21 Avr ADVENCED MATERIALS: Evodence Review Report
21 April 2026
This document was published as part of our overall advice on Advanced Materials.
ADVANCED MATERIALS: KEY DOCUMENTS
Our lives depend on advanced materials. Modern technologies have enabled scientists to manipulate and create powerful advanced materials, such as semiconductors, nanomedicine, photovoltaic cells, and many more, transforming the industrial, medical, electronics, space and aviation, automotive, and energy sectors. Given their influence in practically all sectors, advanced materials are critical to the competitiveness, autonomy, and resilience of European industries.
Therefore, the Group of Chief Scientific Advisors to the European Commission were asked to provide a Scientific Opinion, with policy recommendations, on the following questions as stated in the Scoping Paper (European Commission, 2025c):
What contribution can advanced materials bring to the European Union’s (EU) strategic autonomy?
This question seeks to identify specific research areas in advanced materials that reflect the EU’s core strengths and have the highest potential impact on industrial competitiveness. This includes cross-cutting research challenges for developing safe and sustainable advanced materials for the circular economy, focusing on material design, development, characterisation, processing, production, and product integration. In addition, it aims to identify gaps in research areas for critical sectors where the EU can put additional efforts and resources to achieve strategic autonomy.
How can the cross-fertilisation of innovation in advanced materials be enhanced?
This question seeks to identify mechanisms that can capitalise on the potential of new innovative functionalities of advanced materials across sectors and applications, and to stimulate new business models and innovation markets. To achieve cross-sector innovation and support its uptake by industries, it is also imperative to facilitate alignment and feedback loops between basic research and industrial needs for advanced materials.
As requested, the evidence on the above questions remains within the scope of the European Commission Communication on Advanced Materials for Industrial Leadership (European Commission, 2024b), which focuses on sectors such as mobility, energy, construction, and electronics, with cross-cutting aspects, and also includes health.
To address these scoping questions, SAPEA assembled an interdisciplinary working group of independent experts to develop this comprehensive evidence review report, which the Group of Chief Scientific Advisors used to inform their Scientific Opinion and policy recommendations.
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