Accelerating advanced materials development, from discovery through deployment, has the potential to revolutionize whole industries and is critical for the United States to compete globally in manufacturing in the 21st century. However, today only a small fraction of materials innovations make it to widespread commercialization. The goal of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Energy Materials Network (EMN) is to dramatically decrease the time-to-market for advanced materials that are critical to manufacturing many clean energy technologies, enabling manufacturers of all sizes to develop and deliver innovative, made-in-America products to the world market.

The Lightweight Materials National Laboratory Consortium, or LightMAT, is one of, and the first established, node in the EMN, and is comprised of ten national laboratories with technical capabilities highly relevant to lightweight materials development and utilization. LightMAT provides straightforward access to resources and capabilities in this network via a single point of contact and works to match industry research teams with expertise and equipment found only at national laboratories. This presentation will describe some of the unique technical capabilities available through the LightMAT network and how these will be applied to developing materials technologies for future low-carbon energy systems.