Why Are Carbon-Based Materials Important in Civilization Progress and Especially in the Industry 4.0 Stage of the Industrial Revolution

This article presents a comprehensive literature study showing that, starting from the emergence of the species of homo sapiens, the progress of human civilization is strongly dependent on the development of materials, and over time this is mainly development of engineering materials and the accompanying increase in productive forces. There is no close correlation between changes, and especially between the development of the brain and technologies sequentially controlled by humans. The materials science appeared as an independent branch of knowledge only in the late 1950s. Technical aspects of the product launch on the market relate to several technical aspects; engineering design is a significant conceptual phase of this activity, and within it, the material design. The expected functional properties of the product will be assured only if the right expected material is used and is produced in a suitably selected expected technological process that will provide both the expected shape and other geometric features of the product, including assembly and the expected structure of the material, ensuring the expected mechanical, physical, and chemical properties of the material, the use of which ensures the expected application of the product. The given rule defines the paradigm of contemporary materials science and engineering. Without the use of engineering materials and without the development of manufacturing processes, it is impossible to manufacture any product and make it available to consumers. The material design process in history has gone through a long period of changes. Initially, for millions of years and almost a century ago, materials were selected based on the trial and error method, which is stage Materials 1.0. Currently, about 80 % of work in the field of engineering materials development and material design is carried out in accordance with the Materials 2.0 protocol. The Materials 2.0 protocol includes more systematic material research, ranging from conceptualization, systematic laboratory experiments to verify the idea, prototyping in the laboratory and real conditions, and testing and validating prototypes and life cycle assessment to use the results of research in product production. Materials 3.0 use computational materials science materials, and materials are computationally designed with a target functionality. Only the idea of Materials 4.0 overcomes human limitations in applying existing knowledge about the theory of materials, processing, and properties through the use of cyber-physical space. In manufacturing processes generally after the era of water and steam and mass production based on the division of labor with the use of electricity, and then the use of electronics and information technology for the automation of production processes, there is a dynamic use of cyber-physical systems, the Internet of objects, machine learning, artificial intelligence, and virtual reality, currently guaranteeing the production progress at the stage of the Industry 4.0 industrial revolution. So far, nine technologies have been designated as determining the change in industrial production at the Industry 4.0 stage. According to the authors of this article, it is necessary to augment this list by manufacturing processes and engineering materials as well as living and bioengineering machines; therefore, in total, there will be 12 technologies determining the changes in production in the Industry 4.0 stage. Omitting these issues would make it impossible to manufacture any products available on the market, and the idea of Industry 4.0 presented would be incomplete. The importance of carbon-based materials is also presented, and several results of our own research on various materials are presented, with an indication of application possibilities.