The current definition is contained in the Strategic and Critical Materials Stockpiling Revision Act of 1979.)

Whatever their precise definition, however, these materials have dominated materials policy discussions over the past two decades. This rather narrow focus has resulted in the neglect of many of the issues surrounding materials in the two other major groups, which is all the more regrettable because there are ways and means of dealing with the strategic and critical materials according to their special needs.

Whatever its shortcomings—conceptual, technical, administrative—stockpiling still appears to be the best way to meet the demand for these materials. And the smaller the physical volume of a commodity that needs to be accommodated, the more appropriate stockpiling is. For example, to provide a ready-to-use inventory of 10,000 tons of cobalt should not be beyond the ingenuity or the financial resources of a technologically advanced society such as the United States. Nor should it be a forbidding task to widen the range and affordability of substitutes and to provide information to users as they need it.

The composition and characteristics of a stockpile are bound to change—for example, instead of chromium (used in the production of steel alloys) it may be preferable to stock ferrochrome (itself a crude alloy of iron and chromium) to accommodate the decline in domestic processing capacity for chromium. But this should neither strain our inventiveness nor become an argument for discarding stockpiling altogether, as is advocated by those arguing for the maintenance of high-cost domestic production.

Stockpiling of strategic materials has recently come under close scrutiny with the Reagan administration's 1985 proposal to "modernize" the National Defense Stockpile. Under the terms of the proposal, the stockpile goal would be sharply reduced—and from $16.3 billion to $6.6 billion—the inventory of materials would be changed substantially. Without getting into the technicalities, the heart of the proposal would be a high-priority stockpile group valued at only $700 million. The balance would be made up of "also-rans." Surprisingly for those familiar with the field, even the top group would not contain such old-timers as platinum, vanadium, and manganese, and it would include only a small quantity of cobalt. The changes represent a drastic shake-up.

The rationale and assumptions underlying this proposal for partial liquidation are not made clear in official statements: the comprehensive interagency study that resulted in the issuance of the president's National Defense Stockpile Policy on July 8, 1985, simply says, "Substantial improvements were made in analytic methods for estimating materials requirements and available supply. These changes, as well as correction of errors and the use of more plausible assumptions, are the many reasons for the revised stockpile goals."

It is possible, of course, that if the background material supporting the proposal becomes available, the recommended changes may be found to be quite reasonable. In any case, the administration's move may provide a timely occasion to review basic assumptions behind the stockpile concept, such as its applicability in the nuclear age. The debate over the proposal will also permit recommendations, such as greater industry involvement in stockpile management, to receive more attention. As of early 1987, however, the proposal was still on the shelf due to congressional opposition.

One of the advantages of a thorough debate about and resolution of the issues relating to the stockpile would be that more attention could then be given to the other two segments of the materials field—traditional and advanced materials.

The traditional materials, those "bread-and-butter" items such as steel, copper, lead, zinc, nickel, and tin, have been sorely neglected. That is, little has been done to support the future viability of the industries that produce and process these minerals, to articulate sustainable policies, or to debate any "need" to support them. The consequences of possible decline or even demise of these enterprises in the United States has not been seriously addressed, despite clear-cut evidence that substantial declines have already occurred in both the mining and the processing sectors.

The traditional materials are facing increasing competition from newer materials, both in the area of traditional uses, where they still dominate the market, and new applications. On a positive note, however, the industry has begun to look for new ways of processing and manufacturing metal products that could increase its adaptability and cost-competitiveness. For example, faced with competition from advanced materials and with technical impediments to meeting new needs, metals are being increasingly incorporated as part of matrices—i.e., controlled mixtures of different materials to suit specific uses—rather than used in isolation. It appears, then, that questions of mineral depletion versus adequacy of supplies, which have often been raised, will recede in importance in the years ahead and that completeness in the use of traditional materials, to be achieved largely through growing your complexity in makeup, will become the focus of attention.

Advanced materials in the limelight

The third segment of the materials field, advanced materials, is growing rapidly and is commonly regarded as the field's frontier area. It has been attracting the cream-of-the-crop of skilled scientists and technologists—as well as a large share of government funding in the materials field, if only because these materials are heavily defense-oriented.

