New Toray Research Facility Will Bolster R&D in Green Tech, Next-Gen Mobility
The Japanese firm’s 93,000-square-foot research facility is designed to “fuse green and nano-based technologies in the development of new materials.”
February 24, 2023
Toray Industries is investing in a new 93,000-square-foot research and development center in the automotive hotbed of Japan’s Aichi Prefecture. Its mission, according to the company, is to “integrate diverse elemental technologies from within and outside the Toray Group to fuse green and nano-based technologies in the development of new materials.” Part of the R&D center’s role will be to propose digital solutions that bring together material development, process design, and customer proposals in a drive to cut greenhouse-gas emissions across the economy.
The facility will include a chemical laboratory for wide-ranging basic and applied research, a prototyping and processing area to demonstrate technologies, and an open laboratory. Completion is scheduled for the first quarter of fiscal 2026 (April to June).
Toray recognizes the need to focus on eco-friendly materials while pursuing functionality for the economy to become sustainable. “It is also vital to respond rapidly to the numerous technological mobility advances that the world has witnessed in recent years,” added the company. “These have included electrification and weight savings to cut greenhouse-gas emissions, automated driving, urban air mobility, and drone technologies.” The new research facility will be a hub for customer and academia collaboration and global R&D to accelerate Toray’s green transformation and explore advanced materials for myriad emerging mobility applications.
This facility will bolster material development that helps achieve economic sustainability by bringing together polymer, chemicals, and carbon-fiber composite researchers, as well as digital transformation professionals and developers with chemical engineering expertise to drive nanotechnology advances. Such progress would incorporate materials informatics and computational chemistry in such areas as polymer design, nanostructure control, and composite material design. The facility will integrate nanotechnology with recycling, biorefining, and other green technologies and reduce environmental impact from a process perspective.
The facility will be adjacent to Toray’s Environment and Mobility Development Center and the Advanced Composites Center, both of which engage in mobility-related developments and evaluations. The goal is to generate synergies by integrating R&D and digital solutions. Toray will reinforce open innovation internally and externally by creating an open laboratory for co-creation with customers and academia while deploying a framework to deepen communication among researchers and encourage ideas to emerge.
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