Materials Thought Leaders

The AZoM.com "Materials Thought Leaders" series is a selection of articles that cover the key technology areas where materials are making an impact and where they will make an increasing impact. All the articles are written by experts who have been invited as recognised leaders in their fields to provide a "state of the art" contribution.

Pyrometallurgical Technologies
By Professor Oleg Ostrovski, School of Materials Science and Engineering, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia

Designing Organic Semiconducting Materials: The Promise of Flexible Electronics
By Professor Seth C. Rasmussen, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, North Dakota State University

Microstructure Mining - An Introduction to Microstructure Mining
By Professor Ian Nettleship, Dept. Mechanical Engineering & Materials Science, University of Pittsburgh

Metallic Glasses - No Disdain for Disorder
By Professor Rainer J. Hebert, Institute of Materials Science, University of Connecticut

High Performance Superconductors - An Introduction to High Performance Superconductors
By Dr. Simon R. Hall, Centre for Organized Matter Chemistry, University of Bristol

Nanostructured Metallic Alloys - Materials for the Future
By Professor Emily M. Hunt, Department of Engineering and Computer Science, West Texas A&M University

Mechanical Metallurgy - A Key to Optimizing Materials for Energy, Transportation, and Structural Applications
By Professor Kip Findley, Advanced Steel Processing and Products Research Center (ASPPRC), Colorado School of Mines

Shape Memory Materials - An Introduction to Shape Memory Materials 
By Professor Wei Min Huang, School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

Atomistic Modeling of Materials
By Professor Dane Morgan, Co-Founder, Computational Materials Group, Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Materials Selection - What is Materials Selection?
By Professor Mike F. Ashby, Principal Investigator, Engineering Design Centre, Department of Engineering, The University of Cambridge; Non-Executive Chairman; Granta Design

MAX Phases - An Introduction to MAX Phases
By Professor Michel W. Barsoum, Group Leader, MAX Phase Materials Research Group, Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Drexel University

Ultra-High Temperature Ceramics - An Introduction to Ultra-High Temperature Ceramics
By Professor William G. Fahrenholtz and Professor Greg E. Hilmas, Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Missouri University of Science and Technology

Magnetoelectric Interfaces: Emerging Perspectives for Novel Functionalities 
By Professor Evgeny Y. Tsymbal, Director, Materials Research Science Engineering Center (MRSEC); Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Nebraska, Lincoln

Designing Cell-Responsive Biomaterials Through Protein Engineering
By Professor Sarah Heilshorn, Group Leader, Heilshorn Biomaterials Group, Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Stanford University

Diamond-Based Photonic Sources
By Professor Richard P Mildren, MQ Photonics Research Centre, Department of Physics, Macquarie University, Australia

Atom Probe Tomography: Seeing Millions of Atoms… in 3D
By Professor Krishna Rajan, Director, Institute for Combinatorial Discovery, Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Iowa State University

Green Processing of Iron-Based Materials 
By Professor Allen W. Apblett, Kevin Barber, and Daniel Hoel, Department of Chemistry, Oklahoma State University

Materiomics: Materials Science of Biological Protein Materials, from Nano to Macro
By Professor Markus J. Buehler, Principal Investigator, Laboratory for Atomistic and Molecular Mechanics, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Material Characterization for Power Generation Applications
By Dr. Bruce A. Pint, Corrosion Science and Technology Group, Materials Science and Technology Division, Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL)

Green Engineering and Materials Science
By Dr. Sean McGinnis, Director, VT Green Engineering, College of Engineering, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech)

Materials Science and Structural Integrity (SI) Assessment
By Professor Kamran Nikbin, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Imperial College London

Materials Science and The Global Nuclear Renaissance
By Dr. John Marra, Associate Laboratory Director; Environmental & Chemical Process Technology, Savannah River National Laboratory (SRNL), USA

Semiconductor Biological and Gas Sensors
By Professor Stephen J. Pearton, Department of Materials Science and Engineering and Professor Fan Ren, Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Florida, USA

Pyrometallurgical Technologies

This article by Professor Oleg Ostrovski discusses the pyrometallurgical routes used in the commercial production of steel, aluminium, metallurgical silicon, manganese, chromium, titanium, and many other metals and alloys. Read more

Designing Organic Semiconducting Materials: The Promise of Flexible Electronics

Most organic polymers are insulators and are often used to isolate metallic conductors from other conducting materials. However, studies beginning in the 1960s revealed that the electrical conductivity of conjugated organic polymers can be controlled through oxidation or reduction. Read more

Microstructure Mining - An Introduction to Microstructure Mining

Microstructure Mining, as its name suggests, is the application of data mining concepts, used in many branches of science and engineering, to the analysis of materials microstructure. Read more

Metallic Glasses - No Disdain for Disorder

Metallic glasses were borne out from rapid cooling experiments with binary metallic alloys in the late 1950s at the California Institute of Technology under the aegis of Pol Duwez. The idea was to quench molten metal mixtures very rapidly and thereby bypass crystallization of the liquid alloy. Read more