Advanced materials are of widely diverse origins: petrochemicals are derived from hydrocarbons; graphites are also hydrocarbon-associated; materials such as germanium, silicon, zirconium, and gallium are nonfuel minerals that can be used either as such or, more commonly, in so-called composites that draw on two or more advanced materials and one or more of the traditional materials; and alloys such as aluminum-lithium come from the addition of new substitutes (in this case, lithium) to old-line metals.

Applications of advanced materials are wide ranging and offer considerable growth potential, particularly in new technologies and uses—for example, in telecommunications; transportation; power generation, transmission, and distribution; and the electronics field, to whose demanding specifications, in fact, many of these new materials owe their emergence as commercial phenomena. In electronics, applications include sensors, capacitors, chips, and diodes. Processes in which advanced materials are used include but are not limited to coatings, powder-shaping, and rapid solidification. As mentioned, defense needs have been a major source of demand.

Major changes foreseen

Market statistics on advanced materials are not widely available, but those that are convey the strong impression of an impending major shift in emphasis toward their use both in the United States and abroad. The case of ceramics is a good example of the kind of change that might occur.

A frequently quoted estimate puts sales volume in the high-technology ceramics market in the early 1980s at $4.25 billion worldwide. That figure is for finished products including nonceramic parts, but the estimate for the ceramic powder component alone is $250 million, not a negligible level for a material still heavily in the R&D phase. Few believe that a ceramic motor vehicle engine—an achievement that would surely establish ceramics as a powerful new material—will emerge in the 1980s, but the concept has enough merit to make the eventual appearance of ceramic engines seem likely. (Such engines would have superior heat resistance and thus both higher fuel efficiency and longer life.) Thus, some time in the next decade the ceramics market is likely to lose its heavy orientation toward electronic components and cutting tools and to diversify into a great many other uses and devices. If that should happen, it could overtake some of the conventional materials in value of shipments.

It remains to be seen to what extent shifts like this will be limited to a few of the highly industrialized countries (basically, the member countries of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development). This does not mean that the developing countries will relive the materials history of Western Europe, the United States, or Japan. Instead of working their way through a steel—copper—lead—zinc age, they may instead make the leap into the twenty-first century and take advantage of newer materials—above all, the hydrocarbon-based ones such as plastics.

Given these factors, the often-heard assumption of a strong global revival of traditional, mostly large-tonnage materials demand triggered by rising income levels in the developing countries must be viewed with caution. Though some rise in demand is certain to occur, there is strong doubt as to whether it will even begin to match the loss of markets in the industrialized countries of the world, even considering such relatively unknown factors as future levels of demand for traditional materials in the Soviet Union, its satellites, and China.

Projections for probable U.S. consumption of metals in the year 2000 are provided in the U.S. Bureau of Mines' Mineral Facts and Problems (1985 edition). The big gainers are three steel-alloying minerals (germanium, columbium, and tungsten) and one (vanadium) of relatively recent prominence in a variety of high-technology applications. Average annual growth rates for these four are projected at 6 to 10 percent between the years 1984 and 2000, whereas large-tonnage metals are projected to grow at rates of 2 to 4 percent per year (aluminum, lead, and nickel at the higher rate; copper and manganese at barely 2 percent). In sum, factors such as those highlighted here make a substantial revival of the conventional metals seem a questionable prospect.

In the energy field, news of improvements in efficiency and resulting decline in consumption is received with enthusiasm. In the materials field this pattern is generally viewed with regret, because it depresses prices and threatens the survival of many mineral enterprises. However, unless there is a major materials market shake-up like the OPEC-triggered oil market disruptions of the 1970s—which is not likely—the decline in materials use intensity (i.e., employment of less material per dollar of gross national product) will continue. The one major exception to this widespread downward trend is the advanced materials—pure, alloyed, or otherwise. Though figures on intensity of use for this group are not readily available, it would be safe to assume that they are rising; all indications point to their substantial expansion at the expense of conventional materials.

Despite mounting evidence that advanced materials may increasingly occupy center stage in the materials field, social science research and even mere interest in this area are as yet limited in the sense that, so far, social science research has not taken much notice of a great number of exciting future technological possibilities and their implications for the U.S. economy. To be sure, statistics are hard to come by, and the technical aspects involved are complex. But unless greater effort is made, the social sciences will remain increasingly in the rear guard, with concern and advice addressed to a shrinking slice of the pie.