There are no easy solutions to the world’s biggest problems like climate change, air pollution and providing clean drinking water for everyone. But a new state-of-the-art laboratory in Skokie is dedicated to addressing them through a new generation of materials, products and techniques.
The nonprofit UL Research Institutes, a world leader in safety science, opened the doors of its newest facility in Skokie this fall.
The 19,366-square-foot Materials Discovery Research Institute (MDRI), located in the Illinois Science + Technology Park at 8045 Lamon Avenue, is designed to be one of the world’s top facilities for research involving energy creation and storage, decarbonization, and water security. The ambitious goal, according to Stuart R. Miller, MDRI’s vice president and executive director, is to use the newest technology to advance materials science in ways that can provide practical solutions for problems that often seem overwhelming.
“There are significant innovations that are required in materials science, which will enable us to leverage newer and clean energy,” he said. “It will also enable us to provide clean drinking water and healthy air for populations across the world.”
In researching materials science, Miller and his team at MDRI will be creating quite simply new materials to replace much of what we use in our everyday lives today. That could mean, for example, replacing expensive precious metals found in batteries with more common — and cheaper — metals that will be safer and more effective. Or take the solar panels you may have on your roof, which use silicon.
“State of the art for silicon is probably about 22% efficiency,” Miller said. “And we are looking to be able to move into the 30% to 40% efficiencies with new materials.
“The effect for you as the consumer is that you need fewer panels on your roof, which means you need to spend less money, and they can last longer and they can generate more electricity,” he said.
In building a new facility, MDRI was able to take advantage of advances in AI and machine learning, to make broad leaps forward in how quickly research can be conducted.
“If I were to go into the lab today and not lean on accelerated platforms, I would probably be able to do about 2,000 samples a year, and that’s a lot of work.” Miller said. With the aid of this new technology, over the same period, he could expect to run half a million to three-quarters of a million samples per year.
“But (the machines) don’t take a holiday or work nine to five,” he said. “We’ve changed the rules of the game. It’s not as easy as saying we’re going from 2,000 samples to 2 million samples a year, but we have that capability.”
The MDRI lab is filled with the latest equipment to allow more automated processes in research, such as a 3D metal NanoPrinter. It can generate, combine and deposit nanoparticles in a single automated process. Other state-of-the-art technology includes automated synthesis platforms that can help discover materials more quickly, and a machine that uses x-rays to understand the structure of materials at the atomic scale.
One of the lab’s advantages is that it was designed from the start with many of these new technologies in mind. When existing labs introduce new technologies, they are often shoehorned into pre-existing systems.
“We weren’t working as a lab — we were waiting for the lab to be constructed,” Miller said. “So we spent close to two years working on that data environment. How is that information stored? How do we capture it? What does the architecture look like?
“What that does is it really enables us to lean into that machine learning, because before we even started in the lab, we made sure we captured every data point, and that’s not common.”
Every chemical is tracked from the moment it enters the facility, with information on how it’s stored and the temperature and relative humidity on the day it was used.
“In Chicago, it’s different in July than it is in February, and that can (influence) your experiment.,” he said.
AI revolution
The timing of the build allowed MDRI to take advantage of the AI revolution.
“You really get the benefit of that perfect storm that leans into machine learning,” he said. “The difficult thing about machine learning is it’s become a buzzword. It becomes something that people mention without really giving much thought as to what’s involved.
“(But) you need to spend a lot of time getting that data architecture perfected,’ he said. “Because machine learning cycles back into the data architecture to learn from the experiments that didn’t work. It shortened the road map to success. There’s not a lot of people and not a lot of labs globally that have had the opportunity that we’ve had.”
The MDRI lab is the fifth founded by the UL Research Institutes, each with a different focus (like chemical or digital safety) and organized around the concept of advancing research without the limits often found at other corporate or academic facilities.
“We are committed to open-source in our science,” Miller said. “We are not looking to generate revenue. We’re looking to be able to advance science.” The MDRI has 18 scientists on staff, and Miller expects that number to double in the next few years.
Producing Clean Energy, Water and Air
A clear goal of the MDRI lab is to provide materials that can help with large-scale energy production to help meet the 2015 Paris Agreement, a climate change treaty signed by nearly 200 countries that aims for a 43% reduction in greenhouse gasses by 2030.
“In order to do this, we need to move away from oil and gas while maintaining the quality of life that we have and allowing a population to continue to grow and to pull people from poverty,” Miller said. While that sounds like a tall task, he’s cautiously optimistic with the direction we’re heading.
“We are in a state now where renewable energy and storage is actually cheaper than energy from oil and gas — and it’s only taken two decades, where oil and gas has (been around) about 170 years.”
Making that leap in productivity will force scientists to do a better job collaborating across disciplines.
“I think if you have people with the same skill set looking at the same problem, you’re going to get the same answer,” Miller said. “The problems that we’re looking at — we don’t have 20 years to be able to solve them; we need to solve these problems in a very, very short timeline.
“We need a difference of skill sets and a different way of thinking. The institute will employ a multitude of individuals, including materials scientists, but also chemical engineers, electrochemical engineers, data scientists and software engineers. One of the reasons that I joined UL is that we’re not working in a silo; we collaborate, and we collaborate globally, to be able to solve problems.”
When it comes to clean air and water, research at MDRI will focus on finding materials that can remove unwanted elements through devices like a membrane. In Kenya, the institute is working with a local company to help remove high levels of arsenic, chromium and chlorine from the drinking water. Similar problems have occurred in this country, where municipalities deal with antiquated lead pipes in their water infrastructure.
“We can design materials that selectively absorb lead and remove lead from drinking water,” Miller said. They’re also experimenting on better solutions for areas like California that have fresh water shortages but plenty of salt water at hand. Desalination technology already exists, but it tends to be expensive and energy intensive.
“We’re looking for materials that can improve that membrane,” he said. “But we’re also looking at new energy storage and energy generation materials so that we can make that process from an energy point of view cheaper.”
For Miller, this increased focus on sustainability gives him a sense of optimism for the future.
“The big contributors to pollution, all the big petrochemical companies — every single one of them — are turning their business models towards sustainability,” he said. “For me it is incredibly encouraging. I genuinely think that these problems will be solved by the next generation. All we are doing now is generating the infrastructure that gives them the platform to solve them.”
