3M Research and Development

3M began as an abrasives manufacturer and has evolved over the last century, enhancing technologies and introducing innovations. Our abrasives blend traditional strengths with modern technologies, and offer a range of applications, including cutting, grinding, shaping, finishing and polishing.

Engineered to fit our customers' needs, 3M adhesives are used in a variety of products, from skyscrapers to mobile phones, and automobiles to medical devices. We excel in curable and structural adhesives and are known for our pressure-sensitive tapes, which 3M invented more than 90 years ago.

When 3M began, we used ceramic materials to convert minerals into sandpaper.  Over the last century, we have forged inorganic ceramic materials into a wide range of products serving disparate markets including automotive, electrical and optical.

3M drives the circular economy with material and process innovations. Our Circular Materials extend product lifetimes, support repair and disassembly, and enhance byproduct reuse. Applications span from reimagining everyday materials to developing high-tech solutions across industries.

By infiltrating dense arrangements of ceramic fibers or particles with aluminum alloy, 3M creates composite materials and articles that are strong and stiff, but lightweight. Our advanced composites are used in high acceleration and temperature conditions within industrial or aerospace applications.

Advances in electronic components often result from process improvements. 3M enhances semiconductor wafer yield with chemical mechanical planarization solutions, boosts signal reliability with TwinAx copper interconnects, and cuts fiber optic install time with Expanded Beam Optical connectors.

With thicknesses ranging from one to hundreds of layers, 3M films enhance and protect displays and increase energy efficiency. They are found in graphics on and within buildings, vehicles, and traffic signage, and are even the base of a variety of office and industrial tapes.

Metamaterials are engineered materials that possess properties not typically found in bulk natural materials. Our multilayer optical film portfolio was a commercialized metamaterial long before the term existed. Now, we’re taking our technology even further in optical and mechanical metamaterials.

3M scientists and researchers are exploring a new world at the nanometer level, where materials exhibit unique physical and chemical properties that enhance our hard coatings, abrasives and optical films.

Even after 75 years of innovating nonwoven materials, 3M is still discovering new ways to make and apply them. 3M nonwoven materials are used in respirators, HVAC filters, abrasives and tapes continuing to advance industrial and consumer products.

When 3M scientists begin work on a customer’s problem, they often start with specific performance or environmental property requirements, including optical or electrical properties. 3M Performance Materials connect end-use performance to the resulting materials across all form factors.

Polymer Science involves understanding structure-property relationships in polymeric materials to produce materials with desired end-use properties. Core capabilities include polymer synthesis, formulation and characterization.

Release materials include release liners, low surface energy coatings and low adhesion back sizes used in our high-performance adhesives. Release materials offer functionality like quiet unwind, printability and precision delivery, providing value to 3M products across the business.

Specialty Materials are focused on the discovery, development and production of high-value, custom chemicals and specialty polymers. 3M's Specialty Materials enable new process capabilities and complex product constructions.

3M uses our expertise in materials science, processing and design to take additive manufacturing to the next level. Through rapid iteration and realization of complex geometries, 3M reduces development timelines, optimizes manufacturing and enables new-to-the world products.

3M excels in Chemical Processing to create proprietary materials found in our innovative product portfolios, such as adhesives, that provide differentiated performance and value for our customers.

3M molding technology enables complex and customized components that deliver high-performance customer solutions. We leverage our unique expertise in modeling, tool design, precision machining, metrology and mould processing to deliver diverse, highly-differentiated products.

3M pioneered the use of tiny, precisely shaped structures to give materials novel physical, chemical or optical properties. These structures help solve customer problems by contributing to differentiated and enhanced products like road signs, displays, abrasives and more.

Precision Coating and Web Processing encompasses the integration of multiple disciplines into one manufacturing process. Advancements in coating, printing, drying, curing, and web handling create high-value manufacturing capabilities that provide 3M competitive advantage.

3M's understanding of physical, thermal and chemical interactions allows us to create, modify and disperse particles, then incorporate these precisely distributed particles into materials to tune their properties. This is why we can give unique characteristics to abrasives, inks, films and more. 

3M is a world leader in polymer development and use, combining and shaping these unique molecules using a variety of forming processes. Nearly all 3M technology platforms and business groups leverage polymer processing for making differentiated products that solve customer problems. 

The materials in many 3M products are cured, modified or enhanced through physical or chemical changes―such as heating, polymerizing or crosslinking―caused by radiation processing.  Radiation processing touches a majority of 3M’s technology platforms and is a key element for core products.

Critical product performance characteristics often depend on precise control of surface chemistry, topography and coating thickness. 3M created a valuable vapor processing platform through the refinement of vacuum, non-vacuum and plasma-based technologies to help control these characteristics. 

Computer Vision plays an integral role in many innovative 3M products. Our expertise in light management and image and video analysis, when fused with state-of-the-art machine learning and pattern recognition algorithms, yields products with enhanced machine readability properties.

