Chemistry: The Driving Force for Emerging Technologies

Topic 1: Noninvasive Biopsies for Identifying Cancer

Essentially, ultra-sensitive blood tests known as liquid biopsies will improve diagnosis and care of cancer. Here,

“a tool known as a liquid biopsy—which finds signs of cancer in a simple blood sample—promises to solve those problems and more. A few dozen companies are developing their own technologies, and observers predict that the market for the tests could be worth billions.

The technique typically homes in on circulating-tumour DNA (ctDNA), genetic material that routinely finds its way from cancer cells into the bloodstream. Only recently have advanced technologies made it possible to find, amplify and sequence the DNA rapidly and inexpensively.”

The technologies which help amplify and sequence the DNA are all from the field of molecular biology and biochemistry, e.g. building the primer molecules for polymerase chain reaction.

Topic 2: Harvesting Clean Water from Air

Harvesting water from the moisture in air would be an important improvement for many arid areas in the world. The paper states, that “new materials are making sunlight-powered, moisture-absorbing technologies economical. Billions of people lack access to clean water for all or part of the year or must travel far to gather it. Extracting water directly from the air would be an immeasurable boon for them.”

Already the first words in the text “new materials” show the need of chemical innovation to fulfill the mission. One solution, as presented by researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the University of California, Berkeley, uses metal-organic frameworks (MOFs), a class of porous crystals, to collect moisture. As it is well known, these MOF structures have a very large inner surface, and are designed and built by chemists.

The second approach mentioned in the paper is based on a solar panel, which together with a lithium-ion battery powers a proprietary water-absorbing material system. We do not know the material, but we do know that it, as well the solar panel and the battery, are built from chemicals.

Topic 3: Deep Learning for Visual Tasks

Computerized visual technologies are applied in many fields, e.g. medicine, to help or even replace experts in interpreting data. We learn from the paper, that “for most of the past 30 years, computer-vision technologies have struggled to help humans with visual tasks, even those as mundane as accurately recognizing faces in photographs. Recently, though, breakthroughs in deep learning, an emerging field of artificial intelligence, have finally enabled computers to interpret many kinds of images as successfully as, or better than, people do.”

This progress is based on a deep-learning approach known as a convolutional neural network (CNN). Here, chemistry is surely involved through the chemicals and materials to build a computer. But this is trivial. It is much more important that CNN is also used by chemists, e.g. to find new pathways in retro synthesis projects. Visualization is also very important in chemistry, as it was the topic for the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2017, which was awarded to three scientists for their pioneering work developing new methods of visualizing biomolecules.

Topic 4: Liquid Fuels from Sunshine

Climate change and the exploitation of natural resources are well known drivers for the quest for new sources of energy. Why not follow nature, and develop an artificial photosynthesis process where artificial-leaf technology converts carbon dioxide to fuels and more? The paper states that,

“the notion of an artificial leaf makes so much sense. Leaves, of course, harness energy from the sun to turn carbon dioxide into the carbohydrates that power a plant’s cellular activities. For decades, scientists have been working to devise a process similar to photosynthesis to generate a fuel that could be stored for later. (…) Many, many investigators have contributed over the years to the development of a form of artificial photosynthesis in which sunlight-activated catalysts split water molecules to yield oxygen and hydrogen, the latter being a valuable chemical for a wide range of sustainable technologies. A step closer to actual photosynthesis would be to employ this hydrogen in a reduction reaction that converts CO₂ into hydrocarbons. Like a real leaf, this system would use only CO₂, water and sunlight to produce fuels.”

The idea to produce fuels from sunshine is not new. Currently, hydrogen can be sustainably produced by electrolysis, (using solar electricity), and then be fed into syngas processes to build organic molecules from CO₂ or CO. However,

“recently, one group has demonstrated that it is possible to combine water splitting and CO2 conversion into fuels in one system with high efficiency. In a June 2016 issue of Science, Daniel G. Nocera and Pamela A. Silver, both at Harvard University, and their colleagues reported on an approach to making liquid fuel (specifically fusel alcohols) that far exceeds a natural leaf’s conversion of carbon dioxide to carbohydrates.

The investigators paired inorganic, solar water-splitting technology (designed to use only biocompatible materials and to avoid creating toxic compounds) with microbes specially engineered to produce fuel, all in a single container.”

This is an excellent example of chemical engineering combined with biotechnology. It could even go further, producing “nitrogen-based fertilizer and bio plastics in the process, where the bacteria are fed with hydrogen produced by water splitting and ultimately use the hydrogen to produce desired products ranging from fuels to fertilizers, plastics and drugs, depending on the specific metabolic alterations designed for.”

Topic 5: The Human Cell Atlas

Again, we are in the fields of physiological chemistry, molecular biology, biochemistry, and even synthetic organic chemistry and chemical analytics. The human cell is a highly complicated reactor where a large number of molecules are involved in many reactions. Additionally, the body contains many different cell types. As the paper states,

“an international project is set to detail how every cell type in the body functions.

To truly, deeply understand how the human body works—and how diseases arise—you would need an extraordinary amount of information. You would have to know the identity of every cell type in every tissue; exactly which genes, proteins and other molecules are active in each type; what processes control that activity; where the cells are located exactly; how the cells normally interact with one another; and what happens to the body’s functioning when genetic or other aspects of a cell undergo change, among other details. Building such a rich, complex knowledge base may seem impossible. And yet a broad international consortium of research groups has taken the first steps toward building exactly that. They call it the Human Cell Atlas.”

If we look into the tasks in the process, we recognize many contributions from chemistry: profiling the proteins in a single cell at any given time, inexpensively sequencing DNA and RNA, and identifying small molecules involved or generated by cellular processes, such as sugars, fatty acids, or amino acids.

