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Materials Science
Polymer Melt Flow Testing
Materials science for
product and machine development involves the ability to manipulate
materials in various state phases including crystalline materials such
as precipitates, grain boundaries, interstitial atoms, vacancies or
substitutional atoms to create new materials with the desired
properties. Materials such as polymers, glasses, some ceramics,
and many natural materials are amorphous, not possessing any long-range
order in their atomic arrangements, are commonly combined with elements
of chemical and statistical thermodynamics to give thermodynamic, rather
than mechanical, descriptions of physical properties.
Modern Materials Scientists & Material and Chemical Engineers use this
understanding of the physical and thermodynamic properties of the
elemental materials, relating to atomic structure in various phases
engineering of composite materials including new metallic alloys, silica
and carbon materials, ceramics, polymers, plastics, semiconductors,
magnetic materials, medical – drug production, implant and biomaterials.
Materials science includes the extraction of materials and their
conversion into useful forms. Metal casting, foundry techniques,
blast furnace molten extraction, and electrolytic extraction are all
part of the required knowledge of a metallurgist and Materials
Engineering
Sub-fields of materials science
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Nanotechnology - rigorously, the study of materials where the
effects of
quantum confinement or any other effect only present at the nano
scale is the defining property of the material; in the
nanometer to one hundred of a nanometers in scale.
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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.
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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,
chromatography,
thermal analysis,
electron microscope analysis, etc., in order to understand and
define the properties of materials. See also
List of surface analysis methods
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Metallurgy - the study of metals and their alloys, including their
extraction,
microstructure and processing.
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Biomaterials - materials that are derived from and/or used with
biological systems.
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Electronics and magnetics - materials such as
semiconductors used to create
integrated circuits,
storage media,
sensors, and other devices.
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Tribology -the study of the wear of materials due to
friction and other factors.
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Surface science/Catalysis - interactions and structures between
solid-gas solid-liquid or solid-solid interfaces.
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Ceramics and
refractories - high temperature materials including structural
ceramics such as
RCC, polycrystalline
silicon carbide and
transformation toughened ceramics
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Rheology - deals with
fluid dynamics,
Disciplines that form the
basis of materials science:
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Thermodynamics,
statistical mechanics,
kinetics and
physical chemistry, for
phase stability,
transformations (physical and chemical) and diagrams.
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Crystallography and
chemical bonding, for
understanding how atoms in a material are arranged.
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Glass Science --- any non-crystalline material including inorganic
glasses, vitreous metals and non-oxide glasses.
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Mechanics, to
understand the mechanical properties of materials and their structural
applications.
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Solid-state physics and
quantum mechanics, for
the understanding of the electronic, thermal, magnetic, chemical,
structural and optical properties of materials.
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Diffraction and
wave mechanics, for the
characterization of materials.
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Chemistry and
polymer science, for
the understanding of
plastics, colloids,
ceramics, liquid crystals,
solid state chemistry,
and
polymers.
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Biology, for the
integration of materials into biological systems.
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Continuum mechanics and
statistics, for the
study of fluid flows and ensemble systems.
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Mechanics of materials,
for the study of the relation between the mechanical behavior of
materials and their microstructures.
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