High Performance Superconductors - An Introduction to High Performance Superconductors

Superconductors are a class of compounds which conduct electricity without resistance and are impermeable to magnetic flux below a critical temperature. As a result of this, they are ubiquitous in applications as diverse as MRI scanners, Earth-orbiting deep space cameras and Maglev trains. Read more

Nanostructured Metallic Alloys - Materials for the Future

Recent advancements in the field of nano-technology focused attention on developing materials with new and useful characteristics. This short article is focused on examples of future opportunities within nanostructured metallic alloys. Read more

Mechanical Metallurgy - A Key to Optimizing Materials for Energy, Transportation, and Structural Applications

Mechanical metallurgy can be defined as the interface between an alloy's mechanical behavior, the processing used to produce the alloy, and the underlying structure ranging from the atomic to macroscopic level. Read more

Shape Memory Materials - An Introduction to Shape Memory Materials

Shape memory materials (SMMs) are featured by the ability to recover their original shape from a significant and seemingly plastic deformation upon a particular stimulus is applied. This is known as the shape memory effect (SME). Read more

Atomistic Modeling of Materials

Atomistic modeling techniques use modern computing power to explicitly include every atom in modeling of a material. As interacting atoms are the foundation of all materials science, atomistic modeling has helped enable a new field of computational materials studies. Read more

Materials Selection - What is Materials Selection?

Material selection involves seeking the best match between the property-profiles of the materials and that required by the design. Granta Design Ltd, UK have developed material property charts & selection methodologies that facilitate this match and interface with other engineering tools. Read more

MAX Phases - An Introduction to MAX Phases

A dozen years ago we synthesized and fully characterized, for the first time, the ternary compound, Ti3SiC2, and found it possess some of the best attributes of metals and ceramics. This was later found to be part of a much larger family of solids that all behaved similarly. Read more

Ultra-High Temperature Ceramics - An Introduction to Ultra-High Temperature Ceramics

Ultra-high temperature ceramics (UHTCs) are a class of materials that can be used in environments that exhibit extremes in temperature, chemical reactivity, erosive attack, etc. A variety of criteria can be used to define UHTCs including ultimate use temperature and strength at elevated temperature. Read more

Magnetoelectric Interfaces: Emerging Perspectives for Novel Functionalities

Magnetoelectric (ME) materials are those in which an external magnetic field affects the polarization, and an electric field influences the magnetization of the material. A well-known example of the ME material is Cr2O3. Read more

Designing Cell-Responsive Biomaterials Through Protein Engineering

Currently, surgeons use two primary types of materials inside the body to replace damaged body parts: either common industrial materials or harvested natural materials. Common industrial materials include stainless steel and titanium alloys in artificial joints and synthetic polymers in vascular bypasses. While these materials often perform well at replacing mechanical functions in the body, they lack much of the micro- and nano-scale organization necessary for proper biochemical function within the body. Read more

Diamond-Based Photonic Sources

Diamond is highly attractive as a laser material as it promises capabilities well beyond that possible from other materials in accordance with its extreme properties. Read more

Atom Probe Tomography: Seeing Millions of Atoms… in 3D

Atom Probe Tomography (APT) represents a revolutionary characterization tool for materials that can image individual atoms in three dimensions, a major advancement over the two dimensional images of other microscopy techniques. Read more

Green Processing of Iron-Based Materials

Among the twelve principles of green science and technology is a desire that the production of materials be achieved from sustainable sources with minimal environmental impact, and preferably by recycling of waste materials. Read more

Materiomics: Materials Science of Biological Protein Materials, from Nano to Macro

Materiomics is defined as the study of the material properties of natural and synthetic materials by examining fundamental links between processes, structures and properties at multiple scales, by using systematic experimental, theoretical or computational methods. Read more

Material Characterization for Power Generation Applications

The goal of clean coal research is to increase the steam temperature, which would increase efficiency. At these conditions, Ni-base superalloy blades and vanes in the turbine are protected by sophisticated film cooling systems and by thermal barrier coatings. Read more

Green Engineering and Materials Science

The scope of Green Engineering depends upon one's perspective and discipline, but it is broadly defined as minimizing environmental impacts across all life cycle phases in the design and engineering of products, processes, and systems. Read more

Materials Science and Structural Integrity (SI) Assessment

Structural integrity is concerned with determining and predicting the performance, failure, durability and safety of the component fabricated from the material that is subjected to a range of operating conditions during use. Read more

Materials Science and The Global Nuclear Renaissance

The nuclear industry is at the eye of a 'perfect storm' with fuel oil and natural gas prices near record highs, worldwide energy demands increasing at an alarming rate, and increased concerns about greenhouse gas emissions that have caused many to look negatively at long-term use of fossil fuels. Read more

Semiconductor Biological and Gas Sensors

There is significant interest in the development of new generations of semiconductor-based sensors that take advantage of microelectronic fabrication techniques to create robust sensor arrays that are integrated with wireless data transmission systems. Read more