Materials
Materials & Advanced Manufacturing at Wisconsin
Supports: Scaled Hypersonics · Contested Logistics
Hypersonic flight, advanced reactors, and resilient supply chains all come down to materials — and the ability to manufacture them. UW–Madison leads in materials for extreme environments and in the advanced manufacturing methods that turn new materials into fielded components.
Securing critical resources, including the rare minerals and materials modern systems depend on, is one of the College of Engineering’s six Engineering Moonshots.
Research Strengths
materials for extreme environments · refractory alloys & coatings · corrosion & radiation effects · additive manufacturing · AI materials discovery · epitaxial growth & thin films · nanofabrication · electron microscopy & characterization · semiconductor materials & devices · quantum materials
Anchors & Assets
Materials for Extreme Environments
Development of materials for high-temperature and corrosive conditions: thermal barrier coatings, refractory alloys, and corrosion-resistant claddings, plus additive manufacturing of refractory alloys with controlled microstructures.
Wisconsin MRSEC
One of 21 National Science Foundation Materials Research Science and Engineering Centers in the nation, backed by $18 million in current NSF funding and a quarter-century of continuous support, and uniting more than 30 faculty across nine departments in fundamental materials research.
Nanofabrication & Characterization
The Wisconsin Centers for Nanoscale Technology (WCNT) provide shared instrumentation for microelectronics, nanofabrication, electron microscopy, and materials characterization, including a 10,000-square-foot cleanroom with more than 70 instruments, open to campus and industry users alike.
NSF MATRIX-MIP
A nearly $25 million NSF Materials Innovation Platform — one of only two funded nationally in 2026 — using AI and automation to accelerate the discovery, synthesis, and testing of materials for extreme environments, and launching the Hard Materials Lab as a national user facility within the Wisconsin Centers for Nanoscale Technology, with Argonne National Laboratory as a partner.
Industry & National Lab Partnership
The Grainger Institute for Engineering’s collaboration with Argonne National Laboratory spans advanced materials, nuclear engineering, and manufacturing. Consortia like the Advanced Materials Industrial Consortium connect campus researchers directly with manufacturers.
Wisconsin CHIPS
The statewide hub for semiconductor technology and a member of the Department of Defense’s Microelectronics Commons through the Southwest Advanced Prototyping Hub, part of the national effort to restore domestic chip fabrication.
The Dual-Use Imperative
Materials built for the harshest military environments end up everywhere: jet engines and power turbines, safer nuclear reactors, longer-lasting infrastructure, and the semiconductors inside every phone and vehicle. Advanced manufacturing methods developed for defense now produce medical implants, aerospace components, and custom industrial parts across the economy.
Why It Matters
Scaled hypersonics is a materials problem. Contested logistics is a manufacturing problem — point-of-need fabrication, supply chain resilience, and the industrial capacity to sustain operations. Wisconsin’s materials science and manufacturing research addresses both, in a state whose industrial base is ready to build what research delivers.
WINS connects mission partners to Wisconsin’s materials researchers, facilities, and manufacturing ecosystem.