Materials science

The Materials Science Tetrahedron. It often also includes Characterization at the center.

Materials science is an interdisciplinary field involving the study of different types of materials and the applications of this knowledge to various areas of science and engineering. It includes elements of applied physics and chemistry, as well as chemical, mechanical, civil and electrical engineering. With the recent surge of interest in nanoscience and nanotechnology, materials science has been propelled to the forefront at many academic institutions and research facilities.

Besides its importance for industrial applications, materials science has gradually developed into a field that provides tests for condensed matter or solid state theories. New physics emerges because of the diverse new material properties needed to be explained.

Historical overview

Materials science is one of the oldest forms of applied science and engineering. In the development of human civilization, the defining point of each era has often been described in terms of the human ability to work with a new type of material. Examples are the Stone Age, Bronze Age, and Steel Age.

Before the 1960s, (and in some cases decades after), many materials science departments at academic and research institutions were named metallurgy departments, because the emphasis was on the study of metals and their uses. The field has since broadened to include every class of materials, such as ceramics, polymers, semiconductors, magnetic materials, and biological materials (such as medical implants).

Many important elements of modern materials science have resulted from the space race. In particular, the understanding and engineering of metallic alloys, ceramics, and other materials were useful for the construction of space vehicles, space suits, and so forth, and the new knowledge was found valuable for various consumer and industrial applications as well.

Fundamentals of materials science

In materials science, the researcher conducts a systematic investigation of each material, in terms of its structure, properties, processing, and performance. The research often leads to new applications of known materials and the creation of new materials with desired properties.

On a fundamental level, this field relates the properties and performance of a material to its atomic-scale structure and the different phases it can go through. The major factors that determine the structure and properties of a material are the nature of its constituent chemical elements and the way in which the material was processed into its final form. These factors, related through the laws of thermodynamics, govern the material’s microstructure, and thus its properties.

The manufacture of a perfect crystal of a material is physically impossible. Instead, materials scientists manipulate the defects in crystalline materials, thereby creating a material with the desired properties. On an atomic scale, the defects in a crystal could mean that atoms of one element may be missing or replaced by atoms of other elements.

Furthermore, not all materials have a regular crystalline structure. Glasses, some ceramics, and many natural materials are amorphous—not possessing any long-range order in their atomic arrangements. These materials are much harder to engineer than crystalline materials. Polymers are a mixed case, with varying degrees of crystallinity, and their study commonly combines elements of chemical and statistical thermodynamics to give thermodynamic (rather than mechanical) descriptions of physical properties.

Materials in Industry

Radical materials advances drive the creation of new products and even new industries. At the same time, stable industries employ materials scientists to make incremental improvements and troubleshoot issues with currently used materials. Industrial applications of materials science include the design of materials and their cost-benefit tradeoffs in industrial production.

Techniques used for processing materials include:

casting
rolling
welding
ion implantation
crystal growth
thin-film deposition
sintering
glassblowing

Techniques used for analyzing (characterizing) materials include:

electron microscopy
X-ray diffraction
calorimetry
nuclear microscopy (HEFIB)
Rutherford backscattering
neutron diffraction

The overlap between physics and materials science has led to the offshoot field of materials physics, which is concerned with the physical properties of materials. The approach is generally more macroscopic and applied than in condensed matter physics.

Classes of materials

Materials science encompasses various classes of materials, such as:

Ionic crystals (crystals in which the atoms are held together by ionic bonds)
Covalent crystals (crystals in which the atoms are held together by covalent bonds)
Metals
Intermetallics
Semiconductors
Polymers
Composite materials
Vitreous materials

Each class of materials may involve a separate field of study.

Sub-fields of materials science

Nanotechnology: As commonly understood, nanotechnology is the creation and study of materials whose defining structural properties are anywhere from less than 1 nanometer (nm) (10⁻⁹ meter) to 100 nm in scale, such as molecularly engineered materials. On a more rigorous level, nanoscience involves the study of materials where the effects of quantum confinement, the Gibbs-Thomson effect, or any other effect only present at the nanoscale is the defining property of the material.
Crystallography --- the study of how atoms in a solid fill space, the defects associated with crystal structures such as grain boundaries and dislocations, and the characterization of these structures and their relation to physical properties.
Materials Characterization --- such as diffraction with x-rays, electrons, or neutrons, and various forms of spectroscopy and chemical analysis such as Raman spectroscopy, energy-dispersive spectroscopy (EDS), chromatography, thermal analysis, electron microscope analysis, etc., in order to understand and define the properties of materials. See also List of surface analysis methods
Metallurgy --- the study of metals and their alloys, including their extraction, microstructure and processing.
Biomaterials --- materials that are derived from and/or used with biological systems.
Electronic and magnetic materials --- materials such as semiconductors used to create integrated circuits, storage media, sensors, and other devices.
Tribology --- the study of the wear of materials due to friction and other factors.
Surface science --- interactions and structures between solid-gas solid-liquid or solid-solid interfaces.
Ceramics and refractories --- high temperature materials including structural ceramics such as RCC, polycrystalline silicon carbide and transformation toughened ceramics

Some practitioners often consider rheology a sub-field of materials science, because it can cover any material that flows. However, modern rheology typically deals with non-Newtonian fluid dynamics, so it is often considered a sub-field of continuum mechanics.

Glass Science --- any non-crystalline material including inorganic glasses, vitreous metals and non-oxide glasses.

Topics that form the basis of materials science

Thermodynamics, statistical mechanics, kinetics and physical chemistry, for phase stability, transformations (physical and chemical) and diagrams.
Crystallography and chemical bonding, for understanding how atoms in a material are arranged.
Mechanics, to understand the mechanical properties of materials and their structural applications.
Solid-state physics and quantum mechanics, for the understanding of the electronic, thermal, magnetic, chemical, structural and optical properties of materials.
Diffraction and wave mechanics, for the characterization of materials.
Chemistry and polymer science, for the understanding of plastics, colloids, ceramics, liquid crystals, solid state chemistry, and polymers.
Biology, for the integration of materials into biological systems.
Continuum mechanics and statistics, for the study of fluid flows and ensemble systems.
Mechanics of materials, for the study of the relation between the mechanical behavior of materials and their microstructures.

Some nonacademic materials science research facilities

Government laboratories

Argonne National Laboratory
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Los Alamos National Laboratory
Max Planck Institute
Oak Ridge National Laboratory

Corporate facilities

DuPont
GE Global Research
IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center

Significant journals

Nature Materials
Acta Materialia
JOM
Advanced Materials
Computational materials science
Advanced Functional Materials
Journal of Materials Chemistry
Journal of Materials Online - Open Access
Metallurgical and Materials Transactions

References
ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

Askeland, Donald R. and Pradeep P. Phulé (2005). The Science & Engineering of Materials, 5th edition, Thomson-Engineering. ISBN 0-534-55396-6.
Gaskell, David R. (1995). Introduction to the Thermodynamics of Materials, 4th edition, Taylor and Francis Publishing. ISBN 1-56032-992-0.
Eberhart, Mark (2003). Why Things Break : Understanding the World by the Way It Comes Apart. Harmony. ISBN 1-4000-4760-9.
Gordon, James Edward (1984). The New Science of Strong Materials or Why You Don't Fall Through the Floor, eissue edition, Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-02380-8.

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