Dear all,

The beginning of 2019 has been extremely busy for your WMF team with the 2nd edition of our San Francisco Chapter on January 13th and the 1st edition of our Tokyo Chapter on January 18th. 

We also finalized the program of WMF 2019 - just amazing thanks to our great speakers. 

So here is our no 11 with a bench of sustainability initiatives (zero waste projects, reuse of 1st generation EV batteries, ban of some mining dams). As well as a review of emerging solutions to produce and refine rare earths at an acceptable cost and with higher environmental standards. Also an interesting survey that correlates the Criticality of Lithium to a change in global warming objectives. And some good surprises when Stanford and Grenoble LETI announce the “computer on chip” or when Russia, Singapore and US researchers collaborate on AI for improving the efficiency of silicon solar cells. Finally it is certainly worth reading why a Quantum Computer is useful to develop lighter and more powerful EV batteries or why Materials Science may become the most important technology of the next decade.

As always, we wish you a great reading and we will welcome any feedback.

Victoire de Margerie & Philippe Varin

BIV, January 29th:
A review of possible solutions to produce and refine rare earths at an acceptable cost and with higher environmental standards 

IFP Working Paper, February:
Criticality of Lithium highly dependent on global warming regulation?

The Register, January 2nd:
MIT shows that a superconducting qubit made from graphene is temporally quantum coherent, a key requisite for squeezing more cubits onto a single chip and building sophisticated quantum circuits

Science News, January 8th: 
Some stories behind the periodic table of elements

Digital Tonto, January 9th:
Materials Science may be the most important technology of the next decade 

Stanford News, February 19th:
One full computer on one single chip thanks to researchers of Stanford and Grenoble LETI

MIT Technology Review, January 29th:
What is a quantum computer and why it is useful to develop lighter and more powerful batteries for electric cars or to help create novel drugs

Tech Xplore, February 11th:
Russia, Singapore and US researchers used AI to study how different amounts and orientations of strain would affect the bandgap and improve the efficiency of a silicon solar cell, by getting it to match more precisely the kind of energy source that it is designed to harness - and therefore reducing its thickness to the exact minimum needed

The Washington Post, February 13th:
Zero waste initiatives in California and in Japan 

Tech Crunch, February 18th:
Reuse of 1st generation EV batteries to power campers 

Bloomberg, February 19th:
Brazil bans upstream mining dams after Vale’s dam break

worldmaterialsforum.com