Mikhail Filonov, Vice-Rector of Research and Development at the National University of Science and Technology MISIS. [Photo/Sputnik]

At what point will we no longer have to go to stores to buy things on the same day? What materials will be things made of in the near future? Is an invisibility cloak like Harry Potter had pure fantasy, or can such materials be created? These are not just the idle thoughts of ordinary people, but actual questions scientists are pondering. Interview with Mikhail Filonov, Vice-Rector of Research and Development at the National University of Science and Technology MISIS.

Question: The 20th century was the era of nuclear energy and the digital revolution. Where is scientific research headed now?

Mikhail Filonov: The global trend is to shrink the distance between the idea and the finished product. An idea today must be transformed into a marketable product as soon as possible. For example, say you want a bicycle. Traditionally, a steel plant would have to smelt the metal and ship it to a plant to cut and shape the frame from the metal, turning 90 percent of the original piece into scraps in the process, until all the necessary parts are made for a bicycle. Making something by cutting out excess elements is an expensive process involving a huge numberof plants and people.

The world is trying to take a new approach. If you want a bike, you turn your 3D printer on and go have some tea, returning and a brand new bike will be waiting for you when you're done. This is not fantasy anymore, although 3D printed products are still mostly made of plastic.

Question: You have describedthe global trend, but where are you headed at NUST MISIS specifically?

Mikhail Filonov: Our university is trying to stay with global trends. In 2015 we completed the construction of a high-tech engineering prototype center with equipment for the sintering of powdered metal bodies, which can be used to make 3D printed metal products. But this equipment is very expensive. 3D printers for plastic products cost upwards of $1,000, whereas an industrial 3D metal printer costs millions of dollars. However, the additive manufacturing market is developing very fast.

Question: Can universities shrink the distance from the idea to product?

Mikhail Filonov: In principle, this is what the leading universities have always tried to do. What researchers invent in their laboratories today become finished products tomorrow. This is the centerpiece of the US education system, under which all research schools operate at universities, which are actually the only implementation centers in the country. Russian universities, including NUST MISIS, are rapidly moving towards this model. But there are many obstacles on our way towards implementation, for example financial and other resources.

The process between the idea and its implementation is very expensive and involves all infrastructure aspects such as material engineers and designers. The distance is becoming shorter with every passing year, as is evidenced by the automotive industry. In the past century, a new series was designed and implemented once a decade, whereas now car models are updated every couple years. Time is shrinking. But the laws of marketing products have not changed since Karl Marx. Time is money. By shrinking time, you increase spending on the implementation of an idea. Large corporations such as ROSATOM or Rocket and Space Corporation Energia after S.P. Korolev can launch yesterday's idea to the Moon, but we at NUST MISIS don't have this kind of money, and no other university in the world does.

Question: Do you think the government should increase funding for research?

Mikhail Filonov: It is business rather than the state that should be demanding innovation. The buildings of the world's leading companies surround Stanford University, and they are the ones driving progress at Stanford. Unfortunately, the system is different in Russia so far. Relations between universities and industries are based on public-private partnerships.

For example, we have signed contracts with aluminum producer Rusal worth about 400 million rubles. They are composed of several interconnected projects, such as aluminum smelting under new schemes or new aluminum alloys. But the general sponsor is the state. The state supports research projects whose results are used by the industrial partner. NUST MISIS implements about 500 contracts a year – more than any other Russian university in terms of the volume and number of contracts.

The best case scenario for NUST MISIS would involve more actively attracting corporate funds, preferably signing fewer but bigger contracts. Today we are mostly focused on the domestic market, while ourbest foreign colleagues are fully internationalized, which means that they implement contracts not only for the domestic market but also for foreign markets. This is one more goal for NUST MISIS: we should work not only on the domestic but also on the global market.

Question: Which technologies and spheres of research are gaining precedence now? Which of them do you plan to develop at the university?

Mikhail Filonov: We see the explosive development of many technologies, including in new materials and instrument building. Computer hardwareseems to have retreated, although a different kind of explosion is possible in that area. I am referring to the quantum computer, which will turn the computing system upside down. No one knows when it will be created, but NUST MISIS is one of the leaders in this area, in particular the university`s Laboratory for Superconducting Metamaterials headed by Professor Alexey Ustinov.

Our key priorities are new materials and technologies for their production. NUST MISIS is undoubtedly the leading material engineering center in Russia. Ultimately, materials are everything, as it is from materials that we create the physical world. New materials have been created such as ceramics, composites, hybrid materials, and a huge amount of functional materials with unique properties. There is a term, metamaterials, in material engineering. It means materials that have artificially structured properties that are not found in nature. Take negative refractive index metamaterials, which can be usedto create Harry Potter's invisibility cloak or an invisibility cap.

We are also interested in robotics as a symbiosis of new IT and metamaterial solutions. I believe we will create the Terminator soon. At the same time, we have not abandoned research in the classical areas – mining and metallurgy, because we are still in the Iron Age. Even though we have created many different composite materials, the basic construction material is still steel. This area of research is becoming less and less active. The alloy revolutions such as we witnessed in the 20th century are hardly possible now. It appears that we have reached a ceiling in the creation of new metal properties.

Question: How can this be? You spoke about the heyday of material engineering and new materials, but concluded by saying that we still live in the Iron Age.

Mikhail Filonov: In the Stone Age, humans had nothing better than stone. The basic material today is iron. Most of our buildings are made of reinforced concrete. Even the most expensive cars made of carbon-fiber-reinforced polymers and aluminum alloys nevertheless have steel suspensions. It was predicted about 50 years ago that we were entering the era of composite structural materials. Everyone heralded the end of the age of iron and the beginning of the age of composite materials.They also predicted the decline of the steel industry, but these forecasts have not materialized.

Composite materials have a whole host of advantages, but they also have many drawbacks which we have been working to overcome. The biggest of them is low temperature resistance: compositesbecome brittle at low temperaturesand are non-competitive in hot and humid climates. Termites eat poles made of composite polymers, and large-diameter pipes cannot be made of composites because of their low flexibility. We also attempted, and failed, to use composite materials to build an oil platform.

Whether we call our current age the space or information age, even spacecraft have a greatmany steel parts. Rockets are mostly made of other alloys, yet they also have lots of iron. Rather, we should call this a metals age, because iron is being replaced with titanium, aluminum or alloys. But on the whole, iron is still standing its ground. It has no rivals among the chemical elements and is unlikely to be replaced in the near future, unless we create a new composite material that will be better than iron by combining performance properties such as strength, plasticity, corrosion stability, manufacturability, and cost.