1.

Introduction
1.1 Historical Perspective
• Materials are deeply related to our culture and day to day activities.
Probably every segment of everyday lives is influenced by materials
such as transportation, housing, clothing, communication, recreation
and food production.
• Historically the development and advancement of societies have been
intimately related to the members ability to produce and manipulate
materials to fulfill their needs.
• The earliest humans had access to only limited number of materials
that occur naturally such as stone, wood, clay, skin, leaves, etc. With
time they discovered superior materials such as pottery and metals.
• They have also found that the material properties could be altered by
heat treatments and by adding other elements.
• The industrial revolution in 19th century and early 20th century saw
development of many new engineering materials.
• The Scientists and engineers developed the understanding of structural elements
of materials and their properties. The above knowledge led to the development of
tens of thousands of materials with special characteristics that meet the need of
our modern and complex societies.
• An advancement in material type is often forerunner for the progression of step-
wise development of technology.
• The automobiles would not have been possible without the availability of in-
expensive steel or comparable substitute. Our compact memory stick, mobile
phone, notebook, PC, digital camera with large memory would not have been
possible without the giant-magneto resistance materials discovered in two
decades ago.

1.2 Materials Science and Engineering

• The discipline of materials science involves the study of relation between
structure and properties of materials and on the other hand materials engineering
is about designing or processing the materials towards a specific structure to get a
predetermined properties based on known structure-property relation.
• Here the term structure is very general one. The sub atomic structure involves
electrons within the atoms and their interaction with nucleus. The crystal
structure involves the organization of atoms or molecules relative to one another
• The microstructure deals with agglomeration of large number of atoms or
molecules and can be viewed based on some microscope. The macroscope
structure is that one can see with naked eye.
• Materials when exposed to external stimuli, they evoke some response and
this trait (feature) of materials are called their properties. For example
deformation of materials when they are exposed to force, reflection of light
against the flashed light.
• The properties of solid materials can be classified into six categories:
• 1. Mechanical, 2. Electrical, 3. magnetic, 4. Thermal, 5. Optical and
6.Deterioative.
• Mechanical :
Stimulus - applied load or force;
Properties – elastic modulus, strength, ductility, etc.
• Electrical:
Stimulus – applied electric field or voltage,
Properties – electrical conductivity, dielectric constant, polarization.
• Magnetic:
Stimulus - applied magnetic field
Properties – magnetization, magnetic susceptibility, coercive field, hysteresis
loss, petmeability, etc.
• Thermal:
Stimulus – heat
Properties – thermal conductivity, heat capacity
• Optics:
Stimulus – electromagnetic radiation or light
Properties – refractive index, reflectivity, absorption, transmissibility
• Deteriorative:
Stimulus – chemical vapor, moisture, environmental, etc.
Properties – chemical reactivity of materials
• Other than structure and properties of materials another two important factors
are processing and performance..
1.3 Classification of Materials
• The first point is why do we need to study materials?
• The study of materials science and engineering is essential for any engineer
whether he/she is a mechanical, electrical, chemical, civil, etc. They have to
choose appropriate material for a specific engineering applications such as
transmission gear, oil refiner component, superstructure for a building, ic ship for
electronic circuit, etc.
• It may be difficult to find materials having all superior properties, often one has
to trade off one characteristic for another. Sometimes, some materials might
possess ideal set of properties but with prohibitively expensive.
• As far as the classification of the materials is concerned, solid materials are
classified as metals, ceramics, and polymers. This classification is mostly due to
chemical constituent of the materials.
• Three other groups of engineering materials are,
Composites – It is a combination of two or more different materials
Semiconductors – Materials having unusual electrical properties having its
resistance continuously tuneable depending on the doping impurity in the order
of parts per million.
Biomaterials: Materials used for implanting in human body.
• Metals: They are normally made up of combination of metallic elements. Here
the electrons are not localized to specific atoms rather they are free to move
around giving rise to good conductivity for electricity and heat. They are quite
strong yet deformable, so they are used extensively for structural applications.
• Ceramics: Ceramic materials are mostly made up of oxides, nitrides and carbides.
Materials made up of clay minerals, cement and glass also fall under this
category. They are typically insulative to the passage of electricity and heat and
are more resistant to high temperatures and harsh environment. Ceramics are
hard but brittle.
• Polymers: Most of them are based on organic compounds that are chemically
based on carbon, hydrogen and other non-metallic elements. The examples are
plastics and rubber materials. They generally have low densities and extremely
flexible.
• Composites: Composites are mixture of two or more elements. They are
designed to display the combination of best characteristics of each of the
component materials. Fiber glass is a familiar example where glass fibers are
embedded into polymeric material to have the strength of glass and flexibility of
polymer.
• Semiconductors: Semiconductors have electrical properties intermediate
between conductors and insulators. Their electrical properties can be tuned in a
controlled manner by doping minute (part per million) concentration of
impurities. Semiconductors have revolutionised the electronics industries and
contributed to consumer electronics that improved the quality of life.
• Biomaterials: Biomaterials are specially designed materials for the implantation
into human body towards the replacement of diseased or damaged body tissues.
All of the above materials such as metals, ceramics, polymers, composites
and semiconductors can be used as biomaterials with the only condition that
they must be compatible with body tissues and should no produce any toxic
substance.
• Other three classes of recent and future materials are
- Advanced Materials
- Smart Materials
- Nanomaterials
• Advanced Materials: Materials that are utilized in high technology applications
are called advanced materials. The term high technology is used for a device or
product that operates using sophisticated principles. The examples are electronic
equipment, fibre optics system, aircraft, spacecraft and military rockets, etc.
These materials are either traditional materials whose properties have been
enhanced or the newly developed high performance materials. These materials
are generally expensive
• Smart Materials: Smart materials are a group of new or state of the art materials,
which are being developed and that will have significant influence on technology.
The adjective smart implies that these materials are able to sense changes in the
surrounding or environments and respond to these changes in a predetermined
manner.
• Components of smart system include some type of sensors and actuators. Sensor
detect an input signal and actuator performs responsive and adaptive functions.
Actuators may be called upon to change shape, position, natural frequency or
mechanical characteristics in response to change in temperature, electric and/or
magnetic field. Four types of materials are commonly used as actuators: shape
memory alloys, piezoelectric ceramics, magnetostriction materials and electro
rheological / magneto rheological fluids.
• Shape memory alloys are metals that after having been deformed revert back to
original shapes when temperature is changed. Piezoelectric ceramics expand or
contract in response to applied electric field or voltage conversely they also
generate electric field when their dimension are altered. Manetostrictive
materials expand or contract depending on the applied magnetic field. Electro
rheological and magneto rheological fluids that experience dramatic changes in
their viscosity by the application of electric field and magnetic fields respectively.
• Nanomaterials / Nanotechnology: Until recent times the general procedure
utilized by scientist to understand chemistry and physics of materials has been to
begin studying large and complex structures and then to investigate the
fundamental building blocks of these structure. This approach is sometimes is
termed as top-down science. However with the advent of scanning probe
microscope which permit observation of individual atoms and molecules it has
been possible to manipulate and over atoms and molecules to form new
structure and thus design new materials that are built from atomic level
constituents. This ability to carefully arrange atoms provides opportunities to
develop mechanical, electrical, magnetic and other properties that are not other
wise possible. We call this bottom-up approach and the study the properties of
these materials is termed as nanotechnology. The term nano denotes that the
dimension of the these entities are of the order of 100 nm or less.