The Federal Institute for Materials Research and Testing (BAM) is taking on a central role in the major European project MaterialsCommons. Under the coordination of the Fraunhofer Institute for Mechanics of Materials (Fraunhofer IWM), 26 research institutions from 14 member states of the European Union (EU) are developing a cross-border digital infrastructure for materials research and development. The European Commission is funding the project with 28 million euros as part of Horizon Europe.
New materials are a basis for industrial competitiveness. Batteries, microelectronics, climate-friendly production processes and modern manufacturing technologies directly depend on them. Around 70 percent of all technical innovations are based directly or indirectly on new materials. At the same time, it often takes 10 to 20 years until a material is ready for the market. MaterialsCommons aims to significantly shorten this time.
Federated infrastructure instead of a central data pool
A major obstacle to date has been the fragmented data landscape. Material data is distributed across platforms, databases and national initiatives, is often difficult to find and is not technically compatible. This means high frictional losses for research and industry, especially for small and medium-sized companies. The Europe-wide costs due to inefficient data search and double data collection are more than ten billion euros per year.
MaterialsCommons therefore relies on a federated architecture. Data does not have to be stored centrally. Existing platforms remain independent, but should work together in an interoperable manner. This is not only a gain in efficiency, but also a safety-relevant approach: sensitive research data, industrial material recipes, quality parameters or simulation results do not necessarily have to go to a common central database. Control remains closer to the entities and companies that generate this data.
Data sovereignty as a strategic factor
MaterialsCommons thus touches on a central question of European technology policy: Who controls the data on which future innovations are based? Materials data is strategically valuable for key industries such as semiconductors, batteries, mechanical engineering, steel production or additive manufacturing. They can contain production advantages, quality knowledge and intellectual property.
Against the background of geopolitical crises, the project therefore takes on a security policy dimension. A European infrastructure can help to pool research capacities, industrial development data and digital tools more closely within Europe, without shifting them into proprietary or non-European platform dependencies. MaterialsCommons is thus contributing to digital sovereignty: Europe should be able to make better use of materials data without giving up control over it.