Data Science & Analytics uses scientific methods, processes and algorithms to extract insights from structured and unstructured data. 3M uses this technology to solve complex customer problems, automate workflows, and ultimately create unique products and solutions across our businesses.

3M is adding intelligence and connectivity to many products by combining our global expertise in materials and processing with sensors, electronics, cloud technology and analytics. Our Electronic Systems are creating powerful platforms for smart materials, devices and processes. 

Modeling and Simulation enables 3M scientists to virtually test and predict properties of yet-to-be-made materials, explore product design, improve manufacturing processes, and offer customer support tools for a high level of customer engagement and value before physical development even begins.

3M's Advanced Robotics platform optimizes manufacturing through actuator design, physical manipulation, perception science, advanced path planning and advanced control systems. It enables high-throughput product development in 3M labs and brings proprietary robotic systems to our customers.

A power outage that leaves thousands in the dark, a wildfire impacting the air we breathe, lane detection systems keeping drivers safe – these and other indications can be detected and communicated by 3M sensors and other sensors relying on 3M components.

3M uses state-of-the-art tools and technologies to develop software for client, mobile and cloud that is secure, scalable and globally deployable. This software provides or enables many applications for innovative 3M technologies, including worker safety and consumer air quality.

3M has developed an unrivaled capability to measure, characterize, visualize, and understand materials and processes. With resources located around the world, 3M scientists utilize these capacities to support product development, from concept through commercialization, manufacturing, and registration.

3M Automation Solutions involve the design or adaptation of 3M products like adhesives to meet the workflow needs of our customers. Key capabilities include product design for automation, robotic system integration, industrial process understanding and automated application development.

The last step in manufacturing for over half of 3M's products is the conversion of a film, abrasive or tape into the specific shape and size a customer needs. Our ability to rapidly reconfigure how a product is cut, shaped and finished allows for efficient customization with consistent quality. 

The extreme precision of 3M’s manufacturing―including tolerances of less than a wavelength of light―requires a host of proprietary tools for measuring performance, strength, color, uniformity, reflectivity and thickness.

3M's unique control of interface and surface interactions allows us to enhance materials' reflectivity, improve their receptivity to fluids and adhesives, and create many other novel characteristics in materials.

Precise, consistent, cost-competitive and safe: 3M specializes in ensuring flexible, sustainable production; high-quality products; and quick market adaptations.

We leverage Sustainable Design to thoughtfully reduce the impact of our products, processes and packaging. This includes the materials we choose and how we use them - optimizing our supply chain and manufacturing and enabling customers and consumers to live more sustainably through our products.

Customers expect 3M products designed for outdoor applications to perform reliably after years of exposure, even in extreme conditions. We combine real-world outdoor and laboratory accelerated exposures to measure, analyze, and respond to the demands of the toughest environmental conditions.

Loud, unpleasant noises aren’t just irritating―they are also a threat to our health and safety. 3M has engineered nonwovens, polymers and other materials that absorb sound, dampen vibration and control undesirable noise in car interiors, disk drives and workplaces.

3M harnesses materials science to accelerate solutions that tackle some of the most pressing opportunities in climate change. Examples can be found in carbon dioxide capture, automotive electrification, hydrogen generation, energy grid transition and reduced use of solvents.

3M creates technologies and products to improve display quality, reduce energy use, protect surfaces, secure information and enhance interfaces. Using expertise in films, light management, adhesives, nanotechnology and microreplication, we develop solutions for next-generation displays.

As the world searches for new ways to generate and store energy and tackle vehicle electrification challenges, it turns to 3M technologies, including those in battery and fuel cells, barrier films for photovoltaics, and pipe coatings for corrosion protection in oil and natural gas production.

3M revolutionized advertising with the first digitally printed wall graphics, the invention of retroreflective signage substrates, and refined inks and pigments to ensure true colors in harsh conditions. This technology platform now spans printable graphic films to traffic signage.

3M technologies enable customers to prudently and safely use energy resources so that they get the most out of them without sacrificing performance. 3M films can help reduce cooling and heating costs or lighting needs by controlling the solar energy or redirecting the sunlight entering a space.

3M advances flexible electronics for applications like foldable displays for consumer electronics, wearable VR devices or automotive interfaces. 3M’s strong materials, process and manufacturing capabilities are aligned to support the unfolding needs of flexible electronics.

3M makes multiple filtration, separation and purification solutions, including electret, membrane, activated carbon and nonwoven fiber technologies. This expertise is applied to many products such as 3M's filters, cartridges, respirators, air filters for homes and cars.

3M uses light manipulation to enhance and transform everyday products: brighter signs, more energy-efficient buildings, vivid electronic displays using less power, and comfortable, longer-range electric vehicles.

With 3M mechanical fasteners, customers can attach materials and then detach them―over and over again. We create these durable structured surfaces using a combination of our unique technologies including microreplication, polymer processing, adhesives and nonwovens.

3M thermal management materials' stability, thermal conductivity, high dielectric strength and conformability make them ideal for a variety of applications including thermal management of electronics, batteries and electrical transformers to help protect surroundings from high heat loads and fire.