Topic 6: Precision Farming

At first glance, precision farming does not seem to be a chemical topic. But looking deeper we see that sensors and real-time data analytics are key to improving yields. Clearly the fertilizers used are produced in chemical plants.

The reason why precision farming is getting more and more important is as follows:

“As the world’s population grows, farmers will need to produce more and more food. Yet arable acreage cannot keep pace and the looming food security threat could easily devolve into regional or even global instability. To adapt, large farms are increasingly exploiting precision farming to increase yields, reduce waste, and mitigate the economic and security risks that inevitably accompany agricultural uncertainty.”

The tools, which make farming become precision farming are “sensors, robots, GPS, mapping tools and data-analytics software to customize the care that plants receive without increasing labour.” Chemistry comes in with fertilizer and pesticides, which are designed for precise application, so the use of chemicals is much more focused and less harmful to the environment. Chemists are also involved in the development of better seed varieties that will thrive in specific soil and weather conditions.

Topic 7: Affordable Catalysts for Green Vehicles

In many countries goals are set to terminate the use of fossil fuel-powered cars and open the mass market for electric or hydrogen powered cars. The market volume of battery-powered electric vehicles grows slowly from a low 1 % global value. But, due to many innovations which bring down the battery costs and longer life time, the market volume is increasing fast. On the other side, for fuel-cell based cars the need for platinum in fuel-cell catalysts is still a hurdle to overcome. So,

“reducing the platinum in fuel-cell catalysts could help bring hydrogen-powered vehicles to the mass market.

A raft of laboratories and businesses, however, are determined to cut costs by replacing one of the most expensive components in the fuel cells: the catalyst. Many commercial catalysts for fuel cells contain the precious metal platinum which, aside from being expensive, is too rare to support ubiquitous use in vehicles.”

These laboratories and businesses are chemical labs or chemical companies, respectively, and the investigators are chemists who

“are pursuing several lines of attack to shrink the platinum content: using it more efficiently; replacing some or all of it with palladium (which performs similarly and is somewhat less expensive); replacing either of those precious metals with inexpensive metals, such as nickel or copper; and foregoing metals altogether. Commercial catalysts tend to consist of thin layers of platinum nanoparticles deposited on a carbon film; researchers are also testing alternative substrates.”

Examples given in the paper are:

“Stanislaus S. Wong of Stony Brook University, who works closely with Radoslav R. Adzic of Brookhaven National Laboratory, is among those leading the charge. He and his colleagues have, for instance, combined relatively small amounts of platinum or palladium with cheaper metals such as iron, nickel or copper, producing many alloyed varieties that are far more active than commercial catalysts.

Wong’s group has fashioned the metals into ultra-thin one-dimensional nanowires (roughly two nanometres in diameter). These nanowires have a high surface area-to-volume ratio, which enhances the number of active sites for catalytic reactions.

Sang Hoon Joo of Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST) in the Republic of Korea reported that an iron- and nitrogen-doped carbon nanotube catalyst has activity comparable to commercial catalysts. Also, Liming Dai of Case Western Reserve University and his colleagues have invented a catalyst using no metal at all; it is a nitrogen- and phosphorus- doped carbon foam that is as active as standard catalysts.”

Chemists and material scientists are on the way to find the solution.

Topic 8: Genomic Vaccines

On first view, new kinds of vaccines from DNA or RNA—instead of proteins—is a wholly medical topic. But again, the chemical contribution comes in when these vaccines are composed of synthetic DNA or RNA.

“Genomic vaccines take the form of DNA or RNA that encodes desired proteins. On injection, the genes enter cells, which then churn out the selected proteins. Compared with manufacturing proteins in cell cultures or eggs, producing the genetic material should be simpler and less expensive. (….) In the future, investigators could sequence the genomes of the circulating strains and produce a better-matched vaccine in weeks.”

Sequencing of the genome and building new DNA is the contribution of chemistry in this field.

Topic 9: Sustainable Design of Communities

Construction, transportation, and electronic appliances industries are among the main markets for the chemical industry. Building sustainable communities involves all these markets and is based on materials contributed from chemistry. Additionally, new ideas contribute even more to energy and water savings, by “applying green construction to multiple buildings.”

Topic 10: Quantum Computing

The paper states that “with quantum computing available to many, progress towards solving hard problems seems inevitable.”

From the chemical point-of-view quantum computing will open new pathways for computational chemistry. In fact, this is the only time the word chemistry appears in the paper. Not as source and base of an emerging technology, but as an application example:

“Quantum computing has captured imaginations for almost 50 years. The reason is simple: it offers a path to solving problems that could never be answered with classical machines. Examples include simulating chemistry exactly to develop new molecules and materials and solving complex optimization problems, which seek the best solution from among many possible alternatives. Every industry has a need for optimization, which is one reason this technology has so much disruptive potential. (....) Existing machines are still too small to fully solve problems more complex than supercomputers can handle today.”

Quantum computing is not a dream any more. Already “in 2016 IBM provided the public access to the first quantum computer in the cloud – the IBM Q experience.” Nevertheless, this is only the start and there are many obstacles to overcome before quantum computing will be a tool which can be used widely. Then we might see even more solutions of chemical problems in silico than we already do today.

In summary, it is clear that many of these 10 emerging technologies of the year 2017 will only come true and become disruptive solutions when chemists contribute their knowledge and technologies. But it is a multi-way street, chemistry will also gain a profit from the collaboration with other fields of science. Many scientists from different fields working together will find the solutions and build the future. It would be favorable for the team looking for the next round of emerging technologies to also include chemical competence.