On Feb. 21, President Vladimir Putin toured the Future Technologies Forum exhibition highlighting Russia’s latest advancements in chemistry and new materials. He was accompanied by senior officials, including Mikhail Kovalchuk, director of the Kurchatov Institute National Research Center, and Alexei Likhachev, director-general of Rosatom.
The “New Materials and Chemistry” featured a range of innovations, including an absorbent carbon dressing for healing open wounds and burns; synthetic blood vessel prostheses that allow replacing critically damaged areas of blood vessels in atherosclerosis, aneurysm, thrombosis; polymeric materials for the manufacture of bone substitutes that are similar in properties to human bone tissue; samples of raw biomass obtained from medicinal plants without harming the environment; innovative fertilizers; composite materials based on carbon fiber and thermoplastics, which are used in aviation, UAV design, and the automotive industry; and products made of rare and rare earth metals, which are used in high-tech products.
The Kurchatov Institute National Research Center demonstrated aircraft parts manufactured using additive technologies, polymeric materials for medical use, heat-resistant materials for engine building, special cold-resistant steels and coatings for Arctic use, and other developments, including the synchrotron-laser complex “SILA”—a fundamentally new research mega-installation, which is being built at Kurchatov, and will allow obtaining unique data on the structure and properties of any substances at the level of individual atoms.
Rosatom exhibited a composite material with boron carbide capable of effectively blocking different types of radiation. This is indispensable in nuclear power plants, in medicine (radiotherapy), and in industry.
