I have recently spent much time delving into new materials: “Many of my papers start with a chemists identifying a material that performs a particular function much more effectively than the incumbent material.”
However there is one type of material that chemists cannot create, elements. There are currently 118 elements. Other than using nuclear physics to create them (one atom at a time) there are only two ways to obtain elements: (1) recycle used materials to obtain their component elements, or (2) mine the ore containing the element, and refine it.