Preface

In October 1984 Don Fuqua, then chairman of the House Committee on Science and Technology, wrote to the presidents of the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering urging the National Research Council to form a committee “to conduct a comprehensive materials research and technology assessment for the next decade.” This direct expression of support from a U.S. congressman, which was further reinforced by the federal agencies with materials-related missions, marked the inception of the survey of materials science and engineering presented here. But the roots of this survey extend much further to include the initial recognition of materials science and engineering as a distinct area of endeavor. There have been earlier comprehensive studies of materials science and engineering, most notably that of the National Research Council’s Committee on the Survey of Materials Science and Technology (COSMAT). The publication of COSMAT’s 1975 report Materials and Man’s Needs moved understanding and recognition of the field forward. At that time, national goals were focused on natural resources, energy, and the environment, as well as on defense. Materials and Man’s Needs dealt with materials issues related to strategic materials, reduction of energy costs in production, biodegradability, recovery and recycling of scrap, and the materials cycle, all in the context of an awakened public awareness of the finiteness of the earth’s resources. It also discussed the structure-property-performance relationships that have been so important to development of the field over the last decades. The present report, building on the foundation of that earlier report, stresses the importance of synthesis and processing.

At the inception of this survey, it was clear that materials science and engineering had changed dramatically since the completion of the COSMAT report. A wealth of new discoveries and technological advances had drawn many new people to the field and had radically altered the field’s concerns and methods. At the same time, a number of industries closely associated with materials science and engineering had undergone similarly dramatic changes—and not always for the better. America’s mining and metals beneficiation industries, its commodity metals industry, its machine tool industry, its computer industry, and its electronics industry, which had been, and still are, major users of the results of materials science and engineering, were all losing major portions of their market shares to overseas competitors and shutting down research operations.

Prompted by Fuqua’s letter, the Solid State Sciences Committee, in collaboration with the National Materials Advisory Board, devoted its spring 1985 forum to the question of whether a new survey of materials science and engineering should be conducted and, if so, how it should be structured. At the forum a remarkable degree of unanimity emerged regarding the potential value of such a study, and forum participants outlined a general statement of task for the project. Shortly thereafter, the National Research Council initiated a joint project under the Solid State Sciences Committee and the National Materials Advisory Board to conduct a survey along the lines suggested, and funding was obtained from the National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy, and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, as well as from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, the Army Research Office, and the National Research Council.

The National Research Council’s principal goal for the study was to present “a unified view of recent progress and new directions in materials science and engineering.” Among the specific issues identified in the charge were

The Committee on Materials Science and Engineering was constituted by the National Research Council with a special focus on the unity of materials science and engineering. The committee was carefully balanced with respect to several different factors including the range of disciplines that conduct materials science and engineering, the variety of institutions in which these activities take place, and the scope of the field from science to engineering. By the summer of 1986, a committee of 17 eminently qualified individuals representing government, industry, and academia had been formed. In addition, a steering committee was established to provide oversight and guidance throughout the committee’s deliberations.

One of the first and most challenging tasks facing the committee was to find a way of breaking down a subject as large and complex as materials science and engineering into manageable parts. The committee formed five panels, each of which examined an important area of the field that cut across all materials classes and ranged from science to engineering to industrial practice. The Panel on Research Opportunities and Needs in Materials Science and Engineering identified research areas of national importance in materials science and engineering and evaluated opportunities and needs in the field. The Panel on Exploitation of Materials Science and Technology for the National Welfare examined the links between scientific advances and economically competitive products and processes and other ways in which materials science and engineering affects the national well-being. The Panel on International Cooperation and Competition in Materials Science and Engineering outlined the global dimensions of the field, particularly as it affects industrial competitiveness in the United States. The Panel on Research Resources in Materials Science and Engineering assessed the resources available now and in the future for materials science and engineering in terms of facilities, instrumentation, and funding at universities, national laboratories, and industrial laboratories. The Panel on Education in Materials Science and Engineering considered personnel issues and the means by which future generations of materials scientists and engineers are to be educated.

The leadership of each panel consisted of one chairman and two vice chairmen drawn from the committee (the two committee co-chairmen were the only committee members not serving on a panel). Panel leaders included one person from industry, one from a government laboratory, and one from academia. In turn, the National Research Council appointed a balanced panel, and the panels conducted meetings and surveys, commissioned papers, and gathered data. In this way, a broad cross section of the materials community was involved in the preparation of this report (there were 109 formally constituted committee and panel members and nearly 400 other individuals who contributed to the study). The co-chairmen of the committee and the committee members also appeared before a number of professional societies to present status reports on the committee’s deliberations and to encourage participation and feedback.

Each panel produced a major report on its assigned issue, and these panel reports form the basis for this report. However, this report is not organized strictly along the lines of the issues assigned to the panels. As intended, there was considerable overlap among the panels, an overlap that contributed to the richness of the committee’s conclusions. This report builds on that overlap to provide a committee consensus of all of the panels’ conclusions. Although the findings of particular panels may contribute more heavily to some of the chapters in this report than to others, in effect, each of the panels contributed to each of the chapters of this report. The introduction to the report briefly reviews the contents of the chapters.

We would like to mention one issue that arose from the work of the Panel on Research Opportunities and Needs in Materials Science and Engineering and the work of the Panel on International Cooperation and Competition in Materials Science and Engineering that is treated in Chapter 2. The work of these panels uncovered significant issues with regard to competitiveness. One of the committee’s conclusions is that better integration of materials science and engineering with the rest of business operations is needed to improve the positions of U.S. firms in domestic and international competition; the objective is to strengthen long-range R&D in industry. Other issues of competitiveness emerged that are alluded to above and that have more to do with the entire structure and climate of industry in the United States. These issues are profound and deserve more attention than a study whose scope is limited to materials science and engineering can give them.

As would be expected for a diverse field such as materials science and engineering, the findings range over many topics, and the recommendations are broad in character. In the spirit that has characterized the whole endeavor of the Committee on Materials Science and Engineering, this report is offered with the hope that its important recommendations will be adopted and implemented in ways that will benefit the United States.

PRAVEEN CHAUDHARI

MERTON FLEMINGS

Co-chairmen

Committee on Materials Science and Engineering