Use font awesome with angular2+ material

npm install font-awesome --save

Then 

Import css from .angular-cli.json

"styles": [

        "styles.css",

        "../node_modules/font-awesome/css/font-awesome.css"

      ],

Add the following style to style.css

.fontawesome {

    display: inline-block;

    font: normal normal normal 14px/1 FontAwesome;

    font-size: 24px;

    text-rendering: auto;

    -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased;

    text-align: center;

}

​use 

<mat-icon color="primary" fontSet="fontawesome" fontIcon="fa-thumb-tack"></mat-icon>​

--

Feng