Market Overview

In the domestic material field, in addition to material development methods using the accumulated technologies that Japan has been good at, the efforts on MI (Materials Informatics) since 2010s, that is new methods for designing materials on the basis of data science including computer-used simulations and AI, have brought about fruitful results.

Material science is currently expected to play a major role in realizing social issues such as Society 5.0 and SDGs, etc. Generation of attractive materials, and challenging and acceleration of the science on which that such generation bases have been groped for by promoting data-driven material development (i.e. Material DX), just like digital transformation at companies and businesses.

Material DX, the evolved version of Materials Informatics, will enable multilateral material explorations guided from the correlation between composition/structure and physical properties/characteristics by improving the environment for using data on materials. It also dramatically reduces the time and cost for material development, which is making function-based designing of materials to advance considerably, increasing the possibility of finding out the guiding principles of material functions expressed from diverse materials data.

Meanwhile, Japan, the leader in the material field, has been rapidly caught up by other countries. In 2020, the Preparation Meeting for Formulation of Strategies for Enhancing Material Innovation Power was jointly inaugurated by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) and the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI). The meeting compiled the basic ideas and the direction of efforts hereafter, etc., which led to formulation of the “Strategies for Enhancing Material Innovation Power” by the Council for Integrated Innovation Strategy in 2021.

In this research, the market size was calculated on the material development utilizing Material DX targeting organic materials (i.e. high-molecule materials, bio materials, low-molecule materials etc.) that are more advanced in the efforts on Materials Informatics than other materials. The global market size of organic materials developed via Material DX in 2025 is expected to reach 617,400 million yen, based on the shipment values at manufactures. When observing the details by each organic material, high-molecule materials are projected to occupy approximately 93% of the entire market, bio materials account for around 5%, and low-molecule materials 2%.

Noteworthy Topics

Case Study 1) Process discovery by MI – Exploration of High-Efficiency Nanosheet Synthesis Conditions from Layered Materials

Two-dimensional materials such as layered substances and nanosheets are attracting considerable interest due to their unique thickness-dependent electronic properties. Such a layered sheet can be readily exfoliated to single or few-atom thick nanosheets because they are held together by weak van der Waals forces.

On the other hand, rigid layered materials accumulated with interlayer ions, such as transition metal oxides and clay minerals, have not yet been studied fully about yield improvement, size control, and surface modification, though exfoliation methods are known.

PhD Oaki’s laboratory at Faculty of Science and Technology in Keio University aims to accelerate the development of functional materials by applying new Materials Informatics that have merged data-scientific methods, such as machine learning, and studies based on researcher experiences to experimental data.

By introducing guest molecules into interlayers, the rigid layered materials turn into soft layered organic and inorganic polymer materials, which can be dispersed to relevant organic solution, by which to find out the method of obtaining surface-modified nanosheets. This method enables to change exfoliation behaviours via different combinations of layer-between guests and dispersing media, enabling yield improvement and size control. 

Future Outlook

The global market size of organic materials in digital transformation for material science is projected to reach 1,405,900 million yen by 2030, 227.7% of the size of 2025.

As for surfactants and other low-molecular materials, those typical ones are concentrated into handbooks, etc., which can be utilized as a database to realize Material DX (data-driven material development).

On the other hand, critical data on cutting-edge electronic materials such as semiconductor elements or light emitters is mostly kept at private companies as confidential data, while such data disclosed is rare. Because the structure and properties of those materials are largely dependent on the combinations and processes, available data on high-molecular materials and composite materials made up of multiple substances is very limited, which is the very challenge for realizing Material DX.

In addition, except for some additives, there are a few applications for organic materials to express the functions with the molecule alone, rather, the function often depends on the high-order structure of an aggregate. Therefore, computational science technology to predict high-order structures from the data of computational results, and progress in computational informatics are indispensable. Fortunately, Japan is the most advanced country in computational informatics in the world, which may have nature of leading the world in this respect.

Research Outline