Toray Industries, Inc. has announced its plan to establish a new research facility at its Nagoya Plant in Aichi Prefecture to accelerate its R&D efforts towards green transformation and advanced mobility.
The new facility will integrate diverse elemental technologies from within and outside the Toray Group to develop materials using the concept of fusing green and nano-based technologies. It will also incorporate chemical engineering perspectives from the research stage to develop digital solutions that cut greenhouse gas emissions across the economy.
The company recognizes the need to focus on eco-friendly materials while pursuing functionality to ensure that the economy becomes sustainable. It is also vital to respond rapidly to technological mobility advances witnessed in recent years, such as 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 advanced mobility applications.
The facility will bolster materials development that helps achieve economic sustainability. It will bring together polymer, chemicals, and carbon fiber composite materials researchers, as well as digital transformation professionals and developers with chemical engineering expertise to drive nanotechnology advances. This progress will incorporate materials informatics and computational chemistry in areas such as polymer design, nanostructure control, and composite material design.
The facility will integrate nanotechnology with recycling, biorefining, and other green technologies to reduce environmental impact from process perspectives.
The new research facility will have three floors with a total floor area of around 8,600 square meters, and it is scheduled for completion in the first quarter of FY2026.
The facility will have several key features, including a chemical laboratory for a wide-ranging of basic and applied research, prototyping and processing area to demonstrate technologies, an open laboratory, close communication between researchers to foster innovative ideas, housing 140 people in office and experimental area on one floor, open meeting space, and energy-efficient facilities.